 by Shandi Boyes.jpg)
Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 86238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Check author’s website for TWs.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
ALEK
My knuckles pop when I follow Kirill and two of his men into a seedy strip club on the outskirts of Kronstadt. Kirill is a piece of shit mafia leader I’d never heard of until my ride-or-die brother stumbled onto his lineage.
Ghost was unnamed, unaged, and on the fast track to juvie when we became friends shortly after my ninth birthday. Everyone called him Ghost because his hair was as white as a snowflake the first ten years of his life before it was dirtied by the lifestyle we were forced to live to keep food in our stomachs.
The boys’ home we lived in until the day I turned fourteen provided a roof over our heads, but if we didn’t want to go hungry and wear holey shoes handed down from the boys older than us, we had to get the rest ourselves.
It wasn’t done legally.
Don’t paint me with the same dirty brush that darkened Ghost’s hair. We were more the Robin Hoods of Russia. We stole from the rich and gave it to the poor.
We just so happened to also be the poor who benefited from our criminal ways.
We got busted a handful of times, but sometimes that was the point. We still had to fight for a share of the food in juvie, but it was done in the mess hall instead of icy back alleys that could kill a man standing up if you didn’t keep moving to stop your blood from freezing in your veins.
Our summer months were spent implementing the plans we made while locked away.
Well, except for that one summer.
Her hair is as blonde as the first whore Kirill picks to take home for the night and her tits as sweltering as his second pick. I’m lost for similarities with his third, and I am honestly clueless about why he wants her. I’ve always been a one-for-your-mouth, one-for-your-dick kind of man. A third will only get lost in the process of being so fucking exhausted you’ll spend the day in bed.
“He’s done for the night,” I murmur into the cell phone I recently squashed to my ear. “His picks are made.”
Ghost sounds as peeved as I feel, but it has nothing to do with his girl being married to Kirill and everything to do with his baby sister and niece being disrespected in front of our competitors. This strip club is owned by Maksim Ivanov, a badass gangster who has no issues bringing a woman to her knees with a stern backhand slap, but unlike Kirill, he is a one-woman man.
Despite the miscommunication of my above comment, I’m the same way. When I am snowed under—by a woman, not coke—I don’t fuck around. When you’re my girl, I’ll pretend the only multitasking I can do is choking you out while fucking you from behind so hard and fast you’ll be searching for your uterus for a week.
When Kirill slips into the back of the SUV in the middle of a long line of many, I push my cell closer to my ear so I can hear Ghost’s answer over the thumping music booming around the club-like atmosphere when I ask, “Want me to stay with Kate?”
I’ve kept an eye on Katie since her consignment slip landed on my desk over seven months ago—approximately a day before Ghost asked me to. I don’t know what it is about her, but she’s had me acting like I did years ago when I stumbled onto my first girl not born for the grittiness of my life.
My feelings aren’t sexually motivated this time around, though. Not only would Ghost have my nuts on a platter within a second of sniffing out any type of romantic feelings, but my heart also still only pines for one girl.
She wasn’t a picture of innocence like Katie—and the worst headache I’ve ever fucking faced in my life—but my desire to protect her was immediate, and it wouldn’t quit for anything.
I’m drawn from thoughts that’ll see me strung out for days when Ghost asks, “How many did Kirill pluck from the limited pool at The Penthouse?”
While straying my eyes around the hundred or so topless women keeping the clientele at The Penthouse entertained with tasseled breasts and sparkling G-strings, I laugh about his wrongful insinuation before replying, “Three. All blonde. His preferences are as bland as yours of late.”
That fucker hasn’t been laid in months, and I have no intention of letting him forget it. Before Katie arrived on the scene, he sought hiatus from his miserable existence with whores as much as me.
Now you’d swear he’s on a sabbatical from sex.
Ghost doesn’t take a nibble at the bait I’m dangling in front of him. That’s proof Katie has his balls in her purse. I knew it months ago, but my failure to light his short fuse tonight confirms it, let alone what he says next, “Nah. She’ll be removed from his watch soon enough.” Sparks of the cocky prick I fought and lost for the top bunk years ago shine bright like a diamond when he adds, “And from what I heard circling the crew, your knob is overdue for a polish. Some shit about it getting as rusty and corroded as the ship you last got laid on.”