Trapped with the Mob Boss: A Mafia Romance (Petrov Bratva)

by Nicole Fox

  She rolls her eyes. “I’m sorry. Was that against the rules? Am I going to be punished now?”

  Her cheeks are pink from the alcohol and there’s a shine in her eyes. I expect to see annoyance there, but instead, I see that Bella is playing with me. She’s feigning frustration and annoyance, but she wants me to bite. She’s sitting on the far end of the sofa, legs crossed, but as I stare at her, she uncrosses them, parting her knees slowly.

  She wants me to be thinking about what’s between them. She wants me to punish her. Because, to what I’m sure is her absolute horror, Bella wants this.

  I unbutton my shirt until it’s hanging open, revealing my chest, and Bella pinches her lips together at the sight. I walk towards her slowly, eyes narrowed. “Do you want to be punished?”

  When she looks up at me, her desire is laid bare. Her pink lips are parted, her eyes wide and expectant. Still, she shakes her head. “Who wants to be punished?”

  I close the gap between us and wedge my knee between hers. Her legs open easily. I grip the back of the sofa on either side of her head and lower myself down so our lips are no more than an inch apart. She tilts her head back as I whisper, “Bad girls.”

  Then, we’re kissing. I can’t say whether I initiated it or not, but her lips are on mine, and the coil that has been tightening in my stomach all night begins to loosen. Her hands are on my sides, running up my back, and she’s arching her back, trying to press herself against me, trying to draw me down on top of her. But if she wants to be punished, I’m going to punish her.

  I grip her hip and roll her. Hard. For a second, she looks confused, but then she props herself up on her knees and rests her elbow on the back of the couch. I run a hand up the back of her thigh and quickly realize she was telling the truth in the bar. She isn’t wearing any underwear. I push her dress up onto her back and grab a handful of her perfect ass. Then, I slap it.

  She yelps, but before she can compose herself, I do it again. And again.

  I can see a red handprint left behind on her pale skin, and I slap the other side to balance her out.

  “I can punish you if you like being punished,” I grunt, smacking her skin and watching it ripple out. “Do you like it?”

  Bella looks back over her shoulder, her eyes heavy-lidded, and licks her pouty lower lip.

  I unzip my pants faster than I ever have before and position myself at her entrance. Then, at the same time my hands cracks across her backside, I slide in. Bella moans, her head dropping between her shoulders.

  I pound into her with abandon, the sound of our bodies slapping together loud enough that it probably wakes our neighbors, but I don’t care. I’m not going to stop until she’s a limp doll. Until she’s moaning my name.

  You don’t know anything about good guys, Yuri.

  When she said my name earlier, it did something strange to my chest. It felt like someone was blowing up a balloon inside my lungs.

  “Yuri,” she whimpers, gripping the back of the sofa.

  The same expanding feeling fills my chest, and suddenly, I lose control.

  Even though we just had sex a couple hours ago. Even though I can usually last five times as long. I lose it, and then Bella does, too. We finish at the same time, and I can’t remember the last time that has happened with a woman. If ever.

  I collapse on the couch next to her when we’re done, and Bella fixes her dress without looking at me. It’s so quiet that I feel like I can still hear the faint echoes of our bodies beating together. Or maybe it’s the thudding in my chest. When Bella gets up to clean up in the bathroom, I watch her go.

  Chapter Nine

  Bella

  Yuri orders room service in the morning—scrambled eggs, bacon, fresh fruit, and freshly squeezed orange juice—and I try to forget what we did last night. Twice. Because I have bigger problems.

  “I’ve thought about it,” I start, piercing a perfectly ripe strawberry with my fork.

  Yuri groans. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  I lift one of my fingers in a crude gesture and continue. “My father wouldn’t be involved with you or anyone else if he knew what you really did.”

  He quirks one eyebrow up. “And what do I really do?”

  I swallow back the memory of him inside of me. “You’re a criminal, and my father wouldn’t work with criminals.”

  “Anyone will be involved in anything for the right price,” he says, crunching on a piece of bacon. “Hang around with me long enough, and you’ll learn that first-hand.”

  I don’t plan to hang around with Yuri any longer than possible. One day, and I already feel a little corrupted. “I know my father, and if you trust me, I’ll prove it to you.”

  Yuri leans back in his chair, a piece of bacon pinched between his fingers. He points it at me. “What do you mean?”

  I reach across the table and grab his bacon. He opens his mouth to argue, but I’m already eating it. When he frowns, I grin. “I said you’d have to trust me.”

  He crosses his arms, but I can tell he’s interested.

  ***

  Yuri parks the SUV in the back lot behind my father’s office and then kills the engine. “Okay. You officially have to tell me what you’re planning before I agree to go any further.”

  The dress I had on the day before is now laundered, courtesy of the hotel, and I’m glad to be in my own clothes again. Mostly, I’m glad to be covered up. I turn towards Yuri. “Fair enough. I told you my father wouldn’t work with criminals, and now I’m going to get proof.”

  “How?” he asks, looking doubtful. “By marching in and demanding his staff tell me the truth?”

  “No.” I bite my tongue and barely resist the urge to roll my eyes, something I do frequently in his company. “I worked as an intern in my dad’s office over the summer, so I have a log-in and can get into his accounts.”

  Yuri shakes his head. “They change those passwords all the time. There’s no way yours still works.”

  “First of all, I’m his daughter. I doubt they were in a rush to delete my log-in. Second, I also know the name and password of his previous chief of staff who just retired last week.”

  He looks back up at the building and purses his lips. His stubble has grown in thicker in just the last day, shading his square jaw. It’s funny to think about Yuri grooming himself. He looks like the kind of guy who wouldn’t bother with it, but his neck is clean-shaven, so he must have a daily grooming ritual. I want to ask him about it, but it’s very unimportant, and I have a strong suspicion he wouldn’t tell me what it was anyway.

  “It seems unnecessary,” he says, grabbing the car key from the console and starting the car. “Why do you care about proving your dad’s intentions to me? He worked with us, and we both know that. Are his intentions really that important?”

  I lunge for the keys, but Yuri grabs my hand out of the air. I expect him to squeeze until I cry out, but he just holds my hand, his eyes curious. “Tell me why this matters.”

  “It matters to me,” I admit, sliding my hand out of his, ignoring the tingling in my fingertips. “I want to know who he is. What kind of person he is. Besides, we don’t even have to go inside.”

  He furrows his brow. “Then what are we doing here?”

  “Did you bring your laptop?”

  He reaches into the back seat and hands it to me. I open it up, turn the screen to him so he can enter his password, and then open the internet. “For being a politician, the security at his office is miserable. I liked taking the occasional long lunch while I worked there, and I discovered that I could lock my office door, connect my phone to the Wi-Fi from the parking lot so I’d receive all of the office messages, and get paid to watch reruns of sitcoms.”

  I click the office’s Wi-Fi, enter my old password, and cross my fingers it will work. When the message box appears telling me my device is connected, Yuri curses under his breath.

  “I didn’t really think that would work.”

  “Truthfully,” I sa
y, smiling at him. “Neither did I.”

  I connect to the shared drive in the computer folder and watch the loading bar inch across the screen. I can connect to the Wi-Fi from the parking lot, but that doesn’t mean it works well.

  “You don’t seem like the slacking type,” he says, looking at the screen over my shoulder. “You seem too ... proper.”

  “Thank you?” I shrug. “It was a summer job with my dad. Senator or not, it was boring. When he was out of town on business, no one really noticed whether I was around or not.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Yuri says. When I look at him, he sits back in his seat and stares out the windshield. “It’s just hard to imagine anyone not noticing you.”

  “Quit. You’ll make me blush,” I say sarcastically, though I hope he doesn’t see the very real blush coloring my cheeks. Thankfully, the loading bar pings just in time to distract from our conversation. “I’m in.”

  As soon as I click on the file folder, another password box pops up. Everyone in the office had varying levels of accessibility. If I enter my password, I’ll see a few to-do lists, my father’s event schedule, and everything related to his charity work. But if I enter the chief of staff account password, I’ll see everything. So, I try it.

  A wah-wah sound comes from the speakers, and the password bar shakes.

  “Wrong password,” Yuri says.

  “No shit,” I hiss. I squeeze my eyes shut trying to think. “I only have three tries before I have to reset my password with IT.”

  “Didn’t you study IT?” he asks.

  I spin around, forehead wrinkled. “How in the hell did you know that?”

  Yuri looks genuinely uncomfortable, and I’m ashamed at how happy it makes me. His forehead goes red, and he shifts in his seat. “I had to ... learn things ... about you. To follow you. It was part of my job, and—”

  “You stalked me,” I say, both teasing him and trying to put him out of his misery.

  “For work,” he clarifies.

  “And how did my knowledge of IT assistance come into play in your job exactly?” I ask.

  He crosses his arms and looks out the window. “You never know what will come in handy.”

  I can’t exactly argue there. “True, considering the password I’m trying to remember is one I memorized after the old man asked me to type it in for him. He said his eyesight was going and he needed help typing it in, but I’m pretty sure he just wanted me to lean over his desk so he could stare at my chest.”

  Yuri chuckles. “I can’t blame him.”

  I roll my eyes and then go still. I take a deep breath and try again. Wah-wah.

  “Shit.” I bang my fist on the keyboard, and Yuri snatches the computer away.

  “Easy,” he warns. “No need to damage the hardware. What’s the password?”

  “I think it was ‘bewtee68’.”

  Yuri stares at me, the corners of his mouth turning up. “You sure it was 68?”

  “It was sixty-something,” I say. “Give me the computer back. I only have one more try, so—”

  Before I can finish, he types something in and hits enter.

  “Hey!” I slap his arm. “Why did you do that?”

  “Do what?” he asks, turning the computer towards me, a smile spreading across his face. He looks even better when he smiles. It sharpens his jawline, makes his eyes sparkle. It’s distracting enough that I’m almost not mad at him. Almost.

  I’m about to continue berating him when I realize the password bar is gone and the folder is open. He got in. “How did you do that?”

  “Bewtee,’” he says, shaking his head. “Have you ever said it out loud?”

  “Bewtee. Bootee. Booty.” I drop my head in my hands.

  “With a password like that, I guessed the number at the end might have been sixty-nine instead,” Yuri said, stifling a laugh.

  I grab the computer from him. “That pervy son of a bitch.”

  I scroll past the calendars and security protocols and head straight for the financial documents. I open a spreadsheet and scroll through what seems to be an endless stream of business expenditures and charitable donations. A new fax machine for the office, lunch with campaign donors, and travel expenses. I’m starting to lose steam, and Yuri is clearly bored, sighing once every thirty seconds, when I notice a second tab on the bottom of the spreadsheet. I click over and groan.

  “More numbers?” Yuri groans. “Can you save that and look at it later? I’m hungry.”

  “I’m not saving anything to your computer. Just calm down and give me a second.”

  I expect Yuri to push back at my harsh tone, but he just reclines his seat and closes his eyes. For a second, it feels like we’re a normal couple in a relationship, bickering back and forth and snipping at one another. I push the thought from my mind and start scrolling through the numbers. It feels like I’m looking at the same things over and over again. Until I realize these aren’t expenses. They’re payments.

  “Shit,” I whisper, studying each line. Every month like clockwork, payments are entered, but unlike the expense spreadsheet, this document is vague. No descriptions of what the payments were for or who they came from. Just initials. So many different initials that I start to wonder whether there could really be that many different people he was accepting money from. Then, I see ‘IP’ next to a payment the month before.

  Yuri sits up. “Did you find something?”

  I turn the screen to him. “IP. Is that your dad?”

  “Those are his initials,” he says, squinting at the screen. “And that’s the same date I deposit the payments.”

  The reality hits me like a punch to the chest. I close the laptop and flop back in my seat.

  “You knew he was working with us,” Yuri says more softly than I expect. “This can’t be that much of a surprise.”

  But it is. My father has always been my hero. In third grade, I wrote about him as the person I admired most, and my feelings hadn’t changed until today. In my eyes, my father was sacrificing himself—his time, his energy, and his talents—to do what he thought was right for his state and his country. But now, all of that is gone. Instead, I learn he was doing everything to line his own pockets. And the reality of it is too much to comprehend all at once.

  So, I don’t respond to Yuri. I toss his laptop into the back seat, put on my seat belt, and curl against the window. After a minute, Yuri starts the car and pulls away.

  Chapter Ten

  Bella

  I sit on the bed and stare at the wall, not really seeing anything. Not really thinking about anything.

  My brain is tired after the last two days, and I wish I was like an overheated electronic that could be unplugged and put to rest. I need rest. Badly.

  “Do you want room service?” Yuri pokes his head in the room and waves the room service menu in front of me. I can tell he’s trying, but I can’t muster up the energy to speak. I shake my head, and he sighs and disappears back into the living room.

  He didn’t try to talk to me on the drive back to the hotel, and he has given me my space. But it has been almost an hour, and I’m sure he’s getting worried. Or, if not worried exactly, then at least concerned. Concerned that his hostage won’t be worth much if he returns her catatonic. Because that’s what I’m, after all. A hostage. Because of my father’s dirty political deals.

  It still doesn’t feel real, and I feel like the dumbest, most naïve girl for thinking this whole thing could have been one big misunderstanding. I actually believed, on some level, that Yuri and his father had grabbed me by mistake, or misunderstood a conversation they had with my father, leading them to believe they were in business. I expected my father to reach out to them, smooth everything over with his charm and a winning smile, and then I would be released.

  Now, I realize that isn’t going to happen.

  “Are you okay?” Yuri is in the doorway again. He’s leaning against the frame, the sleeves of his gray T-shirt stretched tight over his bic
eps. With his mouth turned down in a frown and his brows drawn together, he looks pouty and broody like a male model. Yet it does little to cheer me.

  “No,” I say. My voice is hoarse, and I cough to clear my dry throat.

  Suddenly, Yuri spins around and reappears a second later with a bottle of water from the minibar. He hands it to me, and I clearly don’t hide my surprise well, because as soon as I take it, Yuri shoves his hands in his pockets and spins away from me.

  Being friendly has never been part of our arrangement, so if Yuri is being nice to me, it must mean I’m in bad shape.

  “Is there anything I can do?” he asks.

  He might as well have slapped me. I jerk my head up, eyes wide. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” he stutters, kicking the toe of his boot into the carpet. “I just meant that ... I’m sorry. About your dad.”

  I feel like he’s a tiger who has been defanged and declawed. I’m scared of him, but I also want to reach out and wrap my arms around his neck. Or my legs around his waist. I lower my face so he won’t see my smirk. If I’m able to think about sex, then that means the shock is wearing off. Thanks to Yuri.

  “Thank you.” I slide down to the end of the bed and set my feet on the floor. “It sucks to know your dad is a criminal.”

  Yuri hums. “I don’t think it’s too bad.”

  Without warning, I burst into laughter. Full on, head thrown back, cackling laughter. When I get myself together, Yuri is looking at me like I just stripped naked and rubbed myself in butter.

  “Sorry,” I say, though I’m not sure why. “I guess I forgot who I was talking to. You were being nice, so I must have gotten confused.”

  Yuri opens his mouth to say something, but then his phone starts to ring. He pulls it out and frowns. “It’s my dad.”

  I stand up. My legs feel wobbly, but I want to hear this. Maybe it’s about my dad, about me. Since coming to the hotel room, it has felt like we’ve been secluded on another planet. I’m desperate for some outside information. But when I cross the room to stand next to Yuri, he holds the phone to his ear and backs away from me.