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

venture to this wing. This place really is super-villain-level huge.

He stops outside the door, waving a hand. “Take a look,” he says.

“Has anybody ever told you you’re a little bossy?”

His smile is wider this time. His eyes roam over me with something like affection. “You have, many times, and yet somehow I am not tired of hearing it. Go on, Camille.”

There is a weird sort of eagerness in his voice. For a brief moment, he’s like a little kid showing a parent a picture he drew in class. But then his Bratva mask slips back into place. I sigh and turn to look at what he’s showing me.

My breath catches when I enter the room.

A large desk sits in the corner with a brand-new computer and a stack of notebooks and fancy-looking pens. A corkboard rests against the opposite wall with anatomy drawings pinned to it, and right beside that sits a box overflowing with nursing textbooks.

It’s a study room, all for me.

“Erik …”

I turn to him, hands at my chest. My heart pounds and I feel silly tears fill my eyes. The tenderness is so unexpected.

Forget hot and cold; this is frigid versus the temperature of the sun.

His proud smile finishes the job. Warm tears slide down my cheeks.

“What is it?” he asks.

I throw my arms around his shoulders. “It’s just the nicest thing anybody has ever done for me,” I whisper honestly. “Thank you. It’s perfect.”

He lets out a relieved breath. “Good. I’m glad. But we are not done.”

I pause at the full-scale model of the human body. I know how much these things cost from nursing class. He really has spared no expense.

“No?”

We are holding hands as we walk down the hallway. Suddenly, I am giddy. I feel like a damn teenager on prom night. Erik pushes the door open and gestures at the wide, empty room.

This one stumps me. “I don’t get it,” I say after a moment.

“A nursery,” he whispers, avoiding my gaze. “I thought I would leave the decorating up to you, though. I would not even know where to start.”

My belly drops. It’s like we’re no longer the same people, the quid pro quo Erik and Camille who started on this insane journey.

“I have a few ideas,” I manage to say through the knot in my throat.

He nods briskly, as though wanting to leap off the emotional train before it starts chugging too fast. He spins on his heel and paces down the hallway.

“Good,” he says. “Now we will eat.”

“‘Now we will eat,’” I mimic, giggling as I wipe my cheeks. “Sometimes I feel like you’re rehearsing for Hamlet, the way you speak.”

He jabs me playfully in the side. “Let’s hope this does not end with a poisoned blade.”

“Ah, there’s the cheerful Erik I’ve come to …”

I pause.

I was about to say ‘come to love so much.’ What the hell? I need to get a grip or next I’ll be sending him a fucking singing telegram.

Shuddering, I push past him into the kitchen, not daring to meet his gaze. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him lift an eyebrow.

But he says nothing.

“Allow me to present my award-winning grilled cheese.”

I lay the plates down on the table and drop into my seat. The night is warm, so we are eating on the balcony. The sky is clear and the moon is full. It couldn’t be a more romantic scene if we’d rehearsed it.

“You might want to tell Ashley to look for a new job,” I brag sarcastically with a smile, pouring him a glass of wine.

“I will never complain when my woman cooks me a meal,” he says, cutting into it.

My woman. The phrase flutters hummingbird-like around my head. Is that what I am now? The feeling that the two of us have crossed some sort of threshold resurfaces.

“Thoughts?” I ask, when he has taken his first bite.

“The most delicious meal I have ever had the pleasure of eating,” he says with a sly smile.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, sir. Be careful.”

He chuckles and takes another huge bite.

Jesus Christ, this is getting downright surreal now. Is this really the same man who sat in the shadows as I pranced around in my underwear on stage? I try to imagine him covered in blood, Bratva-boss style, as though that will fight off these warring emotions. But it has little effect.

Maybe I’m not the little wallflower all my childhood teachers assumed I was, after all.

“How are your nursing classes?” he asks. “Your duties here are not interfering with your studies too much, I hope?”

I shoot him a look. “Would you let me cut down my hours if I said they were, sir?”

He laughs. “You know the answer to that. Really, I am interested.”

He leans forward. He’s not lying. Since when does he care?

I give him a few details about what I’ve been learning in class, as well as Bethany’s sudden change of heart. “You’d like her,” I joke. “You’re both impossible to read.”

“I never claimed to be an open book,” he says good-naturedly. “I am glad your studies are going well. I mean that. You are going to be an excellent nurse.”

“Oh, Erik. You’ll give me a big head.”

“Perhaps you deserve one.”

I roll my eyes. “I feel like you want something,” I venture.

He reaches across the table and traces my palm with his finger, his eyes full of meaning.

“I always want something from you. It never stops. I dream of you every night, you know.”

I almost gasp. And I almost laugh. What comes out is a mangled hybrid. What has gotten into him tonight?

Suddenly, a future with this criminal doesn’t seem so bleak. Images of us doing normal couple-type stuff—going to the movies, walking down a pier, picking out drapes, for God’s sake—jockey for attention in my mind.

Then my cell phone buzzes on the table. I glance at it: Rob.

Erik withdraws his hand. “Asking for money, I assume?”

“That’s not fair,” I mutter, the moment of tenderness passing.

“Is it not?” he grumbles.