Nikolai: A Mafia Prince Romance (Russian Mob Chronicles Book 1)
Nikolai: A Mafia Prince Romance: Chapter 17

With my heart lodged in my throat, I swing my eyes in the direction of the voice. Standing at the side of my spare bedroom wearing a thick black trench coat is a man whose eyes are as dark as his poor choice of summer attire. His salt and pepper hair is slicked back on his thick skull, and his lips are curled into a snarl.

Even though I’ve never met the man glaring evilly at me, I know who he is. He is Vladimir Popov, Mob Boss of Las Vegas and the monster who raised Nikolai.

After Vladimir’s sullied eyes rake over my body in spine-tingling detail, he returns them to my face. “Maybe we should have kept her on as counsel. It would have made the trial more entertaining for all involved.”

When he laughs as if his comment is funny, the three men surrounding him follow his lead. My lungs begin accepting oxygen again when Vladimir signals for the men pointing guns at me to stand down. I’ve barely inhaled an entire breath when he pushes off his feet and heads toward me. His steps are as arrogant as his abhorrent face.

In the corner of my eye, I spot Nikolai rising from his bed. The fury on his face makes my skin slick with sweat even more than the fire in his eyes. His gaze is murderous and rapt on his father.

When he attempts to thwart Vladimir’s prowling approach, Roman splays his arm across his thrusting chest, foiling his endeavor. They get into a tussle, but with every pair of eyes in the room glued to Vladimir, no one but me notices their exchange.

Clutching Nikolai’s shirt in a firm grip, Roman whispers something in his ear. He is so soft, I can’t hear what he’s saying, but whatever he’s saying must be unpleasant, as the agony in Nikolai’s gaze turns vicious.

My eyes drift away from Nikolai when Vladimir stops to stand in front of me. “As fine as a rose petal, but with the intensity of a huntress. You’d be a lot of fun,” he says, his eyes as desolate as his heavily accented words. “But no woman disrupts the rightful order. Not even one as pretty as you.”

After tracking his thumb down the throb in my throat, Vladimir slings his eyes to Nikolai. “Is she yours, Niki? Is she the reason you tried to slit your cousin’s throat?” He sneers Nikolai’s name as if it’s a derogatory word. “You’re letting a woman weaken you like Rico did? I thought I raised you better than that.” I don’t know who Rico is, but Vladimir hissed out his name as if it scorched his throat.

Panic engulfs every inch of me when Nikolai replies, “She isn’t mine.” His throat works hard to swallow before he adds on, “She isn’t anybody’s. Sergei has been stepping out of line for years. I simply put him back in his place.”

Nikolai’s eyes lock with Roman, silently requesting for him to corroborate his statement. My heart slowly creeps back down my windpipe when Roman mumbles, “Sergei disrespected Nikolai. He was punished for his insolence, not a whore.”

Vladimir eyes his son with skepticism, his mistrust highly notable. “So you wouldn’t mind if I made her my whore?” His lips twitch as he struggles to contain his rueful grin.

When Nikolai pauses for contemplation, I faintly beg, “Please.”

Who is this man? Only this morning he promised no one would ever hurt me, but now he stands in front of me, contemplating his father’s suggestion of making me his whore like it’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do. If I wasn’t engulfed in fear, I’d spit at his feet.

Ignoring my appeal, Nikolai’s eyes drift back to his father. “Would you like her? You can have her if you want. As a gift, perhaps?” he asks in Russian, his tone unlike any I’ve heard him use. It was shallow and weak, a stark contradiction to the man he is.

Moisture burns my eyes as my heart falls from my ribcage. I can’t believe I stupidly thought Nikolai wasn’t the man his file portrays. This proves what the pessimists always preach: a leopard can’t change it spots.

Spotting the distressed look on my face, the haughty gleam in Vladimir’s dark gaze doubles. He is feeding off my fear, reveling in every tremor shuddering through me. He takes his time appraising my ashen face before his dedication drops to my body.

I’ve never been more grateful for the bite marks on my arms when the lusty expression on his face switches to disgust. He glares at the red indentations maiming my skin, deepening them more with his wrathful gaze.

“She’s marked! That makes her worthless!” he spits out in disgust, the words fired off his tongue like venom. “I could have looked past her lack of innocence to witness her face in ecstasy, but I’ve tasted the richest wine, and I refuse to settle for anything less than perfection.”

My breathing spikes when Vladimir runs the back of his hand down my cheek, wiping away a tear. I fought with all my might to hold in my tears, but when his words echoed what I’ve been waiting to hear the past four years, they spilled over before I could stop them.

Vladimir releases a throaty moan when he sucks the salty droplet off his finger. “It’s a pity you’re marked; if your cunt tastes as sweet as your tears, we could have had a lot of fun.”

Even though I’m not looking at Nikolai, I know he balks at his father’s crude statement. His movement was so rigid, the air rippled.

I secure my first breath in what feels like ten minutes when Vladimir takes a step away from me. “Thank you for the offer, Niki, but I must decline your invitation.”

Not bothering to issue a farewell, Vladimir hightails it to my front door. The three heavily armed men follow closely on his coattails.

The instant my apartment door slams shut, the heat of Nikolai’s hands curl around my quaking jaw. His body is hot and brooding, nearly as tumultuous as mine. I yank away from his embrace, sickened he failed to defend me as promised.

“I’ll slit the throat of any man who dares look at you sideways. Family or not,” I quote with devastation dangling off my vocal cords. “You’re such a liar.”

Nikolai growls, angered by my insult. Normally, the fury in his tone would have me cowering away, but not this time. Call me stupid, but I know he won’t hurt me, so it gives me free rein to unleash my vicious tongue.

“Why did you do that? Why did you offer me to him as a gift?” My anger is so intense it chops up my words, making them weaker than I had hoped.

He stares at me, shocked I understood what he said to his father.

“I can speak thirteen languages, Nikolai—including Russian. Perhaps if you hadn’t thrown me away like trash, you would have discovered that.”

“I offered you to him to save you from him,” he whispers, his words barely audible.

I laugh. It’s a torturous chuckle that exposes that my heart is still sitting in my shoes.

“Don’t treat me like an idiot! I know what your father is like. I know exactly what he would have done to me if he had accepted your offer.”

Fury lines his face as his fists clench into balls. “He wouldn’t have touched you. I wouldn’t let him touch you like that. I would kill him before I’d let him touch you.” His words grow louder with every sentence he speaks.

“You offered me to him!” I shout, my words croaky from the absolute despair clutching my throat. “You gifted me to a man who sells his own daughters to the highest bidders and tortures his sons as if they’re animals!”

When a fresh batch of tears trickle down my cheeks, Nikolai wraps me up in a tight hug. “I offered you to him to save you,” he mutters into my hairline. “If I thought there was any chance he would have accepted my offer, I would have never said it.”

I pound on his chest, sickened by his continued denial. If he can’t see how wrong this is, he’s beyond saving.

“Don’t touch me,” I sneer, pulling out of his embrace and hightailing it to the door. “You lost the right to touch me the instant you offered me to that monster.”

“Justine. . .” Nikolai growls in warning.

The vicious snarl of his tone sends horrid memories rushing to the forefront of my mind, but I continue with my trek, more determined than ever. This exchange is different than my last tussle with a mafia prince. There are no vicious animals forced to follow their owner’s command or die.

My shaky steps falter mid-stride when he discloses, “If Vladimir knew how much I wanted you, he would have taken you away from me. If not for himself, for someone else. He has been that way my entire life. Anything I love, he takes. I only offered you to him as I knew he wouldn’t take you. Vladimir craves perfection, so I used anything I could to save you from him.”

The swishing of my stomach amplifies when it dawns on me what he’s saying. I feel sick—horribly ill. Although grateful the marks mottling my skin saved me from a man as horrid as Vladimir, hearing him say I’m not perfect hurts more than I can explain. I stupidly thought he was the first man not bothered by my scars. Clearly, I was wrong. I can’t stay here and let him watch me cry, so I continue marching to my bedroom.

“Justine,” Nikolai shouts, following after me.

When he snags my wrist in a vise-like grip, my free hand flies wildly through the air, only stopping when it brutally connects with his face.

I freeze.

Nikolai freezes.

The entire world freezes.

As the anger on Nikolai’s face overtakes the redness of my slap, his grip on my wrist tightens. “Don’t ever hit me,” he warns through clenched teeth, his words heated enough to sizzle my skin.

I struggle to breathe through the moisture streaming from my eyes unchecked. My tears aren’t from the pain thundering through my body—they come from seeing the absolute agony in his furious gaze. All I can see is the little boy who was admitted to the hospital with three broken ribs the day of his fifth birthday, and the teenager whose arm was snapped in two places from an alleged tumble down the stairs on his sixteenth birthday. Every one of Nikolai’s fifteen visits to the hospital during his childhood centered around his birthday, making my assumption that he isn’t a Popov even more likely.

“I’m sorry,” I stammer out, my words as broken as my heart feels from adding another form of abuse to the long list he’s already endured in his short twenty-eight years. “I shouldn’t have hit you. No one has the right to put their hands on another. I let my emotions get the better of me, and I’m sorry for that.”

After peering into his eyes to ensure he can see the sincerity of my apology, I spin back around and head to my room. He keeps hold of my wrists, foiling my endeavors to leave. His hold is firm, but nowhere near as dense as the guilt clutching my throat.

The heavy thump of my heart nearly drowns out Nikolai’s request for Roman to leave. I freeze, suddenly mindful we aren’t alone. With the tension in the air the thickest I’ve ever dealt with, I didn’t realize we had a witness to our exchange.

Roman steps forward, his worry for Nikolai displayed all over his face. “Your father, Nikolai. You know what he’s like after Rico. Disobeying his direct order could result in—”

“I’ll deal with him,” Nikolai interrupts, his voice strained with unbridled anger.

Roman’s brows furrow, stunned by Nikolai’s response. His worried eyes bounce between Nikolai and me for what feels like hours but is mere seconds before asking, “Will the benefit outweigh the penance?”

Nikolai’s eyes drop to mine. The suffering tainting his beautiful blue irises cuts me raw. I’ve only seen such agony in a pair of eyes once before. It was in my dad’s eyes when they carted my brother out of the courthouse to serve his life sentence.

After cleaning a stream of tears off my cheeks with a brush of his thumb, he answers, “Yes. Do I not deserve a night of pardon after all the years I’ve served?”

Roman’s dark brows scrunch as moisture looms in his eyes. “You deserve that, and so much more.” After dipping his chin, he exits my apartment without so much as a backward glance. “You know how to reach me. Contact me when you’re ready.”

The instant the latch on my front door clicks into place, announcing we’re alone, Nikolai relinquishes my wrists from his grasp. In silence, his hands curve around my jaw as his thumbs work hard to remove the tears gliding down my face.

Happy every strand of devastation has been cleared, he moves me to sit on the double couch in my living room. With my body still shaking, I’m grateful to have something sturdy to lean on.

“Wait here,” Nikolai requests, his voice a throaty purr that makes me wish I could forget the past twenty minutes ever happened.

When I nod, agreeing to his request, he strides to the far-left corner of my living room. Wood scraping across the ground booms into my ears when he drags my single armchair across the living room floor. Once it’s positioned beneath the surveillance camera housed in the outdated molding of my living room, he stands on the springless seat.

My heart rate triples when he yanks down the surveillance device so roughly, wires pull out of the drywall for several feet. He continues tugging until the black cable eventually snaps.

“They were hardwired?” I mumble more to myself than Nikolai.

Jesus Christ. I underestimated this family.

Assuming my question is for him, Nikolai nods before pacing into my bedroom. He continues with his mission of debugging my house until every blinking red contraption has been removed—all seven of them.

Nudging his head to the bathroom, Nikolai says, “Follow me.”

I carefully push off the sofa, cautious my quaking thighs won’t hold up my weight. Mercifully, they do. I shadow Nikolai into the bathroom, my mind too hazed with confusion to ask what he is doing. My brow arches when Nikolai dumps the surveillance equipment into my tub before he begins to draw a bath.

Unimpeded by his clothing, he steps into the bitterly cold water. He stomps on the recording apparatuses, their hard plastic no feat for his black boots. He demolishes the cameras until they’re nothing more than fragments of rubble drowning in a foot of water. If I was concerned the devices had a battery backup, I no longer have any reason to fear.

Nikolai’s eyes drift to me. “Happy?” he queries, his tone demure.

I nod, a more confident response beyond me. I’m so damn confused I don’t even know which way is up.

Smiling, he steps out of the tub. My breathing shallows when he prowls toward me, his steps purposely slow. There’s something glistening in his eyes I can’t recognize. It’s bright and emotion-packed, and my skin mists with sweat as I stare at him.

The veins in my neck twang when he grips the hem of my dress and flings it over my head. His eyes remain locked on my face, even though I’m standing before him in nothing but a pushup bra and sheer panties. I don’t know whether I should be pleased or disheartened by his gallantry. After the severe beating my ego just took, displeased is my first thought.

I snap my eyes shut when Nikolai leans in and presses his lips to a bite mark on my right shoulder. “Perfect,” he mutters against the angrily stretched scar.

His lips drag to a section of rippled skin on my right rib. It’s mottled and ghastly appearance compliments of the dog tearing cartilage from my ribcage.

“Perfect,” he murmurs before caressing it with the same tenderness he did the first bite.

My thighs squeeze together when he falls to his knees to embrace the two bite-marks hidden behind my knee. “Perfect,” he mumbles again.

Goosebumps race to the surface of my skin as he continues with his mission to kiss every mark, bite, and imperfection on my body. By the time he pulls back, all my earlier anguish is lost, replaced with a lust so potent, nothing will succeed it.

I’m proven to be a liar when Nikolai connects his eyes with mine. “I previously said you’d be worth three nights in lockup. I was wrong. You’re worth so much more than that. You’re perfect, Justine. Don’t ever let a monster like Vladimir lead you to believe any different.”

I want to believe what he is saying, but I can’t. No amount of praise can alter the appearance of my body. It remains as ugly as it has ever been.

I grow panicked I said my inner monologue out loud when Nikolai spins me around to face the vanity mirror. Its horrid Hollywood lighting showcases every imperfection on my body in the most unflattering light. When I wither away from the sickening image of my patchwork skin, he curls his arm around my waist and forcefully walks me toward the offending object.

‘Look in the mirror and tell me what you see,” he demands when we stop to stand in front of it.

I shake my head as my eyes drop to my feet, which are dangling in midair from Nikolai’s firm hold.

He tightens his arm curled under my breasts before growling, “Look in the mirror and tell me what you see, or I’ll bend you over the tub and fuck you so mindless, you’ll submit to my every command without stopping to think.” His tone is drenched with its usual pig-headed confidence, but there’s something more deeply seated within it that sets my pulse skyrocketing.

“Five. Four. Three. . .”

My chest expands and releases three times before I raise my massively dilated gaze to the mirror. My eyes go wild, taking in the unique qualities of Nikolai and me. My petite frame is swamped by his broad shoulders, narrow hips, and thick thighs. The paleness of my skin dramatically contrasts with his vibrantly tattooed body, and the murkiness clouding his eyes looks even more sinister against the purity my eyes falsely portray.

“We look like night and day,” I mumble, my words barely a whisper. “Darkness and light.”

“Angel and devil,” Nikolai interrupts, stealing the words from my mouth.

He drags my hair away from my neck, exposing several bite marks I hide with my waist-length locks. Before I was mauled by a dog, I had shoulder-length hair. Now, it sits just above the two dimples in my lower back.

“What do you see now?” he asks, his demanding tone incapable of concealing the underlying message in his question.

He is trying to tell me I am the same person with or without my scars, but I know that isn’t true. I lost a part of myself the day of my attack, and no amount of platitudes will change that.

“I’m not who I used to be, Nikolai. . .”

The remainder of my reply snares in my throat when his eyes lock with mine in the mirror. His gaze is as hot and hungry as it was before he exposed my angry scars, and his cock is firming at a faster pace than my hazy mind can comprehend.

“Nothing changed, Ahren. Nothing.” His last word is so volatile, I barely hear it over the tremor of my heart.

When he places me onto my feet, I keep my eyes front and center, confused by his silent retreat.

The heady aroma of lust fills the bathroom when he starts to remove his clothes. He shreds them off his body, leaving them where they fall.

Once he is stripped as raw as I feel, he locks his eyes with mine, which are gawking at him in the mirror. “Turn around,” he demands, his words extra throaty.

One side of his mouth lifts when I do as instructed without pause. I’m not meaning to act submissively; I’m just desperate to recoup some of the confidence I lost four years ago, I acted before my brain could cite an objection.

After giving my eyes time to absorb every morsel of his panty-wetting body, he says, “Come here.”

“No,” I whisper with a shake of my head. “I’m safer here.”

His lips curve into a genuine smile, revealing he understands my apprehension isn’t based on fear. We may have been strangers days ago, but we’re both already well-rehearsed on my inability to behave rationally in his presence. I could barely hold back this morning when he was clothed head to toe, so I stand no chance with him being as naked as the day he was born.

“I guess I’ll come to you then,” Nikolai grumbles, his tone half-wrathful, half-playful.

When he takes a step toward me, I take a step back.

“Don’t run unless you want to be chased, Ahren,” he warns, his voice groggy with arousal. “I will chase you no matter how fast you run. Because I know that is what you want.”

I freeze, trusting his threat. I do want him to chase me. I’m just afraid of what that means.

My core clenches when his cock bobs up and down by its own weight with every step he takes. I ball my hands at my side, fighting not to reach out and touch his perfect manhood. His cock is as appealing as his face. Thick, handsome, and long. Like it could possibly get any bigger, my attentive stare has it steadily rising to his belly button, growing even more mouthwatering.

My skin grows clammy when Nikolai encloses his hand over mine. He raises it to his rock-hard stomach, stopping just above his vibrant tattoo. Moisture burns my eyes when he runs my fingertips over a section of gritty skin concealed by the dragon’s head. It’s approximately half an inch in width and three inches long. Its texture indicates it’s several years old, but the pain in Nikolai’s eyes remains fresh.

Over the next ten minutes, I’m shown over a dozen scars mottled throughout his body. Some appear as if they could be surgical, but others leave no doubt they were put there by harm. They’re as rough-edged as my most horrendous bite marks.

Although lust continues to bounce between us, a stronger, more powerful awareness adds to the tension in the air. It’s heartfelt and strong, completely wiping every inhibition from my mind.

While tracing an angry scar spread across his right ribcage, Nikolai asks, “Do you see me any differently now, Justine?”

I want to say yes.

I want to say I understand him now more than I ever have.

But instead, I smash our lips together.