Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 122242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Octavio Hernandez
I stole an angel from the devil and claimed her as my own.
Faith Donovan has been battered, abused, and enslaved for most of her life.
Now, she's mine.
They say touching her is an abuse of authority.
Unethical. Immoral. Wrong.
Ask me if I care.
Her freedom and her fate are in my hands now.
And I'm not playing by the rules anymore.
I swore I'd set her free if she helped me find the men who murdered my sister.
But in this world, life is pain, and everyone lies.
I'm not letting her go. I can't.
She's already home. She just hasn't accepted it yet.
Kill for You is a dark age-gap romance that can be read as a standalone. If you love burn-the-world possessive alpha heroes and strong heroines with dark pasts, you'll love this angsty forced proximity romance
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
Faith
My life is a mess of ugly moments and painful realities, carved from adamantine and immortalized in stone. The things that shaped me hurt like hell. They burned, gnashed, and clawed, ripping their way through me and stripping me down to the bone. What they left behind isn't whole, and it isn't pretty, either. It's brutal, and it's raw.
That's been my life for as long as I can remember—brutal and raw.
So it shouldn't come as any surprise when a hail of gunfire rips through the Bratva-owned bar where I work…but the loud crack of sound surprises me anyway.
It surprises the cartel members partying all over the bar, too. For a moment, they're frozen, gaping in shock. And then one of them gets blasted in the chest.
"Get the fuck down!" someone at the table beside the dying man roars.
I stand frozen for a full ten count as some of the most dangerous in Los Angeles dive for cover all around me, screaming and yelling. Not even the gunfire or their screams drown out the sound of Pitbull and Ke$ha blasting through the building at ear-bleeding decibels.
Old wooden tables and rickety barstools crash to the floor alongside shot glasses and beer bottles. People dive for cover, some not nearly quickly enough to avoid the barrage of bullets ripping through the building from the broken front windows.
The chaotic scene doesn't make sense to me.
Nikolai Tarasova and the Bratva own this part of the city, and no one ever comes after him in his own territory. I should know; my stepfather was an important man to Nikolai before he cheated him five years ago and then ran off with my mother, effectively trapping me in this hellhole.
Reality sinks in just about the time Adrian and Lev, two of their enforcers, fall to the ground, blood spreading rapidly around their bodies. Two others drop a few seconds later, shot to death where they stood.
My gaze bounces to the now broken windows to see a group of men right outside, assault rifles and handguns aimed at the building. I blink rapidly, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that there are only five of them. They had to know coming here with so few was a suicide mission when at least a dozen of Nikolai Tarasova's men partying it up at three tables set up near the front of the bar.
And yet…they came anyway.
"Faith, get down!" Ilya, my hulking boss, yells from the opposite end of the bar.
Bottles of liquor explode beside my head, lending a certain urgency to his order.
I drop to my hands and knees, hissing when my palms meet the sharp edges of a broken bottle. I scurry forward anyway, using the heavy oak counter as a shield from the war currently ripping apart my only safe haven in this city.
Ilya's bar is nothing special. It's old and decrepit, with years of grime ground onto the cement floors and just about as much smeared across the walls. The building is falling apart at the seams, but my job here is the only thing I have that I can call my own.
Everything else—from the bed I sleep in to the roof over my head—belongs to Nikolai Tarasova and the Bratva. They claimed it right after my mother and Alexei Palatov, her oh-so loving husband, took off with over three hundred thousand dollars in drug money, never to be seen again.
I've been collateral ever since, unable to leave the invisible lines that mark the boundaries of the Tarasova territory. Why he thinks my mother and Palatov might come back for me, I don't know. She hated the sight of me. She told me so often enough while beating me with whatever she could find.
I was an accident, the product of too much tequila and a broken condom. As soon as she gave birth, she dumped me in my dad's lap and left me there until he died six years later. She always resented him for saddling her with me after he died…like it was his fault he had a brain aneurysm. She never let me forget that she didn't want me. And Alexei Palatov didn't much like me when he married her when I was fourteen. I doubt he'd like me any better now.
Telling the Bratva that hasn't done me any good. I've been saying it for five years, but I'm still their prisoner here. I don't think they plan to ever let me go.
Part of me—the part that burns with hatred for the men who make my life a living hell—hopes they all die in this building.
The other part doesn't want to be here to witness it.
"Stay down," Ilya orders in his thick Russian accent, hooking his prison-tattooed arms around my waist and pushing me as deeply into the corner as he can get me. He then hunkers down in front of me on his hands and knees, protecting me with his big body.