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

in the fresh air, puffing out his chest as we gazed at the jagged peaks of the mountains. And something always stirred deep inside of me, a satisfied feeling I couldn’t place or name.

Tonight, it’s different. I exhale slowly, my breath clouding from the frigid temperature. I feel hollow, worn out, like a dishrag used too many times. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t feel this way. I can’t remember the last time I felt anything at all, really.

Until Annie.

I’m aware of her in a way I’ve never felt with anyone else. Not just in tune with her feelings, with every sharp intake of breath or every awkward purse of her lips—though I feel those things as if they were happening to me. But I’m aware of her as I’m aware of myself. Her pain is my pain. Her exhaustion is my exhaustion. Her fear runs in me like it was my own, though it has been years since I was truly afraid of anything. I can’t explain it and I don’t like it, this sudden expansion of awareness that has taken me over.

I look over my shoulder to make sure she’s okay. Sure enough, she’s hoisting herself over a fallen tree and heading in my direction, grimacing with each step. What I wouldn’t give to take her pain away.

“Nikita, wait up. It’s dark and I don’t know the area as well as you do. I don’t want to get lost,” Annie says from behind.

“Take your time. Just trying to figure out what direction to head in.” I face forward and scan our surroundings. There was a place my father and I would camp out at when we came up this way: our secret hiding place, tucked away from the well-trodden main path, safe from all but those who already know where it is. I’m hoping it will keep Annie and me safe for the night.

“There should be a clearing to our left. It’s hidden from the trail.”

“Lead the way,” Annie says as she climbs the rest of the way to meet me.

I stop and study her for a moment as she approaches. Her hair is long and ragged, strewn with sticks and leaves from the hike up. I’ve chosen the less-traveled route wherever I think she’ll be able to handle it. Anything to hide our tracks from would-be pursuers. There is a weary slant to her shoulders and sweat is beaded on her upper lip despite the chill in the air. For a wild moment, I imagine kissing it away. Then the thought passes like a fever dream, and I remember once again where we are and what we are running from.

“You’ve handled yourself well tonight.”

“Because I had a choice,” she replies sarcastically.

“Few of us ever do.”

Apparently, it was the wrong thing to say. I can see a sudden clench in her jaw, a tightness in her fists.

“You had a choice,” she snaps. “You chose to drag me into this. And what’s happened since? Nothing I chose, that’s for sure. Bullets aimed for me, blood everywhere, the ambush on the terrace, a midnight car chase with our lives on the line, my feet scraped completely raw, and now this mad dash up a mountain in the godforsaken dark ... Would you like me to continue?”

“Earlier, you said it was thrilling.”

“Please tell me you’re joking,” she says. “Please tell me that’s a joke.” It’s dark, but I can still see the fire gleaming in her eyes, catching the moonlight and throwing it at me like a taunt, like a schoolyard dare.

“Would you prefer if I had left you on the terrace?”

“I’d prefer if you had left me to my old life, which I very much enjoyed, actually. Before I knew who you were or that any of this existed.” She throws a hand in the air at “any of this” and I know exactly what she’s referring to.

She means my life. My world. The empire my family has cultivated for generations, humming just under the surface of the city everyone thinks they know. But no one really knows it like I do. And once you learn what exists—how far it reaches, how ugly and depraved it is, run by dons like me and beasts like Gino—there is no going back. Annie knows that. Even if we make it out of here alive and Annie returns to her old life, it won’t matter. The knowledge that I exist has changed her for good. She can never truly return.

And she hates me for it.

But I still can’t shake the memory of her thrown across the dining table on the terrace, writhing and moaning. The soft swell of her lips against mine, the heat of her skin, the timbre of her begging whimpers. The thought alone gets me hard and makes my heart clench in an unexpected way.

I feel so many things attached to this woman, standing across from me with her hands on her hips, jutted out angrily. Responsibility and protectiveness and lust and fury at her constant insubordination. Why will she not just lie down and obey my orders, like everyone else in my life? Why will she not just do as I say? At every turn and in every way, she fights back, pushing at me, testing my limits. And yet, I can’t find it in me to get angry and stay there. Over and over again, I come back to the same thought:

She is different than the rest.

Even now, in this moment, I’d kill her if she were someone else. No one talks to me the way she is doing and goes unpunished. I’ve spent my life building up a reputation as a ruthless mob boss, and all it takes is one petite accounting student to unravel all of it. So, as much as one voice in my head is screaming at me to make her pay for her sass, I can’t bring myself to do it.

I’m responsible for her. And I have to make things right.