Sold to the Mob Boss: A Mafia Romance (Lavrin Bratva) Nicole Fox (most popular novels TXT) 📖

the occasional whizz of a passing car fill in the gaps when we finally stop to draw breath.

A voice in the back of my head wonders what the hell has happened to my life. I’m in a bullet-ridden car, miles outside of the city, with a powerful Russian mob boss who says he owns me—and we’re laughing like it’s been a grand old adventure, a real knee-slapper of a time. What’s wrong with me?

Eventually, we calm down again. I use the hem of my dress to wipe the tear tracks from my face. Nikita coughs and composes himself again.

“Too late at night, I think,” he says, answering my question. “Maybe there’ll be something in the morning.”

I nod. Then I realize suddenly how hungry I am. I reach into the back and grab the bag containing some food. Thank God the safe house had cookies. I grab the box and open them, shoving two into my mouth, not caring how bedraggled I look. I offer Nikita some but he just stares straight ahead. “You sure you don’t want one?”

“I’m good.”

I chew for a couple of moments, then swallow and pick out another cookie from the tray. “I’ve never been through anything like that before.”

Nikita glances my way. “Did you check yourself? Did a bullet hit you?”

“I ... I don’t think so.”

He presses his lips tight together and does a quick scan of my body. “Check. With all the adrenaline, you might not feel it right away.” There’s a caring tone in his voice that I’m not used to.

I put the cookies down and run my hands up my legs, over my torso, and down my arms. Nothing. Only tiny beads of glass cover me. I gently wipe them off. “I’m good. What about you?”

“I’m fine.”

I grab two bottles of water from the back and offer him one after I unscrew the top. He takes it and sucks down all the liquid without coming up for air and then tosses the empty bottle into the back. “Thank you.”

I smile meekly and shove another cookie in my mouth. “If it wasn’t for the bullets, I would almost say the car chase was kind of fun.”

“Excuse me?”

I take a sip of my water before continuing. “When I was really young, I used to watch action movies with my dad. Anything with a car chase would do. We’d watch them, then go running around the backyard, him chasing me so I could pretend I was the one escaping.” It’s a memory I haven’t thought of in a long time. Easy summer evenings, cicadas humming, my dad making vrooming noises as he chased me left and right, circling everywhere, until he’d finally snatch me up in his arms, squealing and giggling. I still remember what he smelled like. That was back before all the nightmares began.

“Who would’ve thought: the little bird is a closet speed demon.”

I quirk my brow. “‘Little bird’?”

Nikita looks uncomfortable suddenly, like he said something he didn’t mean to let slip. “Never mind,” he says gruffly. He looks down at the cookies in my hand. “I changed my mind. Can I have a cookie before you eat the entire package?”

His smile is infectious. I grin and place three in his hand. He chews thoughtfully. When he’s finished, he nods like he’s arrived at a decision.

“All right,” he says. “Time to go.”

“Where?”

He points. I follow his finger to the top of the mountain.

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Up there?”

“Yes.”

“But ... why?”

He sighs with the exasperation of someone answering questions from a child. “The men following us will have radioed in a description of the car and the direction we were headed. It’ll take them time to cover the distance, but make no mistake—they’re coming to finish what they started.”

I swallow hard. I shudder to think what will happen if we get caught. I hope I never have to find out. “Okay,” I say. “So we walk?”

“Yes. Ditch the car, hide it, disappear until I can figure out what to do next.”

I try to put on a brave face. What he’s saying makes sense, but it’s not exactly what I was hoping for. I look into the shadows of the trees clustered close together off to my right. That’s where we’re headed. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Nikita opens his door and gets out, grabbing his bags from the back seat as he does. I follow suit. But when my feet hit the dirt below, I wince, my body tensing from pain. I clutch the door in an attempt to alleviate the pressure from my feet. Nikita hears me hiss and comes around the front of the car. He wraps an arm around me and lowers me back into the seat.

“We need to walk, but I need to take a look at your feet first,” he says as he gingerly removes the sneakers I threw on in our blind panic at the safe house.

The insoles are soaked in blood which has begun to dry, so when he peels them off it’s as if he’s also ripping new scabs away. I can’t help but cry out. While he doesn’t look up, I notice the way his face contorts and the way his thumb rubs gentle circles against my skin.

“I’m sorry,” I say, unsure as to why I’m apologizing.

He sighs and stands. “Where’s the bag with the supplies you took?”

“In the back.”

He opens the rear door and searches through the bag, returning with peroxide and gauze. He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “This isn’t going to be pleasant.”

I brace myself as he squirts the peroxide onto my feet. But nothing prepares me for the burning sting. There’s hardly any skin left on my soles, and the peroxide is ruthless in seeking out every raw nerve ending and lighting it on fire. I whimper, squeezing my eyes shut to try to block out the pain as Nikita uses the gauze to pat at the cuts and pulls some pebbles from my wounds with a pair of tweezers.

When he’s