“No, thank you,” I reply before my son can drink the man out of house and home. “The wedding will be in six weeks. We’ll be in touch.”
I stand and stare my son in the eyes.
“Let’s go,” I say, gesturing with my chin, and he smiles one more time at Natasha before he walks out of the room ahead of me.
When we’re outside, he turns to talk to me, but I beat him to it.
“Not here. There are ears. Get in the car.”
“But I drove my own car.”
“Get in the fucking back seat, Elliott.” My patience is wearing thin with my son.
He looks like he wants to argue, but finally sighs and slides into the back of the Range Rover, and I follow him. We have three other vehicles, and ten men with us, and we pull down the driveway and out onto the road.
“What the fuck, Dad?”
“We need an alliance with the Russians.”
He’s staring at me, his eyes suddenly sober. “I’ve been seeing Kitty for three months.”
“And now you’re not.”
He shakes his head, and I lay it out for him. “You’ll marry her, and you’ll honor that marriage, El.”
“Or?”
“Or I’m done. No more bailing you out. No more helping you. I’ll cut you off and act like I’ve never met you in my life.”
His jaw drops. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
I lift an eyebrow, and he knows this is his last chance with me. He knows what’s at stake.
He sits back in the seat and stares out the window.
“I guess it’s a good thing I like blonds.”
One
NATASHA
My life has beena living hell for a month.
Okay, let’s be honest. It hasn’t been sunshine and roses for all of my twenty-two years, which is just par for the course when you’re the daughter, and only child, of the head of the Bratva. Especially when your father is ...horrible.Mean. Unloving.
Yeah, my dad’s an asshole.
My mom is just as bad. Maybe worse because a mother is supposed to show affection, to be the nurturing one. My mother doesn’t have an unselfish bone in her body.
But I digress. It’s been a month since I was summoned to my father’s office and told that I’d be marrying Elliott Stavros, the son of Julian, the head of the Greek Mafia. One of the Kings of Vegas.
I don’t exactly know what all of that means, except that Julian is powerful and my father wants an alliance with him. Therefore, it’s up to me to be the sacrificial lamb, as if it’s 1592.
Elliott has taken me out on dates, and he acts like the doting fiancé when we’re around other people. So attentive and sweet. He smiles at me, opens doors, gently lays his hand on the smallof my back as we walk through a room. If that were who he truly is, I wouldn’t have an issue with this arrangement.
But in private?
