Fake Bride With Benefits by Riley Rollins

Author:Riley Rollins [Rollins, Riley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

2

Havok

I stand in the back of the club, silent and watchful. My arms are crossed, my body hard and alert. Heavy, grinding industrial music blares through the club's P.A. system, loud in the low-ceilinged, neon-lit room. My eyes scan back and forth, and I keep mental tabs on who's here tonight and who's with whom. Situational awareness. That's what keeps you alive in this world.

My real name is Vladimir Vladimirovich Ivanov. Some call me Vlady for short.

Others call me Havok.

By day, I'm a hitman for the West Ark branch of the Russian mafia, the Bratva. By night, I moonlight as a bouncer at Fascinations, the hottest strip club this side of New York City.

I'm not working a second job for the money. I don't need more of that. My targets have made me filthy fucking rich over the years, ever since I came to the United States from Russia to work in West Ark. I don't need the pitiful thirty dollars an hour I take home from this gig.

I'm here for one reason and one reason only.

Connections with the underworld.

To your average Josef, the strip club is just a seedy place to take the boys for a few beers. To get away from the office, away from the wife and kids. But in reality it's much more than that. It's a gathering place for men of the dark. Ambitious men, to whom money and success are everything. The kind of men who stop at nothing to make their dreams come true. Men like me.

This job lets me keep my finger on the pulse of West Ark. Meets me new clients, finds me new Bratva business partners. Lets me keep my enemies close.

I believe they call it "networking."

Because all I've really got left is ruthless ambition. An insatiable hunger for money, for power, for control. I've got no family. No parents. No one who loves me, no one to soften my sharp edges and keep me more human than machine. Not anymore. I haven't touched a woman since Irina, my ex-fiancée, got fucking raped and murdered back in Moscow. God, the memory enrages me. I thought I was keeping her safe, but…

I failed her.

So now, when I'm on a hit late at night, my arms covered in my target's blood up to my elbows, my mind sometimes starts to wander, and I question whether I'm in control or if the darkness has finally taken over. But then I get my bounty, and I get that rush of power and satisfaction that doesn't come any other way, and I keep returning to the darkness again and again. It's all I know. So I chase it. And one day, I'll catch it.

Or it'll catch me.

The door to the front lobby swings open. New customers. My head automatically swivels to survey the scene, by pure reflex. A welcome distraction, to be honest.

My instincts immediately tell me something's wrong with this picture. The four men entering the room are brawny, menacing figures, two of whom have shaved heads.

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.