The Czar
A Standalone Hockey Billionaire Novel
Selena Laurence
Golden Age Press
Copyright 2017 © Selena Laurence
All Rights Reserved
Copy Editing by Proof Before You Publish
Cover by Selena Laurence
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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, sorted in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.
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Contents
Also by Selena Laurence
About The Czar
1. Mick
2. Solana
3. Mick
4. Solana
5. Mick
6. Solana
7. Mick
8. Solana
9. Mick
10. Solana
11. Mick
12. Solana
13. Mick
14. Solana
15. Mick
16. Solana
17. Mick
18. Solana
19. Mick
20. Solana
21. Mick
22. Solana
23. Mick
24. Solana
25. Mick
26. Solana
27. Mick
28. Solana
29. Mick
30. Solana
Excerpt From The Heir
Tess
Also by Selena Laurence
About the Author
Also by Selena Laurence
A Lush Betrayal (Lush 1)
Loving a Lush (Lush 2)
Lowdown and Lush (Lush 3)
A Lush Reunion (Lush 4)
A Lush Rhapsody (Rhapsody 1)
Racing to Rhapsody (Rhapsody 2)
Addicted to Rhapsody (Rhapsody 3)
Dreaming of Rhapsody (A Rhapsody Novella)
Camouflaged (Hiding From Love 1)
Hidden (Hiding From Love 2)
Concealed (Hiding From Love 3)
Buried (Hiding From Love 4)
Prince of the Press (A Powerplay Novella)
The Kingmaker (Powerplay 1)
POTUS (Powerplay 2)
SCOTUS (Powerplay 3)
The Darkhorse (A Powerplay Novella)
Cade’s Loss (California Cowboys 1)
Vaughn’s Pride (California Cowboys 2)
Ty’s Heart (California Cowboys 3)
Breath of Deceit (Dublin Devils 1)
Brush of Despair (Dublin Devils 2)
The Czar (A Standalone Hockey Billionaire romance)
The Heir (A Standalone Billionaire romance)
About The Czar
"Smart and sexy, Selena never disappoints." - Jennie Marts, USA TODAY Bestselling Author.
They call him The Czar, the heir to a billion dollar Vodka fortune and Chicago's homegrown NHL superstar. But when Mick Petrovich sustains a career-ending injury, life seems hopeless until he sees a blonde trying to unlock her apartment door.
Solana Werner spent six years working for one thing--a job in marketing at Petrovich Vodka. While her mother, father, and ex-boyfriend might all have left, she knows corporations are forever, and Petrovich will never abandon her.
Then Solana meets her new neighbor, he's hot, tortured, and none other than hockey's Czar, her new boss's son. But employees aren't allowed to date Petrovich family members, and Solana wouldn't do anything to risk her dream job…would she?
1
Mick
"Ladies and gentlemen," the announcer's voice booms through the arena. "In your starting lineup tonight for the Chicago Norsemen, last year's MVP in the MidNation Conference, and All-Star Center, our very own native son, number 12, Mikhail Petrovich, The Czaaaar!"
The crowd goes nuts, and I take a couple of steps on the rubber matting that lines the entry to the rink before I hop onto the ice, brandishing my stick above my head as I take a lightning fast turn around the perimeter. When I reach my teammates I twist my outside hip around and tip my skate to the inner blade edge so that a huge cloud of ice spray lifts from the floor as I grind to a stop. I'm better at this than any skater I know, and I manage to send the crystals as high as my teammates’ faces.
"Asshole," my best friend, Deke, mutters, running the back of one arm across his face to wipe away the moisture.
I chuckle as we settle in and wait for the rest of the team to be introduced.
Fifteen minutes later the game is underway and I'm up at the boards, fighting for the puck against Andre Romero, one of the toughest defenders in the league. He's also an asshole who's known for cheap shots and a penalty record that rivals the worst in our conference.
I shove him off of me and manage to hook the puck as I do it. I charge down the ice, eyes on the opening I see between two of Romero's teammates. My D-men have them tied up, and I'm closing the gap fast, I know I can thread this little black disk through the tangle of bodies and into that pretty net waiting for it. But suddenly, it’s like a boulder fell from the sky. I'm slammed hard on my left side, I twist, bringing my stick up to protect myself, but my skate edge must catch a divot in the ice and I feel myself falling as the boulder, which is actually Romero, seems to fall right along with me.
On the way down I think about the irony that it really does seem to be happening in slow motion, yet, it's at the speed of light. I hear the ligament snap as my knee twists up under me, and the pain is so sharp and sudden that the wind leaves my lungs in a paralyzing rush. I've got my lips open a bit like a fish, desperately trying to grasp a mouthful of oxygen, when things go from bad to worse. The impact with the ice is hard, but the weight of two hundred and fifty pounds of Andre Romero crushing me is worse, and the shattering pain that spreads through my hip as bone meets bone is the worst of all.
Lying on the ice, my entire right side throbbing with horrific pain, I hear chaos—my teammates yelling, refs' whistles blowing, grunts, the sounds of flesh smacking against flesh, but my eyes are screwed shut, and when I try to move, even a tiny bit, something stabs through me like a thousand sharp knives.
"Mick," Deke's voice comes to me and I open one eye to see his face hovering over mine, worry playing all over his bloody nose and the eye he must have just blackened against Romero's fist. It’s strange, but mostly what I’m thinking is that he shouldn’t have taken his helmet off to fight. "You're going to be okay."
I grit my teeth as the team doctor kneels beside me and starts flashing his penlight in my eyes. "Not this time, man. I don't think I'm going to be okay this time."
2
Solana
“Sol!” my roommate, Marissa, calls from the kitchen.
“Yeah?”
“The co
mputer keeps flashing that you have an urgent email. You didn’t log out last time you used it.”
I close my copy of Conquering Corporate Culture, climb off my bed in our tiny, shared bedroom, and walk to the living room.
“Also,” Marissa says as I enter, “the moms say we have to come to Tampa for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. They won’t let us skip both.”
Marissa is also my cousin—our moms are sisters, they moved to the U.S. from Spain together. I’m an only child, and Marissa’s the only girl, so we became kind of a package deal—we might as well be sisters, everyone treats us like we are.
I try to ignore the pang that goes through me when I think about my mother’s move to Florida. She packed up the van and pulled out of town the day I graduated from high school, leaving me to live with Marissa’s family until college started in the fall and I could move to the dorms. Nothing quite like having your own mother counting down the days until you’re out of her home, and in many ways, her life.
“I vote Christmas because it’s going to be freezing here by then,” I mumble, shaking off my bad memories as I grab the laptop we’ve been sharing off of the counter and bring up my email.
My eyes scan the newest message once, twice, then a third time before I shriek, unable to believe what I’m seeing.
“I got it! I got it! Oh my God, M, I got it!” I toss the laptop on the sofa where Marissa catches it before it slides onto the floor, then I’m screaming and bouncing and probably scaring the crap out of the neighbors.
“Ok, ok,” she laughs. “Calm the hell down, chica. I take it you got one of the jobs you applied for?”
I’m nearly breathless when I answer, hands gesturing like I’m a used car salesman. “Not a job, the job! The one at Petrovich. I’m the new junior marketing executive at Petrovich Vodka!”
Now Marissa knows what all the fuss is about. Her hands fly to her mouth and her brown eyes grow big and round. “Shut the front door!” she gasps. “You got it? The big one? The one you’ve been talking about for two years?”
She’s right. I have been talking about working for Petrovich for two years. It’s a phenomenal company—still family owned, but turning out a monstrous profit year after year, and innovative both with their product and their marketing. Hashtag career goals.
Before I know it, Marissa is off the couch and we’re both jumping around like a couple of lunatics.
“Woo hoo!” we shriek, holding each other’s hands and dancing in a circle like we did when we were little. A pounding vibrates the floor beneath our feet and I roll my eyes as we stop jumping and Marissa drops to the floor where she yells into the hardwood, “Take a chill pill, Herman. We’ve got shit to celebrate!”
She stands and we both giggle breathlessly.
“This calls for a party,” she says, skipping into the kitchen. She returns with a box of red wine, the only alcohol we have in the apartment.
“It’s cheap but plentiful,” she says, holding the box up over her head with one hand and two wineglasses with the other.
She pours the wine and we both raise our glasses to cheer. “To Petrovich’s newest junior marketing executive,” she says. “May you get to do lots of those marketing kinds of things that you like so much.” I laugh at her ignorance about my work. “And may you see The Czar every single day you’re at the office because nothing makes a job worthwhile like some sizzling eye candy.”
The Czar is Mick Petrovich, heir to the Petrovich Empire. His father is the owner of the company, but rumor has it that now that Mick is no longer able to play professional hockey he’ll be working for the company as well.
“He would be nice to look at,” I agree, taking my first swallow of wine. “I’m not sure if he’s working there or not.” I shrug. “I probably won’t see him anyway. I’m sure all the Petroviches are locked away on some super secret floor with gold bidets and dishes of caviar all over the place.”
“Eww,” Marissa says, scrunching up her nose. “Caviar and bidets in the same sentence does not create good images in my mind.”
“Sorry. Think about Mick Petrovich again, that’ll clear your mental palette.”
She sighs. “Ah, yes. Those legs, that chest, the ass.” She sighs as she takes a sip of wine. “You have to promise me to get a picture if you do see him.”
“I won’t, but okay, I promise.”
“Good. Now let’s get this celebration underway!”
She stands up on the coffee table while I stick my iPhone in the dock and set it to The Chainsmokers. As we begin to move to the music, glasses of wine clutched in our hands, the occasional sloshes splashing to the floor, I think, it paid off—every bit of it. I’m finally on my way to my dream—a corner office in a tall building, a corporate position, a home that no one can take from me. I’m going to be part of something bigger, something permanent. I hug my cousin and swig wine, because this is the greatest day of my life. Petrovich Vodka, here I come.
3
Mick
Petrovich Vodka is one of my least favorite places in the world. Which is why I avoid it like the plague. For the last five years I’ve been able to use my job as an excuse, but now that I no longer have a job, it’s getting tougher to find reasons not to go to the evil empire my father built from scratch.
I hobble to the large black SUV that waits for me at the street in front of my apartment building. The ankle to thigh brace that I have to wear for my knee makes it nearly impossible to maneuver. I can’t bend it, can’t drive, can’t exercise. What I can do is go to physical therapy, and other than one-night stands and a lot of television, that’s pretty much all I do these days. My life is an endless cycle of PT, puck bunnies, and Game of Thrones reruns.
Vanya, my father’s driver, exits the car and opens the back door for me. I’ve told him a hundred times that he doesn’t need to do that, but Vanya’s old school, he’s been with my dad since I was a small child. My dad modernizes what he has to, but the fact is he’s still a traditional Russian patriarch. He expects allegiance from his people, and Vanya, raised in the pre-wall-coming-down Soviet Union is more comfortable in that role anyway.
“Thanks, Vanya,” I tell him as I sit on the edge of the backseat then swing my braced leg into the car with the rest of me. I have to admit that this Escalade with all the seats adjusted to provide maximum legroom in the back is a real improvement over my Aston Martin for the time being.
After Vanya climbs into the driver’s seat he looks at me in the rearview mirror. “Your father asks that you call him, Mr. Petrovich.”
I sigh. I’ve been avoiding my dad for days now, but I can’t in front of Vanya, it would look bad and undermine my dad’s authority. He knows this, hence the reason he used Vanya to get to me. Fuck.
“Thanks,” I say as I take my phone out of my pocket and hit Dad’s speed dial number.
“Mikhail,” my dad answers.
“Hi. Vanya said you needed to speak to me?”
“How is the therapy going?”
I shift on the seat and look out the window, knowing what’s coming and wishing he’d just get to it already.
“It’s fine, Dad. Everything’s on schedule, no surprises so far. The new hip joint is stiff, but that’s better than if it were too loose. The ACL is healing like it’s supposed to.”
“Good. So you’ll be out of the brace in one month?”
He’s being disingenuous. I’m sure he has the exact date I can take the brace off entered in his calendar—probably with little stars and dollar signs drawn around it.
“Yeah, just about a month.”
“This is good. I have maintenance working on your office space now. The northwest corner suite, it has a small conference room attached and a full bathroom. Also, if you will have your physical therapist call me, I will make sure the building gym has any equipment you need installed. That way you can keep up with your rehabilitation.”
My heart rate picks up and I struggle to stay in control of the tone and volume of my voice.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” my father scoffs. “You can’t play hockey anymore, this has always been our plan. Once you retired from hockey you would become the vice president of public relations. This is your destiny. It is past time for you to start taking a daily role in your company.” Then he digs the knife in deep and twists. “I will not be here forever to run it for you.”
Because here’s the thing, my father doesn’t consider Petrovich Vodka to be his company. He sees himself as the steward who is maintaining it for my brother and me. Everything he does is for us, which only makes things that much more difficult since I hate Petrovich Vodka. Everything about it. It stole my family from me, and I’d rather die than work there.
But I don’t feel like fighting with my father today so I pretty much brush him off.
“Ok, I’ll think about it. Have you talked to Dmitri this week?” Because every good sibling knows that the easiest way to get a parent off your back is to deflect to your moody younger brother.
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