The Fixer: A Dark Bratva Billionaire Romance (Chicago Bratva Book 2) Read online

  Blyat.

  He takes a short breath. Then nothing.

  “Igor!” Galina cries.

  “Papa?” Alarm rings out in Sasha’s voice.

  Igor breathes again.

  “Oh!” Galina heaves a sigh.

  But it was his last breath. His body twitches as the life goes out of it.

  For the first time, Galina looks at me. “He waited to die until you got here,” she says, but it’s an accusation not a compliment.

  I waited too long to come. I dodged his calls, not wanting to find out what it was he wanted to give me before he died.

  I was afraid it would be his position as head of the Moscow bratva. Or some other high up position. I thought he was calling me back to service.

  Never in a million years would I have guessed it was to wed his daughter.

  “May the earth be soft for him,” I murmur the traditional Russian saying then turn and walk out.

  I don’t have time to grieve the loss of a man who already threw me out of his life six years ago. I need to figure out how to keep his stubborn daughter safe when she has no desire to be attached to me.

  Chapter 2

  Sasha

  “Where are you going with that? Stop! That’s my mom’s,” I snap at Viktor, one of my father’s men. He’s one of four jerks who just barged into the one-bedroom apartment I’ve lived in for the last year with boxes and started packing everything up today. Right now, he’s boxing up the salad bowl I borrowed from my mom last week.

  “I’m just following orders,” he tells me.

  Maxim’s orders. Funny how Maxim doesn’t even have a position in the organization, but these guys obey him.

  Maxim also gave me orders via text this morning: say your goodbyes and pack two suitcases because we’re leaving this afternoon.

  Unlike Viktor and Alexei and the other two soldiers, I didn’t obey.

  I’m not going anywhere with Maxim. I don’t know what kind of twisted game of poetic justice my father was playing with our lives, but marrying me to a man who hates me tops the cake.

  My mom, whose apartment—the one I grew up in—is next door, comes in without knocking, taking in the chaos. “Today you leave,” she says. A statement, not a question.

  I shake my head. “No. Help me—they won’t listen. Tell them to stop packing my stuff. I’m not going anywhere.”

  My mom grabs my hand and pulls me into my half-packed bedroom. When she finds there’s a guy in there, too, she pulls me into the bathroom and shuts the door.

  “Listen to me, Sasha,” she whisper-snaps.

  I shake off her hand. “What?”

  “You will go. Your father left me nothing. Nothing. He left it all to Vladimir and to you, in care of your former lover.”

  “He wasn’t my—”

  My mom waves an impatient hand. “Whatever. Maxim controls it now. So you need to go with him, make nice and ensure that money stays where it’s supposed to stay—with us.”

  I stare at her. I’m surprised to discover this side of her. She was always so passive, so compliant with my father. She took what he gave us and never asked for more.

  But I suppose with him gone, she’s discovering her vulnerability to losing it all. We both are.

  The rebel in me wants to tell her hell no. I have principles, and they don’t allow me to be sold off to another member of my father’s organization.

  But I have no livelihood and neither does she. My American acting degree is useless both here and there. The only job I worked was a side gig in college that involved me dressing sexy and handing out whatever product we were pushing. And I only did it for fun—not for the money.

  Honestly? I shouldn’t have to work. My father’s money was intended for us, he just was an asshole about the way he gave it to us.

  “What about Vladimir? He’s supposed to provide for you.” I hadn’t brought myself to ask about him before because I knew I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about how wrong this all is.

  My mother clenches her teeth. “Vladimir is supposed to provide for me, yes. But you get everything. And I have no guarantees Vladimir will hold up his end of the bargain. You will not give up our inheritance because you’re being a stubborn cow.”

  I draw back, surprised at how mean and desperate she sounds. Like she’s inches from a nervous breakdown. Or doing something crazy.

  “I won’t give it up,” I promise her. “Maxim and I will come to an arrangement.” That was my plan from the start. He doesn’t want to be saddled with me any more than I want to be his devoted wifey. All we have to do is acknowledge that, and we can forego the whole moving in together and pretending. I’ll stay here. He’ll send me a check every month. Or better yet, direct deposit.

  I head back out to the kitchen where Viktor’s nearly packed up everything. He looks over, but his gaze goes past me to my mother. “You okay, Galina? Anything I can do for you?”

  He’s been our bodyguard for as long as I can remember. He and Alexei, the other guard, live here in the same building and rotate their time babysitting us. I suppose they’re happy to be rid of me. But it suddenly occurs to me that Viktor may not feel the same about my mother. The way he looks at her...

  How did I never notice that before?

  “You can help my mom by leaving my shit alone,” I tell him. “Put that down!” I snap, when he tosses my expensive blender in a box.

  “Take it easy.” Maxim walks in my front door like he owns the place. Maybe he does—who knows?

  He’s impeccably dressed, as always, in a crisp blue button-down and tailored slacks. His hands are in his pockets in that GQ-casual way he has of standing. Like nothing ever ruffles him.

  The past week has been a nightmarish blur with the funeral and interment. I’ve been numb, trying to help my mom bear her grief. Too angry to even examine my own. Maxim kept his distance, and I was hoping it meant he had as little interest in maintaining this sham marriage as I do.

  But it appears I was wrong. And now I regret not trying to talk to him yesterday before he set all this into motion. To talk him out of this insanity.

  “All your things get shipped to Chicago. If there’s something you want to leave for your mom, just tell them, and they’ll separate it out.”

  I fold my arms across my chest. “I’m not going to Chicago.”

  “It’s not up for discussion,” he says easily, almost like he expected that response but gives it no credence. His gaze dips to my breasts, which are pushed up and framed by my folded arms. I wore a skin-tight, pink-gold minidress today, which I’ve been using to fluster all the men swarming around my apartment this morning.

  I’m way more satisfied than I should be to find Maxim is also affected by it.

  “Listen.” I switch into English since we both speak it, and my father’s men don’t. “I understand you control the money now. I’m fine with that. I’ll be a good girl and do what you tell me. But we don’t have to pretend to be husband and wife. I know you don’t want me, and I obviously don’t want you.”

  “The marriage isn’t about what we want, caxapok.”

  His old endearment for me—sugar—rolls off his tongue too glibly and sends a riot of the shame and longing he once incited blasting through me again as if I were still seventeen.

  “Your father wanted you safe, and he chose me to be your protector.”

  I gesture toward the men dismantling my apartment. “Viktor and Alexei will keep me safe, as they always have.”

  Even though we’re speaking English, Maxim takes a step closer and drops his voice. “Think about it, caxapok. If your father thought you were safe with them, he wouldn’t have arranged to have you shipped off to America. He wouldn’t have brought me in.”

  I want to scoff. My mom and I practically own Viktor and Alexei.

  After I got Maxim banished, I realized how much power I could wield with my sexuality. And since it’s the only power I wielded in my life, I used it. I played games with my father’s men. Baiting them,
getting on my knees for them. Sucking their cocks. Then threatening to tell my father to get whatever I needed from them—usually my freedom.

  But a whisper of foreboding runs through me at Maxim’s words. He’s right. With my father dead, everything’s changed. I don’t hold any power anymore.

  “Go and pack your personal things. Our flight is in a couple of hours.”

  I shake my head mulishly. “I’m not going.”

  Maxim goes still and warning bells go off in my head. There’s a dangerous air to him. “Pack now or you travel with what I bring for you.”

  “Just leave me here,” I try again. “You can have the money—that’s why I’d be in danger, right? So you keep it. Just give me enough to live on, and I’ll stay out of your hair. Just leave me here.”

  “Do you think I married you for the fucking money?” he snarls. Maxim’s upper lip curls. He shouldn’t look so beautiful when he looks down his nose scornfully at me. “Believe me, caxapok, I don’t want it. It—and you—are definitely more trouble than you’re worth.”

  I spread my hands. “Then go. I’m letting you off the hook. Vladimir will protect me here.”

  “I made a promise to your father, Sasha. I won’t dishonor him by forsaking it.”

  I roll my eyes.

  He looks at his watch. “We’re running out of time, sugar. Looks like you’re traveling with what’s already packed. Go and get in the car that’s waiting outside.”

  I don’t know why I have to push. Stubbornness has always been my downfall. I fold my arms across my chest, lift my chin and dare to say, “Fuck you.”

  He cocks his head. I half expect a slap, like my father sometimes issued, but he appears completely unruffled. “If I have to make you, there will be consequences, Sasha.”

  “Go ahead—make me,” I challenge.

  Maxim isn’t amused. He loses the relaxed posture and launches into motion, like the sleeping lion that suddenly springs into a pounce. In one swift movement, he tosses me over his shoulder and carries me to the door, barking an order at one of the men to get my suitcases and bring them down to the car.

  His hand claps down on my ass when we’re out in the hall. “There are consequences for your disobedience, caxapok.”

  Surprisingly, he doesn’t sound angry. His voice is relaxed and even, despite the exertion of carrying me. I wriggle on his shoulder, which sends my microskirt bunching up around my waist. He slaps my ass again, kicking open the door to the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. “Stop squirming, or we’ll both break our necks,” he advises as he starts swiftly down the steps.

  I find the back of his belt and hang onto it. His muscular ass fills his slacks, flexing as he takes each stair. Heat swirls in my low belly as my old attraction to this man flares to life. I remember what he looked like on the deck of my father’s yacht. His shirt off, skin bronzed in the sun. He was an Adonis, sculpted muscle and perfect lines, in the prime of his youth.

  He’s no less appealing now, at thirty.

  He exits the building, and I reach back to tug my hemline down, fuming that he’s giving a show to his driver and the men outside. He tips me down to my feet, and when the driver opens the back door of the waiting car, hustles me inside the roomy Towncar.

  Maxim says something to the driver before he climbs in beside me and shuts the door, then snaps the window between the front seat and back closed. The way he looks at me makes everything inside me squirm. There’s a dark promise in his gaze. Like he’s going to enjoy punishing me.

  There will be consequences.

  I try to control my blush—one of the downsides of being a redhead. “So what? You’re going to punish me, as my father suggested?” I’m a fool to keep pushing. But it’s Maxim, and I never recovered from him spurning me as a teen.

  I swear I see the corners of his lips twitch right before he tugs me down across his knees.

  I’m simultaneously thrilled and horrified. My body’s already a live wire from being ignominiously manhandled by him out of the building. Now, with the promise of punishment, electricity zings everywhere.

  He gives me several hard spanks—five, to be exact—then he squeezes my ass roughly. My minidress rides up my hips, exposing the lower portion of my ass. I’m wearing a thong since the dress shows everything, so Maxim now has a full view of my cheeks.

  I don’t make a sound. I’m breathing hard, but it’s more from shock than pain although a tingle and burn start to set in as he continues to knead and massage my ass.

  It feels good. Humiliating, but hot. And when his fingers stroke between my legs, over the thong, I realize just how much Maxim is still my ideal man.

  I fell in love—or maybe it was just lust—with him on that yacht in Croatia, and even though things went terribly wrong, it seems the attraction never died. Heat pulses between my legs. Maxim rubs along the seam of my panties, tracing the string up between my ass cheeks and back down again. I soak the little triangle of fabric, impossibly excited.

  The moment he slides a finger under my panties, though, my internal alarms come back online. I buck on his lap.

  The truth is, I’ve never let a man touch me there. I flaunted and bluffed my sexual experience to rebel against my father, but in the end, I actually was that good little girl he wanted me to be.

  And Maxim may think he can do whatever he wants with me, that he has rights to my body because we stood in front of a clerk and he gave me my father’s ring, but it’s not going to happen.

  I lurch my legs toward the floor of the car, and he lets me go. I land on my knees at his feet. “I’m not having sex with you,” I declare, my mussed hair falling across my face.

  Maxim gives me an unfathomable look. He was always hard to read. “I hope you’re good at satisfying yourself, then, because no other man will be getting between those legs.”

  I flush with indignation—probably to a darker red than my hair, but before I can think of a response, Maxim’s door opens, and one of the men hands in my purse. “I’ll put the suitcases in the trunk,” he tells Maxim then steals a glance at me kneeling at my husband’s feet and smirks.

  “Don’t look at her,” Maxim orders, slamming the door in the guy’s face. He grips my elbow and helps me back onto the seat beside him. “I’m sorry for that,” he surprises me by saying. “He should have knocked first.”

  “I guess you think you own me,” I seethe, still hung up on the claim he’s made on my body.

  “I think you’re my wife,” Maxim says flatly, somehow conveying what a pain in the ass that is to him. “And I promise I’ll kill any man who touches you.”

  Chapter 3

  Maxim

  The blush bleeds from Sasha’s face at my threat. The car lurches into motion, en route to the airport. I shift to make room for the tightness in my pants.

  I didn’t mean to humiliate her with the spanking, but when she suggested punishment I just couldn’t help myself. Her ass was so damn tempting in that body-hugging dress she’s wearing, and she’s been begging for a correction since I showed up today.

  Judging by how wet she got, she enjoyed it as much as I did. But I shouldn’t have tried to satisfy her. There’s zero trust between us right now. Besides, if she hadn’t pulled away, that jackal who opened the door would’ve gotten even more of an eyeful than he did.

  “I suppose the same rules won’t apply to you?”

  “I won’t be letting any men between my legs, no.” I’m being a dick, I know, but she’s already such a pain in my ass, I don’t know how I’m going to stand this marriage. I learned at a young age that women are lying manipulators, and I know Sasha is one of the worst of them.

  “You’ll be screwing anyone you want while you keep me under lock and key. Is that how it works?”

  I attempt to shove my irritation down. Try to muster some understanding and compassion. It’s not her fault she thinks the worst of me. Her father modeled all the lowest male behaviors. I grip her hair and tug her head back, then slide my mouth dow
n the column of her neck. “If you want a different arrangement, caxapok, then claim me.” I open my mouth wide and bite her breast over the dress and her bra.

  Her beautiful chest heaves like she’s a damsel in a corset, swooning over the bold touch of her gentleman courter.

  I kiss her clavicle, the hollow of her throat. Trail my tongue down between her breasts. She smells delicious—like citrus and spices. Like sunshine and summer. My dick gets harder than stone. Now that I’ve touched her—now that I’ve felt how soft and luscious her body is, how responsive—the leash on my control grows short.

  “Are you telling me you’d be faithful if I had sex with you?” The wobble in her voice belies the bold tone.

  “Yes,” I shock myself by saying.

  Huh. I never imagined I’d commit to one woman. Then again, I never imagined I’d marry. Especially not to a wealthy young wilful bride whose life I have to protect. But no, I wouldn’t fuck around on her. Not if we had a real marriage.

  She arches her full round tits up when I bite the fabric over her nipple. “I-I don’t believe you.” Her breath is short. Her hands find their way to my shoulders.

  “Give it up, Sasha,” I coax, “and I’ll save myself for you.”

  She gives me a firm push, and I immediately release her and sit back in my seat. I may force her onto the airplane today, but I don’t pressure women to have sex. That’s not me. Ever.

  “I’m not your whore,” she says.

  I narrow my eyes, the ache in my balls making me cranky. Why the fuck would she even say that? “No, you’re my wife. And the sooner you accept that, the easier this will be for both of us.”

  “I have no intention of making this easy for you.” She folds her arms and then her long, bare legs.

  “Careful, Sasha,” I warn. “That road goes both ways.”

  After a stretch of silence, she mutters sullenly, “I don’t have my passport.”

  It was passed to me with all the paperwork related to our marriage, the trust, and Igor’s will. Apparently, Igor had taken it from her and kept it in his safe. The passport and her birth certificate are in her mother’s surname. Igor was careful not to mark her as a target with his. I’ll give her mine, though. I don’t have people gunning for me like Igor did. She’s the one who will bring danger to me, so I need to signal to any potential enemies she’s permanently under my wing. “I have it.”