Kostya: A Dark Mafia Romance (Zinon Bratva) by Nicole Fox (open ebook .TXT) 📗

Her eyes go wide. “That’s very … generous, but I”—her skin grows darker red—“I’ll need something else, too.”

I watch her, head tilted to the side with curiosity, as she fidgets and tries to smile.

She stops shuffling, takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes as she says, “My sister disappeared and I promised my mom … I need you to find Lila.” She ends strong. Resolute, with a nod of satisfaction and a smile. Eyes open, waiting on pins and needles for my reaction.

Tiana has both arms around Charlotte’s neck, and Charlotte is cuddling her as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. I would pay any amount of money for more of the same.

“Fine.”

“Fine,” she echoes. “I’ll consider it.”

I nod. “You have one week.”

This feels like a deft, simple solution. Bring Charlotte into my home. Have her care for my child. Brilliant and elegant in one stroke.

Except my desire to fuck her senseless has grown by unforeseen leaps and bounds. And now she has an even more central role in my life.

Perhaps not so brilliant after all.

4

Charlotte

A week later, I’m sitting at my kitchen table, bills spread out before me, head in my hands.

I can’t stop replaying the scene from last week in my head, over and over again.

Kostya stripping off his shirt …

The bulging pecs, the rippling abs …

Stop that. But I can’t.

The V-cut leading down to his beltline …

The tattoos, inky and swirling, tracing across his back …

Stop. That.

The firm curve of his ass in his suit pants. His zipper, straining against …

“Okay, hell no! That is too far,” I say to myself.

“What?” comes my mom’s voice over the phone.

Shit. I forgot I was on a call with her. My tune-out-Mom skills have gotten too finely honed over the last couple years.

“Nothing, Mom,” I mumble. “That was just the television.”

“Oh. Well, anyway,” she continues, “I was saying …” I can hear the jangle of her bracelets clacking together, so I reach over and turn down the volume on the speakerphone until she’s just a tinny voice in the background. She doesn’t really care about what I have to say anyway; she just wants to know that she has a captive audience, so I get back to what I was doing and offer her an “Mhmm” every so often so I can avoid another Gloria Lecture (patent pending).

The bills I’m shuffling through are, as expected, depressing. They always are. I meant what I said to Kostya—he doesn’t pay me enough. I might be okay if I didn’t have Mom’s ridiculous shopping habits to fund, but Lila isn’t exactly wiring me cash to pick up her share of that, and suggesting to Mom that she get a job would be blasphemy to a degree that even I am not willing to risk.

I reach over to my laptop and enter in a few line items for new things. The red text glaring back at me lets me know that this will be yet another month where I dip into the meager remnants of my savings to keep my head above water.

I know that there’s a way out of this. I’ve been mulling it over for seven days straight, ever since Kostya made his absurd, borderline-offensive offer.

I’ll double your pay. He said it so casually that it made me shiver. I wonder if it’s the money that makes him such an ass sometimes, or if he’s just naturally gifted in that department, and the money is merely a means to express his innate ass-ness. Either way, the result is the same—he dangled a lump of cash in front of me like it meant nothing to him. Which, to be fair, it didn’t, but I am choosing to be insulted nonetheless.

Not that I can afford to be insulted. Hell, I can’t afford to be anything. I can’t afford to be sick, can’t afford to go on vacation, and sure as hell can’t afford not to at least consider doing what Kostya wants.

So I’m considering it. But first, I’m gonna have to square up with the way he asked me. Mostly because he didn’t really ask me at all. He told me to do it, as if “Move into my home and take care of my surprise child” is a secretarial order on par with “Please make me twelve copies in black and white.”

To a man like Kostya—far too used to getting his way at all hours of the day—maybe those things are on equal footing.

But they aren’t to me. Not by a long shot.

What the man is asking is for me to uproot my entire life and come camp out in the room next to his. It’s a bad idea on about a billion levels, not the least of which is that I’ve literally masturbated to the image of him taking off his shirt for seven straight nights.

Putting that aside because I’m not willing to confront that particular snafu in the hours of daylight, it’s a bad idea because I am not exactly an ideal candidate for the job. Yeah, Tiana and I have gotten along easily thus far whenever she visits the office, but I’m far from a qualified babysitter. She’s just cute and wants to play. It isn’t so hard, and it’s better than dealing with one of Kostya’s moods, which have been worse than ever lately.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Argh, dammit, there she goes again. “Yes, Mom, I’m listening.”

“Well, what did I just say?”

“Mom, can you not?” I sigh. “I’ve had a long week at work, and—”

“You think you’re the only one who’s had it hard lately? I …”

And then she’s off and running, launching into a new tirade. I admire her energy—holding the kinds of grudges she does would exhaust me to no end. I’m exhausted enough coming home every day as it is.

Since he first made his offer, Kostya hasn’t been in the office much and has buried