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

I lie beside her with my own sketchpad and concentrate on recreating every contour and edge of Kostya’s profile, the curve of his lips, the way his hair fans out just below his ear, the commercial-worthy eyelashes.

When she’s finished and staring at her drawing, I look over her shoulder. “Tiana, that’s beautiful.” It’s clearly a person—a man if I had to guess—with brown and green hair and blue eyes with red pupils. And she’s drawn a giant heart around his head.

“It’s Daddy.”

I can see Kostya in her drawing. His strong chin. The waves in the top of his hair. The long, sleek neck. She’s definitely caught the essence of her father and has used splashes of color to bring the picture to life. I imagine art school in her future.

“It looks just like him.” I glance at the clock once, then look again. We’ve been so caught up in our artwork, I’ve somehow managed to let her stay up almost an hour past her bedtime. Some nanny I’m turning out to be. Thank goodness Kostya isn’t home yet. “But we are running late tonight.”

“Can I show it to him?” Her little voice is so hopeful, and I haven’t found a way to say no to her yet.

I look at her. “Well, maybe if you’re very good and we can hurry through your bath to get you into bed, I’ll show it to Daddy for you, and tomorrow at breakfast, he can tell you how much he loves it.”

She purses her lips. It takes a second for her to nod, but then we run upstairs and hurry through a bedtime routine that I improvise. As I tuck her into her bed, she looks up at me. “Don’t forget to show Daddy my picture.”

I nod. “Of course I won’t.” If I have to wait outside his bedroom door until he comes home, he will see the drawing, and then I will hang it in his office in a beautiful and ornate frame. She’s adjusted so quickly, adapted to our places in her life, and I don’t want anything to diminish her knowledge of how important she is in ours. “Now, little lady, you sleep sweet, and I will see you first thing in the morning.”

I flip on the monitor and take the tablet that lets me see her from its docking station, then kiss her cheek. “Good night, Charlotte.”

“Good night, T.” I wink and leave the door open enough that there’s a triangle of light spilling onto the floor.

She’s asleep almost before I’m standing outside Kostya’s office. I just plan to poke my head in, but … this room is him, the entire essence of him. It smells like him. The furniture is well built and if it had a personality, I would call it powerful. The wood is dark and accented with steel and stone that give it a kind of medieval vibe.

It is undoubtedly his space. And I’m intruding.

As I’m about to walk out, a light from the yard—not that there aren’t plenty of landscape lights, but this one is further off—catches my attention. It’s the guesthouse. The one that flooded, I think he said? I can’t remember what exactly he told me about it, but when he gave me the tour of the place, he made it seem like it was dangerous to go in there. Something about structural integrity, blah blah. It seemed legit, and Kostya was an architect once upon a time. So I figured it was the kind of thing he’d know a lot about.

But now I’m curious. And because no one’s around to stop me, I walk across the yard on my tiptoes, hiding in the shadows as if I’ve suddenly turned into 007. But it feels naughty and decadent. Something about that appeals to me.

I crouch beneath one window, then stand to look inside. But I can’t see anything. The sheer curtain isn’t sheer enough. So, I have no choice but to walk up onto the porch and try the knob. If an alarm sounds … I’ll just say I saw a light and am checking the property. Never mind that Kostya has guards who roam the grounds—I haven’t seen them since I came to work at the house, but I know he has them because I used to write the checks that paid the company they work for.

I talk myself into going inside when the alarm doesn’t sound. If Kostya had a guest in the house, he would have mentioned it, right? At the very least, that’s what I assume. So, that means there’s no logical reason for the light to be on, and I’m doing my bit to help out by ensuring we don’t have vagrants taking up residence on the property.

Or maybe this is the security team’s center of operations and I should probably see how they operate so we can all work together to keep Tiana safe.

Yeah, that sounds plausible, right? All the wonderful excuses.

I step inside, onto a braided rug on a hardwood floor. The house is cute. Devoid of the water damage I’m ninety-nine percent sure he told me about when we were walking around the grounds on the day I moved in.

The living room to my left has blue plaid curtains and chairs that accent a deeper blue sofa, whitewashed tables and lamps and plush white carpeting. It’s homey and beautiful in ways the mansion isn’t.

A thump against the ceiling startles me.

There’s someone in the house.

I knew it.

“Hello?” I’m on the third step before it occurs to me that I might not be welcome no matter who’s upstairs. I have no weapon. I’m the intruder and if I die here tonight, it’s my own fault. “Kostya?”

“… Whelan has planned!” At the distinct crunch of fist on skin and bone, I gasp and race the rest of the way up the stairs. There’s trouble. Why my first instinct is to race in blindly, I’ll never know, but I’m at the