Owned by the Mob Boss: A Dark Mafia Romance (Ivanovich Bratva) Nicole Fox (year 7 reading list .txt) 📖

that I realize tears have pricked my eyes. “That doesn’t sound lame at all. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, ignore me.” I rub at my face. “It’s just …”

“Her MS?”

I nod.

“Horrible disease. Fuck the fucker that invented it. Fuck him straight to hell.”

I half giggle, that kind of desperate laugh you do when you’re trying not to cry. “I don’t think anybody invented it, but I agree. What about you?”

She shrugs. “What about me?”

“What made you want to be a chef?”

“Oh, nothing exciting.” She pats her belly. “I just love to eat and I got tired of people ruining my meals.” Her smile is warm, and the sight of a friendly face alone is enough to smooth away the worries wrinkling my forehead.

We laugh and drink and make small talk for a little while. Then something strikes me. “Hey, Ashley, can I ask you something?”

“Sure thing. Shoot.” She leans forward.

“Erik, is he …” I pause, wondering how to phrase it. “A good person?”

Ashley folds her hands, looking at me closely with an expression I can’t read. “I don’t know how to answer that question,” she says after a long pause. “But I know this: that’s something you ask about a boyfriend. Not about … well, whatever you and Erik are.”

I swallow. “Talk about vague,” I say, trying to sound jokey.

“I know,” she admits. “But just think about it like this. If you’ve got feelings for Erik, then maybe you want to ask questions like that. But if this is just …”

She trails off. A business proposition is the missing end to that sentence. But she doesn’t need to say those words out loud. We both know what it is.

“I know what you’re saying,” I sigh. “Thanks, Ash.”

She raises her glass. “No problem, Cam.”

We knock glasses together and move on to other topics, but she’s right. Erik is nothing to me. It’s better to keep this cold and impersonal. Terrible or good, it makes no difference. He could be the fucking tooth fairy for all I care, as long as he keeps paying for Mom’s health care.

That’s what this is about. That is why I’m here.

Not a single thing else.

I’m lying in bed—‘my’ bed, in ‘my’ room, with my clothes still in their suitcases and my box of knickknacks sitting on the desk, as though I’m ready to flee at any moment—when there is a knock at the door.

I put down the nursing textbook. “Yes?”

The door swings open and Erik’s massive body fills the frame. He tosses a large brown package onto the desk. He’s wearing a suit and has his hair slicked to the side, looking handsome and powerful.

“Ashley picked some clothes out for you. Put them on,” he says without looking at me, “and get ready. We are leaving for dinner in forty-five minutes.”

I open my mouth to protest—a little heads-up would’ve been nice—but he’s already turning away. “Jerk,” I mutter when he leaves without saying another word.

Yet I open the package and study the clothes and can’t help sucking in a surprised breath. They’re downright beautiful: a diamond-glittering dress with heels to match. Fancier than I’d normally go for—not to mention hellaciously expensive, judging by the feel of the fabric and the quality of the stitching.

But I can’t lie, I feel a little like Cinderella as I pull it on, except for the slit up my thigh revealing a good amount of leg. Disney princesses don’t usually chart so high on the sex-appeal factor.

I feel sexy and dangerous and strangely excited as I walk down the stairs.

Erik is waiting for me at the bottom. His eyes get dark and intense when he spots me.

“What do you think?” I ask, willing myself to stop blushing.

He grabs my hips and pulls me close. I gasp and suppress a giggle, reminding myself that I am supposed to hate this man. But it is difficult as he brings his lips graze my neck.

“You look magnificent,” he says.

I push him away, laughing, though I do note the distinct feeling of my center growing hot and damp at the tease of his kiss below my earlobe. “Who taught you how to speak English—a James Bond villain?” I tease. “‘You look magnificent.’ Get outta here; no one talks like that.”

He shrugs. “It is true.”

I blush. The sincerity and authenticity in his voice is weird. It would seem almost vulnerable if he weren’t so confident about it. “Well, then, thanks, I guess,” I reply, eyes downcast.

“Prekrasnyy would be the word in Russian, by the way,” he adds. “For magnificent.”

I wrinkle my eyebrow. “Pre-crass-knee?” I ask, sounding it out slowly.

Erik laughs and nods. “Something like that,” he murmurs. “Though the accent needs some work.”

I pronounce it again, taking my time to mimic the way his mouth moves around the syllables.

He chuckles. “A work in progress, we will call it.”

“You know,” I venture, “you go from hot to cold so fast that it gives me whiplash sometimes.”

He tilts his head to the side and takes me in. “How would you like me to be, Camille?”

Again, he’s so blunt and honest that I find myself a little taken aback. “I mean, um, I don’t know … nice, I guess.”

“Would you like me to be subservient? Should I kiss your feet? Is that what you’re looking for?”

I punch him in the shoulder. “See, there you go. Being an asshole again.”

He smirks, such an arrogant, infuriatingly handsome look on a man like him. “Perhaps you are the one who doesn’t know what you want.”

I roll my eyes. “I know what I don’t want—to be psychoanalyzed by you. Put that one firmly in the ‘No’ column for me, please.”

He nods slowly. “As you wish.”

“Sir,” Adrian interrupts politely.

Erik pauses. “This better be important.” His breath whispers across my collarbone.

“It is, ah …” He glances at me.

“Speak freely,” Erik mutters, turning.

“The police are here to see you.”

I watch his face closely as something like cold panic moves through me.

The police? Why? What did he do? My mind fills with a dozen possibilities, each worse