Kostya: A Dark Mafia Romance (Zinon Bratva) Read online

  When he is finished, I do not make him wait long for my answer.

  “No.”

  I tell him what I am willing to sacrifice—much less than what he’s demanded—and I take something from him also. My traffic in the east has slowed and I know it’s because his men have infiltrated my area of operations. “Either pull your men back off my streets or there can be no further discussion.”

  Collin scoffs, but his father nods.

  “Da!” the son protests.

  The old man looks at his son. “We can concede sales in the lower east but we need your assurance that our boats will be allowed to come into harbor without disturbance.”

  Ah. That was the reason they came. To ensure their freight arrives. “Undisturbed. Yes. For a fee.”

  The younger Whelan curses under his breath and clenches a fist he most assuredly would prefer to drive into my face. But it would get him killed and we all know it, even this brash rookie.

  He remains seated. The old man nods and echoes, “A fee.”

  The harbors all along the coast are mine. Controlled by me. Manned by me. Patrolled by men I own, body and soul. There will be a tribute paid to my Bratva, or his shipments will sink before they get within ten miles of land. And he knows it. I can name my price.

  So I do.

  But as soon as the sum is out of my mouth, Collin shoves out of his chair violently. It tilts, teeters, and falls with a crash against the marble floor. “You son of a bitch!”

  I’ve been called worse, but never in my own office by someone who wants me to spare his life.

  I smile at Jack. “Your son is angry because he thinks I’m at an unfair advantage.” I cock my head to the side. “I trust, before he assumes your position in the Family, you will impress upon him the importance of community relations?”

  The threat is veiled with a smile and a pleasant tone, but the meaning is sharp and present.

  Jack Whelan breathes in deeply and nods once because he won’t humiliate himself with more than that. “Sit down, Collin.” He turns to me. “We will talk again, Kostya.”

  He extends a hand and I take it, because we are men of honor. Men who will kill each other if necessary, but men of honor.

  Jack’s phone has vibrated and shimmied across my desk and he reaches to pick it up. He frowns at the screen. He whirls away to read, and as he does, his son steps closer to my desk. “You hauled my father in here to humiliate him. This is not a slight I will forget.”

  He needs to prove his mettle. I let him, because I might need him one day and it’s clear he’s being groomed for his father’s position. Which means we will, at some future point, be adversaries and enemies, but on equal footing.

  Jack glares at me as he turns back from his phone. “Three of my gambling dens have been burglarized.” He stares at me, searching for answers in my face. I offer nothing.

  I’m unimpressed with his fury. I’m also unsurprised at the news. I knew his dens had been robbed.

  I’m the one who scheduled it.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Mm.” He chuckles. “You have no honor, but you are a master gamesman. I’ll remember this. My son will remember this.” He turns to the door. “Collin.”

  Instead of moving to see himself out, Collin glares at me. Then a slow smile slides across his face. “Well played, Mr. Zinon.” He leans across my desk. “My father played your games, abided by your terms. But I’m the new generation and I look forward to working this out among ourselves. My way.”

  I am under no illusions. The father’s time is past and his son will need to be kept in line. That will have to start now, because revenge will happen sooner than later.

  I will be ready when it comes.

  I work until late in the evening because my men need to be prepared and my business needs to be protected from whatever plot Collin and Jack Whelan may decide to put into play. Shipments are rerouted, security details reassigned. It is tedious work, the kind of boots-on-the-ground administrative drudgery I have long since left in my past, but I have an eerie feeling about this threat. I want to ensure the job is done right.

  When I am satisfied we’re adequately protected, I go home. My night will be as long as my day, but I want to see my daughter before Charlotte puts her to bed.

  At the thought of Tiana, I smile. She’s beautiful and smart, a little angel that would make any man proud.

  And she’s mine.

  The only good thing Natasha ever gave me.

  Charlotte is leaving Tiana’s room when I walk upstairs. “She’s sleeping.” She puts a finger to her mouth.

  “How was she today?”

  Charlotte smiles. “Very good.” Her smile fades. “It’s funny to me how good she is, considering what she’s gone through. It can’t be easy losing her mother and adapting to a new home and new people, but she’s doing so well.”

  I sigh because to speak the sad truths about Tiana’s beginnings gives credence to the fact I let her down, even though I didn’t know about her. “I suspect she spent time with strangers more than her mother. Natasha wasn’t … maternal.” Someone so selfish would never be the kind of mother Tiana deserved. “Natasha loved the idea of family more than she wanted to build one.”

  I know more than I want to share, and yet I still share more than I intended to. I know about the babysitters who called family services whenever Nat forgot to pick up our daughter. Yelisey’s report was thorough and heartbreaking.

  Charlotte lays a hand on my arm. “She asks about you.” There is the slightest disapproval in the thin line of her lips.

  I need to be home more. I know it. But I don’t see much chance. Not with the volatility of the Whelans and the vengeance they will extract. “I’ll see her in the morning.”

  I should go to my room, should walk away. But I can’t stop staring at Charlotte’s lips.

  My thoughts are unwelcome. I shake my head as if I can clear them away physically.

  “Well, I should say good night.” It’s barely eight in the evening but she’s determined to go, already walking away—when I spot the blood on her arm.

  I pull her back to me.

  “What?” she asks, wide-eyed.

  “There is …” I lift her sleeve and look. This is not blood. It’s ink, perhaps. “A spot on your arm.”

  Her smile is like sunlight and I’m caught in the shine of it. “Tiana wanted to give me a tattoo. I couldn’t reach to wipe it off. It’ll fade.”

  “Come.” I lead her to the bathroom at the end of the hallway by the stairs. When we are both standing inside, I’m trapped with the scent of her, trying to inhale shallow breaths because more would make me want things I cannot want from her.

  As I dampen a cloth, she looks up at me, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Her eyes are open, curious, trusting. Her skin is soft as I hold her arm with my free hand and imagine twisting it behind her, crushing her petite frame against the wall, and thrusting into her while she whimpers my name and clings to me with her nails raking my legs.

  I want her—to feel her slender fingers wrap around my cock, to taste her skin, to see her eyes dilate as I yank her panties away and feel her wetness on my fingers.

  I move closer so that the heat from her body warms me, and the desire in her trembling makes me smile with satisfaction.

  I look down at the same moment she picks to look up at me. Her eyelids flutter and my pulse kicks in response. To taste her would be my undoing. I know it.

  And yet, she is so close. Right here for the taking. It would require only …

  “I have to go,” I say abruptly.

  I drop the cloth into the sink and leave her.

  For my sanity. For my daughter. For Charlotte.

  For now.

  7

  Charlotte

  Not that I mind Kostya being here, in his own house, or that he’s taking care of Tiana, his own daughter, but I don’t know what to do with my free time since he’s taken this morning to spend with her. The house has a library of first editions and signed classics, memoirs and biographies, poetry, sonnets, and a copy of the Fifty Shades trilogy. Who doesn’t like to lose herself in a good book? But I haven’t asked to borrow one, and he hasn’t offered me free range of the house, so I don’t even know if I’m allowed to be in this room.

  I don’t know anything, actually. Whether or not my boss is a Russian Mafia leader. Whether or not I should be afraid of him or be attracted to him or if being attracted to him—because let’s face facts, I’m attracted—is even allowed.

  The library is lined with mahogany shelves of perfectly maintained books, ranging behind wingback leather chairs, an antique humidor, and a baby grand piano. Floor-to-ceiling windows look out over the backyard. There is a flower garden to the left, the swimming pool and guesthouse to the right. Every single thing I can see is manicured and pristine.

  As I’m standing in the doorway gaping at the insanely ridiculous display of wealth, which still has not gotten old, Kostya and Tiana walk across the patio to the shallow end of the pool.

  She has a pair of water wings on her arms and a life jacket hugging her torso. His giant hand swallows hers as he walks around to the steps. She smiles and hops next to him until he stops to strip off his T-shirt.

  Whoa.

  He’s extraordinary. His stomach is flat and muscled, just like I recall from the office, his chest broad and smooth and inked with the fine lines of tattoos. Deliciously inked, with very few inches left bare. I see the swirling slashes of Cyrillic text—something in Russian, I assume, although reading comprehension is not high on my list of priorities right now. I’m more concerned with how my finger itches to trace each tattooed line.

  My body vibrates with desire I need to lock down. I will.

 
In a minute, though. Maybe two.

  His expression is stern as always but a touch softer than normal, and when he looks at her, I can almost see the wheels in his mind churning. Tiana is probably the first person in his life that can get away with throwing a tantrum and not face his wrath in return. Although, so far, she hasn’t had a reason to act out, since her father is indulgent to a fault.

  I find myself drawn to him, to them, like a magnet. Walking through the library, I push through the double doors on the far wall and exit out to the pool area. The sound of Tiana’s laughter and the trickle of the waterfall feeding the pool fills the air. When I sit on the chaise to watch Tiana—it’s my job; that’s my story and I’m sticking to it—she giggles and uses Kostya to steady her as she climbs out of the water.

  I don’t intentionally watch him, but he makes a lovely picture with the sunlight reflecting off the water and onto the little drops streaming down his chest and arms.

  He’s staring, and there’s a hint of a smile. It’s in that moment I realize I’ve never heard him laugh. Or even seen a genuine grin. Not that he’s grim, exactly. He’s more what I would call chronically serious. But seeing him truly relaxed is like seeing a completely different person.

  “Charlotte, swim with us!” I hear the pitter-patter of little feet on the pavement and turn my head to see Tiana scampering towards me.

  “Walk, honey,” I warn. “You could fall!”

  She ignores me and takes my hand to tug me to my feet. She’s strong for a little girl, though I could make it easy for her to yank me towards her daddy.

  As much as I would love to swim with her and Kostya, I can’t. I haven’t bought a swimsuit in years. I may live in California where the miles of ocean and beach almost outnumber the residents. But swimsuits have never been high on my priority list.

  “You swim. I’ll watch.” But she’s insistent and pulls again so that I stumble at the edge of the pool. I fight my forward momentum and catch myself just in time with a pinwheel of my arms that, if gravity was just a hair weaker today, might have lifted me in flight.

  Tiana laughs because, at three and a half, all her life is a game. And now she’s discovered a new one. I teeter and totter. Beside me, she mimics my antics. I wiggle and wobble, and her giggles turn to belly laughs and clapping hands.

  And then I hear it. The richest, most delicious and resonant sound in the entire history of sound: Kostya Zinon’s laugh.

  A purr starts in my stomach and works its way up as goose bumps rise on my skin. Then it becomes a nervous chuckle that bubbles out of my throat.

  I am a thousand degrees of hot for Kostya, and every minute I stand here, this pool and the man in it each look better and better.

  “Swim, Charlotte!” Tiana’s big eyes blink up at me again, while Kostya lounges at the side of the deep end with his arms spread. “Pretty, pretty please.”

  “Come swim,” he drawls.

  It feels less like an invitation and more a dare. At least that’s how my imagination takes it. And I’m not one who backs away from a dare.

  I take a deep breath. “Okay.”

  And I jump in.

  Because, why not? I want to swim with them. I want to hear his laugh again. I want to be a part of this day, not a spectator to it. And if I have to spend the rest of the day plucking my T-shirt off my torso a hundred times so my nipples don’t poke through and give me something else to be embarrassed about, then I will gladly pay that cost.

  Kostya’s eyes are dark, his tongue gliding along the inner edge of his lower lip, and I’m thinking of shedding my top altogether. If I had anything even remotely sexy underneath my Bon Jovi T-shirt, Kostya would be getting an eyeful of it, but the last time Victoria told me a secret, I was a senior in high school who didn’t have a car payment or rent and my mom gave me clothes money. Nowadays, my lingerie comes from the sales bin at the discount department store. And a man like Kostya deserves better than a cross-my-heart whose lace is only sewed onto one cup.

  “Catch me, Daddy!” Tiana is poised to jump, hands pressed together like a fin over her head, knees bent, toes pointed. I wait, although I can see a thousand dangers I want to scoop her up and shield her from. But I also know she needs to try new things, test her courage, and Kostya is here to save her if necessary.

  Not that she cares about any of that. She’s jumping on three. “One. Two. Three!” And into his arms she goes, flailing, giggling, like the star of a commercial about a perfect little girl having a perfect summer’s day.

  The sun hits her honey-colored hair, and I can’t quite digest how lovely she is. I wonder if, when Kostya looks at her, he sees her mother. I see Kostya in her eyes and her smile, but I wonder about the woman who gave birth to Tiana. I do it more than is probably healthy and much more than I’ll ever admit to anyone else.

  He’s smiling as they play, the genuine smile I wish he would wear all the time. He’s too young—early thirties—to be so serious all the time. And I don’t like to think about why, because the answer is probably one I don’t want.

  He lifts her out of the pool, and she runs around again to stand in front of me this time. “You catch me this time, Charlotte!”

  I could do it with no problem, but Kostya moves to stand behind me. His breath warms my ear. “Move back just a little.” He slips his arm around my waist and pulls me against his chest.

  Before I can settle in, Tiana jumps, and he catches her in front of me.

  “Again!”

  I nod and this time she swims to the edge and climbs out. Kostya moves us toward the slope where the pool goes from waist height to over my head. Way over my head.

  Our legs tangle as I kick and wait for Tiana, who’s running from one end of the pool to the other. Kostya is still pressed to my back, his arms still tight at my waist as we tread water. My stomach flutters and my pulse dances in my chest. Since I started working for him, there haven’t been many nights where I don’t dream of something like this, but the reality is so much better.

  His chin nuzzles my neck, and I tilt my head. Wrong. I know. But … so right. His beard rasps against my skin, and I’m a goner. I know it. He knows it. Tiana probably knows it.

  I can’t see anything but him. And I want him so badly I can’t even look at him for fear he’ll see it and know.

  “I have to work this afternoon.” His voice is low, deep, as if he can see inside my head and is making his excuses now.

  I nod because I can’t speak. Not with all the desire and passion and disappointment bubbling in my belly. If I even try, I’ll probably end up blurting out that I want him to take me to bed. Best to keep quiet. And it’s my plan to stay one hundred percent silent—until Tiana runs off, shouting something about the bathroom.

  Leaving me alone with Kostya.

  “You’re very good with my daughter.” The arm around me loosens, and he turns me so that we’re facing each other now. I can see every fleck of gray and dark blue in his eyes. His chest is flush with mine and his hands are clasped at the small of my back. I know wrapping my legs around his waist is off-limits, but oh, what I wouldn’t do …

  “She’s a great kid.” And I sound like a raspy, two-packs-a-day smoker who can’t catch her breath. And though I’ve never touched a Marlboro in my life, I actually am having a hard time catching my breath. He’s too close. Too real. Too wrapped around me for my own good.

  He smiles down at me, and I swear his eyelids flutter as if he wants to kiss me as much as I want him to.

  For a moment, I’m sure it’s about to happen.

  But when I open my eyes again, of course Tiana is back, and Kostya pulls away to swim toward the edge of the pool. As he climbs out, I watch. Any sane woman with eyes who enjoys men would watch, so I’m not shamed by my ogling. The sigh, though, the whimper that escapes my lips when I catch a glimpse of his ass in his shorts, might be a little over the top.

  He’s out and walking toward the house before I recover enough to wonder what the hell just happened. And why he left. Why didn’t he kiss me. There are about a thousand other things I should be worried about, but I let the train of thought go as Tiana jumps back into the pool.