Nikolai

I’m being sold at a criminal auction to pay my dead father’s debts.
Then a bratva boss kills three men to claim me.
I’ve survived on my own for three years. Buried the soft, small parts of me that got the last man I loved killed. Stayed big, stayed alert, stayed armored.
But when I step onto that auction stage, Nikolai Besharov looks at me like he sees everything. The photographic memory that makes me valuable. The shattered dancer’s knee. The Little girl I’ve locked away so deep I thought she’d never surface again.
He’s cold. Calculated. A strategic mastermind who thinks seventeen moves ahead.
So why does his voice go gentle when he calls me printsessa?
He says I’m under his protection. That he’ll keep me safe while I work off the debt. That being small doesn’t make me weak—it makes me his.
But the last time I let myself be vulnerable, someone died in my arms.
Can I really trust a man who bought me at auction… with the softest parts of my heart?