Unprotected with the Mob Boss: A Dark Mafia Romance (Alekseiev Bratva) Fox, Nicole (best chinese ebook reader .TXT) 📖

It’s testing my patience, too. It’d take one stray bullet in the parking lot for her to slip away before Julia could save her.

I glance over to the kitchen. Allison is chopping up an onion while Julia is filling a pot with water. Julia steps away from the pot, her hand settling on Allison’s shoulder as she leans toward her ear to whisper something. Allison whispers something back. Julia glances at me, notices me watching, and retreats to her pot of water. After she fills the pot, she sets it on the stove.

“Be careful,” Julia says to Allison, igniting the fire under the burner. She could be talking about the fire or me.

I get it now. Julia helped save Allison’s life and therefore feels more responsibility over her life than an average friend or roommate would. Julia is invested in Allison’s life, so my sudden appearance raises her hackles.

I sit down on the couch. I’ve never met anyone who hated me that I didn’t feel indifferent about or despise, but Julia is a first for me. I’m grateful for her suspicion of me. I need to convince her that we’re a real, loving couple, but it’s nice to know that Allison has someone around that’s focused on her well-being.

“Julia.” I stand up and face the two of them. Allison is holding onto a colander, her grip tight on the edges. “Could I talk to you for a moment?”

“Sure,” Julia says. “Speak.”

“I meant without Allison around. Outside.”

Julia looks back at Allison. I can only see Allison’s face, but there’s the slightest shake of her head. Julia turns back to me.

“Sure.” She heads toward the door. “I hope you don’t smoke.”

I follow her out. “Not tonight.”

She takes the stairs down, not checking to see if I’m behind her. Once we’re outside, she keeps her gaze on the parking lot, her arms folded over her chest. The door slams shut behind us.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” she asks.

“I want you to say what you need to say,” I tell her. “And then move on.”

She spins around to look at me. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Allison has chosen me. She’s with me. And you can hate me for whatever reason you want, but that fact isn’t going to change until Allison changes her mind. So, say what you need to say because the tension between us is not good for Allison.”

She tilts her head. “I don’t know you. How could I hate you?”

“You’re managing it just fine.”

She smirks, but her arms remain tightly folded in front of her chest. “You know, after she told me who you are, I looked you up. Why did you change from models to Allison?”

“That sounds like an insult to Allison,” I say. “She’d wipe the floor with any of those models any day.”

“I don’t hate you. I just don’t trust you,” she says. “If you want me to trust you, you better earn it. Do you know how many houses and penthouses of rich pricks I’ve been to? The poor neighborhoods get a bad rap but that’s just because the rich know how to hide their skeletons.”

“You hate me because I’m rich.”

She opens up the apartment building door and turns to me. “The fact that that’s your takeaway? That is your problem. You hear the word rich and you skip over the word skeletons.”

I turn away as the door slams shut. I pull a pack of cigarettes out of my jacket and light up. I inhale until it starts to hurt and let it go. I watch a tweaker dance around his car before banging the front of his body on the hood of the car. He does it two more times before starting to dance around his car again.

When I finish the first cigarette, I start another one. When I’ve almost burned through that one, the apartment door slams open. First, an old woman toddles through, giving me a wink as she passes by, and then Allison is standing beside me.

“What the hell was that about?” she asks. “Did you threaten her? Blackmail her?”

“I’d think you’d know her well enough that if I tried either of those, she’d cut my balls off,” I say. She tries to hide a smile, looking down at her shoes.

“She always gets what she wants. If you weren’t down here to threaten her, what did you two talk about? She won’t tell me.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I drop the cigarette and crush it with my foot. “The only good news is that she doesn’t think we’re both frauds. You’re a saint and I’m the emblem of rich, corrupt people, who hide skeletons.”

“She’s not wrong.”

I give her a look, but she’s already focused on the tweaker. With the sun setting, her features have a faint glow and she couldn’t be more flawless. I wasn’t lying to Julia about that. The models were aesthetically pleasing when I was fucking them, but unlike them, I could spend a lifetime looking at Allison. Every time I glance back toward her, there’s this abrupt loss of breath in my chest. If anything, I should be bitter toward Julia for getting to see her for a year longer than I have.

“We should go back in,” she says. Her hand touches my arm. “Try to be nice. She’s not just an obstacle. She’s my closest friend.”

I open the door for her. We walk back in together. When we’re in the elevator together, I lean against the handrail. She stands in the center. She’s wearing a summer dress—simple, with faded and thinning material. It must be years old, which might be why the material is nearly gauzy. My hands desperately want to trace every curve, savor every inch of exposed skin.

When she moves forward, it’s a trial to keep my eyes off her ass. We step back into her apartment, the smell of garlic charging straight into me. Allison pulls me forward. She stops us next to Julia, who is straining the spaghetti.

“Hey, Jules,” Allison says,