ONE
SHOWER 1 - MAXIM 0
“Your obsession will bethe end of you.”
My desk chair teeters and crashes to the floor as I jump up, grab my brother by the lapels, and pin him to the wall.
One second, Misha is sputtering for air, and the next he has a knife kissing his Adam’s apple.
“Myobsessionis the beginning.” And the fucking end.
He smirks. “Asshole.”
Flicking Misha an annoyed look, I release him so I can return to watching the front foyer’s security stream where Victoria, mypchelka, is studying the space as if it’s one of her college textbooks.
I ignore his huff as he straightens up and fiddles with his shirt collar.
Misha and I have been in a mood with one another since I moved out of my penthouse apartment.
He liked me up in the sky, forty stories high.
“Harder to kill,brat,” he’d say when I’d stare at the city skyline. “We don’t want to make it easier for you to die.”
It’s taken a lot of assassination attempts for me to accrue power, to stabilize my position asshukher, the head of the Russian faction in NYC, so I understand why he’s afraid I’ll die.
But I won’t let that stop me from living.
Another reason he’s pouting at Victoria’s presence in the brownstone I bought forher.
She tilts her head at a Picasso I purchased last year and installed in the front hall. The very fact that she isn’t shocked and awed by it is what makes her so intriguing to astreet rat like me.
Victoria was born to be a queen.
I had to kill to be her king.
“Stop drooling,” Misha scorns as I grow tired of merely watching my future bride. “Victoria is a liability.”
“What liability?” I deride.
One of the staff squeaks when I open the door before she can knock. In a flood of apologetic Russian, she tells me I have an unexpected guest.
Unexpected—damn straight.
Victoria has never sought me out before.
But she’s here.
In my house.
She brought herself to the tiger’s den…
I tamp down the quiver of excitement that realization stirs.
“Maxim!” she greets when she hears my soft footfall on the Arabescato Corchia marble tiles that run throughout the property.
A perfect foil for her coloring, the coffee brown makes her blonde hair gleam like spun gold. That blonde tips her lashes and brows, and the silk of her skin is the faintest of creams. With her unusually dark-as-pitch eyes for one so light, she has no way of knowing that this house is fitted forher.
As she turns to face me, her eyes widen in stunned surprise. Her lips part. Her throat bobs. And she grows still.
