My lips purse. “Please! You don’t even know what I’m going to ask!”
“I can guess,” he growls, his hand tightening a little more around my throat. “Your father, having been banished to Russia by your brother Roman, is having a bad time of it without power, money, or allies. Is that more or less it?”
My heart sinks.
I knew this was going to be a tough sell. Especially since?—
“The same father, I might add, who got himself banished by said brother after he tried tomurderRoman. Oh, yes…” His eyes narrow. “And murdermybrother, too.”
Yeah.
That.
I’m not blind, or an idiot. I know Pavel Nikitin is a cold, often cruel, violent and bad-tempered man. I also know he was always hard on Roman—much harder than he was on me.
And I know—I know—that whatever goodwill anyone in their right mind might still have for a parent like that should go up in smoke when that parent ties your brother and your brother's boyfriend up in a basement and tries to kill them.
But the thing is, whatever I have left inside my heart when it comes to my father isn’t goodwill. It’s definitely not charity. I’m not even sure it’s love. It’s just…something. And for the life of me, I can’t seem to get it out of my system. I can’t cut that last cord.
So that’s why I’m here. Because six months ago, when Roman took my father down and replaced him as the head of the Nikitin Bratva, he only agreed not tokillour dad if he could banish him to Russia and leave him with nothing.
No access to the Nikitin bank accounts. No power. No allies to speak of back here in New York.
And now the wolves in Russia are circling.
Older enemies. Newer enemies. Neutral parties that see the opportunity for some street cred if they rip apart the deposed former king of the Nikitin empire.
And as horrible a person as he is, Pavel is still my dad. Roman’s made it crystal clear that he has zero intentions of doing anything but applaud when someone inevitably kills our father, and the other mafia families in New York feel the same.
The Italians. The Irish. The Greeks.
I’ve checked.
Which is why I’m down to this last-ditch effort. Why I’mhere, so far outside my element that I can’t even feel the sun anymore, pleading with this man as my only hope.
Unfortunately, it’s now hitting me just how ridiculously naive that hope was.
The Obsidian Syndicate is powerful in a way other mafia families can only dream of, my own included. They have allies and spies everywhere. Resources I can’t even imagine. They influence world politics, banking systems, the very direction of history.
And the man whose hand is around my throat with a cruel smirk on his lips is the man who leads that organization.
“Am I getting warmer?” Vaughn says with dry sarcasm.
“Please—”
“No.”
His arctic gaze narrows on me, sending my pulse racing.
“Don’t worry, Evelina,” he adds. “There isonefavor I’m going to grant you tonight, because the pure balls it took for you to walk in here, even if it’s quite clear you had no fucking ideawhatyou were walking into, amuses me.”
He leans down closer, his masked face filling my field of vision and his clean, spicy and masculine scent enveloping me like smoke.
I shiver as I force myself to speak. “W-wh-what’s the fav?—”
“I’m going to let you walk out of here…”
He leans all the way down, his lips barely millimeters from my ear. Then he steps right into me, his firm, muscled chestpractically pressed against my body as his big fingers splay across my neck.
