CHAPTER ONE
Sasha
“How canyou allowhimto do this tome?” my sister Katarina cries, dropping to her knees at our brother’s feet. “How can you let him marry me off like I’m livestock?”
“Livestock does not getmarried off,” Dimitri sighs, rubbing his eyes with his forefinger and thumb.
“It gets sold,” she fires back, glaring from her spot on the floor. So much for the pretense of pleading. “Just like I am being sold for a casino on the Las Vegas strip.”
Dimitri drops his hand, a grimace pulling at his handsome features. “Technically, the property that Ryker Smith will take over is not on the strip.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” she cries tossing her hands in the air. “That I’m being traded for an inferior casino?”
“You’re not being traded,” Dimitri straightens, his eyes hardening. “First and foremost, you will be protected from our father by being married to such a powerful family.”
I snort and my brother’s glare swings to me. My chin drops a few notches as my eyes swing away, and I remain silent.
First, because I’m not the one being traded like livestock, but second, it’s best if I keep out of my brother’s notice. We’ve not seen our brother in years, he hasn’t cared about us at all.
But now…now that we have a use, now that we can help him beat our father in the war the two of them have waged for years, now he’s become interested in us. No thank you.
I will do everything in my power to get out from under my brother’s thumb.
Katarina and I have an understanding. This is a sinking ship and it’s every woman for herself. It’s been that way for years.
“And who will protect me from my new husband?” Katarina’s voice rises with every word. “You don’t think I haven’t heard the whispers about his family. My future husband. You are tossing me from the frying pan and into the fire!”
I’ve heard them too. Those dark rumors. Ryker Smith is known for his uncompromising and ruthless nature.
Katarina and I find ourselves at the center of a tornado. Stuck between three powerful men and every option is truly terrible. But my father and even my brother, are known enemies to us. The Smiths however…
I hadn’t been in Vegas for ten minutes when stories about Ryker’s closest brother, Killian Smith, painted a picture. The man stalked his wife, who was desperate for money, and then forced her to marry him.
These are not nice men.
Not that our family is any better. Our father hasn’t allowed us to leave the house without a battery of armed guards, meant as much to keep us from escaping as for our protection, for the last five years.
For all intents and purposes, we’ve been locked in a prison. Now, Katarina is twenty-three, and I’m twenty-one, and we’refree from our Russian prison. We’re in the United States for one purpose…marry to strengthen our family’s business connections.
Only our loving brother—note my sarcasm—stole us from our father and is now brokering Katarina’s marriage deal himself.
I’ve got a great family.
I only realize my brother and sister have continued the conversation without me when Katarina smacks my arm. “Tell him, Sasha.”
I give my sister, and then my brother, a blank stare. “Tell him what?”
She lets out a long huff. “Focus, Sasha. Don’t crap out on me now.”
I wince. There are a few areas that I can focus with absolute and intense concentration. Numbers, for example, just stick in my head.
Conversations about feelings, not so much.
“I’m not crapping out,” I frown, my brow creasing. I was just contemplating the likelihood that the Smiths are as ruthlessly narcissistic as our father, or as cruelly uncaring as our brother. The brothers are in the same business as my family. They are willing to arrange marriages for financial gain. They build apartment buildings with the strength of bomb shelters?—
“Sasha,” Dimitri barks with a scowl. “There are enough opinions in this conversation. We don’t need yours.”
I tell myself to remain silent, but once Katarina is married, I will be the next pawn put into play. “I’ll give it anyway. I’d say the likelihood is very high that the Smiths are terrible people. And Ryker Smith?—”
