Brutal Temptation: A Dark Bratva Mafia Romance by Nessa Graye

Author:Nessa Graye [Graye, Nessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-10-17T23:00:00+00:00

Seven years ago…

It is a cool start to a Chicago fall. I’ve skipped out on my afternoon classes and taken the L down to Lincoln Park. The autumn foliage in this verdant neighborhood, far from my own, far from where I go to school, offers me an orgy of color, a festival through which I stride on my way to the Zoo.

I walk quickly past the shoppers on the street, the finely dressed ladies out to an early lunch, no doubt a ritual of theirs that they’ve maintained for decades. A few martinis as a way to ease oneself into the sleepy afternoon.

When I arrive, I find myself searching for Kostya. It’s a Friday, and plenty of other people—families, office workers, students—seem to have gotten the same idea, coming to the zoo for one last look at the animals before the winter chills send them inside.

I’m growing frustrated when he doesn’t show. I reach for my phone—a flip-phone which I’ve kept from high school out of affection for its simple design, though I know I’ll need to upgrade before long—when two strong hands descend on my shoulders.

“Boo!” Kostya cries, not far from my ear. I just about leap into his arms, half from the adrenaline rush of being startled, and half out of delight at finally seeing him after two weeks.

“You jerk,” I say, burying my face in his neck. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’m sorry—business, you know. Had to go back to old country for a while.” He affects an Eastern European accent for that last sentence, and I know, in a way, that’s his real accent. A few times he’s let slip things about his past: I knew that he’d grown up, the first few years at least, in various cities and small towns in Russia, before being adopted by the leader of his Bratva and coming to America.

I knew he had a brother too, a true brother among his adopted brothers.

“I know. I understand. It’s like that, too, with my family.”

“La Familgia,” he teases, stretching out the syllables, making them sound more foreign than they are. “When you’re here, you’re La Familgia.”

I nudge him hard in the belly, and loop my arm through his.

“You said we could go see the lions and the monkeys. Well?”

“All right, Princess, have it your way.” I giggle: every once in a while, he calls me that, and it always strikes me as so silly. Were it any other person, it would have driven me insane but from Kostya, it’s dripping with affection.

He takes a step and I stay rooted where I am.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?”

I stand on my toes, stretching my neck to cover the head’s worth of space between our faces, my lips close to his. He chuckles, suddenly sheepish.

“Ah, you know, I was around some guys with the flu real bad. I’d better not this time. Don’t want you getting sick.”

“I don’t care if I get sick,” I whine. “I want a kiss. Can’t I at least have that?”

He leans down, quickly, and pecks me on the forehead.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.