by Ava Bloom
I was silent, thinking that over. I still had my arm wrapped around her shoulders; I couldn’t shake the urge to comfort her when she was so obviously upset. “I don’t know what to do,” I finally said, my voice quiet and solemn.
“We could go away somewhere,” Vitoria said fiercely. “Leave Spain. Get away from Audaz and your family and everything else. Forget all about gangs and violence and focus on us. On love.”
I considered that for a moment. It was tempting, to be honest. More tempting than I had thought it could be. I imagined our lives somewhere—England, America, Australia. Just the two of us, together and ready to start our lives. We could raise a family, without worrying that they would have to face the same choices when they grew up. I could get work in labor; she could be a teacher. We could…
But I stopped that train of thought before I could get too carried away, knowing that it would never work out that well in reality. There was no walking away, once you were part. I might not have a central role in the Volkov syndicate from here out, but that didn’t mean I could just leave. If my brothers were at risk, I needed to be there to protect them.
And I knew it was exile, what she was suggesting. If we ran away now, when my relationship with my family was already so shaky, there would be no coming back. It was a lifetime without them, at that point. I would have shown that I had no loyalty to them whatsoever, and that was unforgivable.
I shook my head slowly. “I can’t just leave,” I told Vitoria sadly. “Barcelona may not be the place I’m from, but my family is here. I can’t just desert them.”
“I can’t leave my family behind either,” Vitoria admitted, her body slumping even more towards me. She looked lost and frightened, like a small child, and I hated what I had to say next.
I slowly removed my arm from around her shoulders. “I guess that must be it between us, then,” I said bitterly. “If we can’t leave together… Well, things would never work out here.”
“But why not?” Vitoria pressed, catching my hands in hers. She looked eagerly into my eyes. “I completed my assignment, and my mother is better. I don’t have to do anything else for Audaz. And I think they know better than to use me again in the future.” She looked away, a faint blush staining her cheeks. “I guess they all thought I was stronger than I turned out to be. To be honest, I did as well.”
“I thought I was too,” I muttered. “How do you think I feel, knowing that all those men who died, their deaths were my fault?”
“I can’t imagine,” Vitoria said softly. “But doesn’t that show you, more than anything, that you don’t want to be involved in this anymore?”
I frowned over at her. “It’s not that easy to walk away from,” I told her.
“No, I know it isn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “There were so many times I wanted to tell Audaz to fuck off. But I couldn’t.” She took a deep breath. “But if you refused to take part in anything to do with the mob and I didn’t do anything else for Audaz, things could work out, couldn’t they? We could start a normal relationship.”
“Where would we even begin with that?” I asked sarcastically. “This whole time, I’ve thought we were in a relationship, getting to know one another and falling in love, and you were just trying to get information from me.”
“But it didn’t work,” Vitoria said quietly. “I meant it when I said that I’d fallen in love with you, Dmitry. It was so stupid of me, I was trying so hard not to let that happen. I was trying to convince myself that I was still just going along with the plan. But somewhere along the line…”
“But even that!” I said exasperatedly. “How do we start a relationship at the beginning, if we already know we’re in love with one another?”
Victoria smiled a little at that. “I don’t know,” she admitted honestly. She paused. “You’re no saint either, though. I thought you were this kind, caring guy, come to find out that you’re a cold-blooded killer.”
I frowned as I looked over at her, trying to come up with some way to explain. Finally, I shook my head. “My uncle told me what to do, and I had no choice,” I said. “I guess when it comes down to it, we’re not so different after all. We both put family in front of everything else.”
“So I guess the place to start would be with prioritizing our relationship?” Vitoria asked slowly.
“Seems like as good a place as any,” I agreed, my words just as cautious. Vma pay then, though. It felt that wouldn'o remind him that I had just bought him his freedom, his lire n'if I attacked
Vitoria paused, looking like she was trying to make her mind up about something. I raised an eyebrow at her. “Are there any more secrets that I need to know about?” I asked, already panicking a bit internally as I wondered what else could cause her to hesitate like this. It had seemed, for an instant, like everything was going to work out between the two of us, but now, again, I wasn’t so sure.
“It’s not exactly a secret,” Vitoria said, her face flushing almost as brilliantly as the sunset as she turned her head away from me. She shifted a little, looking uncomfortable. Then, she turned back to me. “Or it wouldn’t be a secret if you would…” She trailed off, and I tried to figure out what she was trying to tell me.
Suddenly, it hit me, and I gave her a devilish smirk. “You’re turned on right now,” I accused. “You probably want me to take you home straightaway and screw you silly.”
Vitoria’s blush deepened even further, if that was possible. “Please,” she said breathlessly.
I couldn’t take it anymore; I toppled her back onto the sand, covering her body with mine and kissing her feverishly. After a minute I moved back and looked her in the eyes with a big smirk on my face “I’ll race you to the car,” I said.
“Okay,” she agreed.
The two us immediately leapt to our feet to begin running across the sand, when Vitoria suddenly shoved me back down to the ground and took off for the car while laughing hysterically at me.
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Andrei Preview (3 Chapters)
When I'm offered a job as the bar manager at the most exclusive club in Barcelona, I took it. I also knew it was in my best interest to do as I'm told, and keep my mouth shut. You see, the billionaire Russian mobsters who run the place were the kind of guys you didn’t want to know too much about anyways. But I really needed the money, and I knew that as long as I ensured the customers were happy and I did my job, everything would be fine.
That is until Andrei came into the picture.
He was one of those Russian gangsters that ran the club, sexy and dangerous. A real bad boy who had gained quite the reputation around here as a ladies man, and now his attention was fixed on me.
The guy was bad news in a good suit, and I knew that giving in to him would be the worst idea I’ve ever had.
F**k me!
Chapter One — Andrei
Ritmo was as busy as we could have hoped that evening. I caught a glimpse of Uncle Evgeni looking down at the proceedings from the top floor before he disappeared. It made sense that we were busy, after all: we were letting the women in for free, as long as they were in their heels and skirts. We were also giving away free drinks if they brought a hot, young guy in with them—the strict dress code turned away the unwanted ones. In the last three months or so, we'd been able to take this boring beachfront bar and turn it into one of the hottest clubs in the city.
“Have your fun now, Andrei,” my brother Nikolay said with a laugh. “You're on inventory tonight, remember?”
“Oh come on Kolya—that doesn't mean he can't take someone into the bathroom for a quickie!” Dima, my other brother, laughed.
I rolled my eyes at both of them and signaled the waitress for a refill of our drinks. My brothers both did the work when they had to, but they were much happier chasing after girls and lazing about, living the good life. They didn't seem to understand that they cou
ldn't live the good life if they didn't do the work—but then again, they had grown up with our father's first wife in Petersburg, rather than out in the countryside like I had. It was another thing they liked to bring up when they were teasing me: that my hands were too rough for these women, that I needed a broad-hipped woman rather than one of these dainty Spanish girls.
“Inventory needs to get done, and it needs to get done right,” I pointed out, trying not to let their teasing get to me. “At this point, we're too big for little screw-ups on ordering.”
“You know you're just on inventory because you couldn't handle your real responsibilities,” my cousin Vanya said derisively.
I felt my face heat but carefully schooled my features to neutral, knowing that the flush wouldn't be visible here in the club but that my facial expression definitely would be. “They've never given you even a hint of responsibility in the business,” I said sweetly. Vanya was younger than I was, and given that his father was the head of the local mafia, Vanya had always lived a pretty cushy life. “Pretty soon, it'll be your turn to do inventory, I'm sure.”
“I won't have to do inventory,” Vanya said confidently. “I know better than to fuck the daughter of the real estate tycoon that my father spent months trying to woo.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Is it that you know better, or that you know no self-respecting Catalonian woman would ever sleep with you?”
“Hey!” Vanya cried indignantly as Nikolay and Dima cackled. I shrugged unrepentantly. When I had first moved to Barcelona to join my brothers in our uncle's syndicate, I hadn't dared tease Vanya, expecting that Uncle Evgeni would dole out harsh punishments to anyone who dared make fun of his son. But I'd settled in over the past six months, and I was starting to take part in the family bantering that went on. There was a certain sense of camaraderie, all of us Russians here together in a foreign city. I liked it.
“But seriously, why did you have to sleep with that cow?” Nikolay groaned. “Now we're doing all the research again, trying to find a suitable headquarters with a landlord who'll turn a blind eye to whatever we're doing to pay for the place.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Did you ever see 'that cow'?” I asked him. I leaned in conspiratorially. “Tits out to here,” I said, gesturing lewdly with my hands. The boys all laughed, and I sat back, feeling pleased with myself.
The truth was, I had known better than to sleep with Katarina, but the woman had practically thrown herself at me, and I'd finally had no choice but to take pity on her. I'd expected that she would be so grateful that it would actually make the deal even easier. But of course, her father had been upset that we had “ruined” his beautiful daughter, and he'd refused to have anything else to do with “disgusting Russian pigs.”
I'd expected Evgeni to have me sent off to the homeland after that, back to the fields and dirt where my aunts resided, or at least back to Petersburg where my father's primary residence was. The family had money, and in the time that I'd been in Barcelona, I had gotten used to having unlimited funds at my disposal. But one false move and Evgeni could make my life miserable.
But instead, he'd seemed amused by the whole thing. He'd clapped me on the shoulder. “Now, young Andrei, you see why business and pleasure don't mix,” he had said. “But if I'd known the bitch's legs would open that easily, I'd have chosen the pleasure for myself!”
Still, there was that whole messy fact of the deal going under and months of research (and some unknown amount of money) that had been lost. Evgeni had made it very clear that I needed to be punished for that, and I'd quickly agreed—anything to keep from getting sent back to Russia. I didn't know what I'd expected since I knew that we weren't tied up in any truly shady business. Just some money laundering, some real estate deals, and maybe a weapons deal or two. But I guess I pictured my punishment to be one of those crazy deals like you see in the movies.
Instead, I was on inventory duty at Ritmo, plus cleaning duty for two weeks. All in all, I considered myself to have gotten off lightly. Of course, it didn't feel that way as Dima, Vanya, and finally Nikolay, all pulled leggy, sexy women over the course of the evening and drifted off to have their way with the sluts, leaving me alone with my drinks.
“What are you drinking, water?” a woman asked from my right elbow. I turned and gave her a considering look, noting the low-cut black top and the tight, lipstick-red skirt. She had smoky eyes and long, dark hair that curled softly down her back. Definitely the kind of girl I'd love to take home for the night—only again, I was on inventory. I cursed internally but decided to chat with her anyway, since she was clearly interested. Maybe I could still have that quickie in the bathroom that Dima had teased me about.
I held up my glass. “Vodka, straight,” I told her.
She put her head back and laughed, exposing the long, tanned line of her throat. “Of course you are. You're Russian, aren't you?”
“Is it that obvious?” I asked her dryly. I knew I had a slight accent, and my classic, chiseled features were a dead giveaway.
“You know,” the girl told me, sliding closer—close enough that her ample breasts were grazing my arm. “I've never been with a Russian guy before.”
God, this was going to be too easy. I grinned down at the woman. “Well, you know where I'm from—but what about you? Are you from Barcelona?” I asked her.
The woman laughed again, and I decided I liked the sound, liked the fact that she clearly wasn't shy about making noise. Mm, I could practically hear her screaming my name already.
Of course, if we went for a quickie in the bathroom, we would need to be somewhat discrete. It wouldn't be the first time that that had happened, but I was in enough hot water with my uncle already without causing a scene in the bathroom. I groaned inwardly, not wanting anything to spoil the fuck that I imagined having with...whatever her name was. But the only way to not let anything spoil it was to take her out on a different night.
I knew what the odds were like. She was looking for someone to go home with tonight, and even if I got her number, there was no saying that she'd be feeling as frisky tomorrow, and definitely not later in the week. My chances would diminish the longer it took for me to get her in bed.
But I wanted her in a bed, with the whole night ahead of us. I wanted to fuck her senseless, feel those legs quivering as I pounded her again and again and again.
I was getting hard just thinking about it, and I realized that I wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to what the woman was actually saying. I forced myself to tune back in, right at the point where she asked what I was up to that night.
I grimaced. “I have to work the night shift tonight,” I admitted. It was honestly embarrassing having to admit it. It was embarrassing having to do it. Not that I had anything against hard work, but it wasn't like I was doing this because I needed the money.
“Are you a doctor?” she asked, sounding surprised.
That sounded better than admitting that I was a member of the mafia group that owned this place and that I needed to do inventory and clean the floors that night. I nodded at her. “Yes, a doctor,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Should you be drinking all that vodka right before your shift?” she asked.
I shrugged and grinned rakishly at her. “I'm not going into surgery or anything,” I told her. “I just have to be there to...examine people.” I expected her to see through the lie, but she seemed to want to believe it.
“Oh, okay,” she said.
“You know, I'd much rather examine you,” I told her, giving her another obvious once-over. It was such a dumb, cheesy line, but she giggled all the same.
“Maybe another night,” she suggested. She scribbled her number on a napkin. “There, so you can call me,” she said, winking at me as she slipped away towards the crowd. “Have a good night at work...”
Watching her walk away, her hips swaying as she went, was frustrating as anything, especially when I glanced over a few minutes later and saw
her chatting with another guy. I could have had her if it wasn't for this stupid inventory shift tonight. I tried to remind myself that this was because of my mistake, that I was here because I had slept with Katarina. But it was small consolation.
Suffice it to say, it put me in a bad mood for doing inventory.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Sarah, our bar manager, said as I flung down another box. “I know the glasses and things are wrapped up for shipping, but they're not going to hold up to that.”
I scowled at her. “So we'll order more glasses,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “The whole point of doing inventory is so that we know what we need to order,” she said. “And hopefully, we won't need to order the things that we already have.”
“Does it really matter?” I asked impatiently. “We're making money now. We can afford a few more glasses.” Sarah gave me a tight-lipped look, and it sparked the anger already there inside me. “You're just some fucking employee,” I reminded her. “You can't tell me what to do. I could have you fired.”
I knew I shouldn't be saying that; the poor girl probably didn't want to be there any more than I did. It wasn't like inventory was some fun thing to do, especially not in the middle of the night. And I could tell from the way she got pale and quiet that she was worried, that she thought I might actually take away her job.
I sighed internally and went back to shuffling around the boxes to be counted, hoping that the way I gentled my actions would count as an apology. We didn't talk for the rest of the shift, each working our way through our own sections of the list.