Page 41 of Black Ledger

“You?” He raised a brow, waiting for me to fill in what you meant.

“You know…” I swallowed, not wanting to say it. But he wasn’t letting up. “Built like a Greek god with far too many muscles to be reasonable. Someone who has trained his whole life to kill people with his hands… you.”

The corner of his mouth lifted with amusement, but his body remained rigid, pinning me against the stone.

“Why are you here, Sevka?”

“I go to school here.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Oh, I don’t?” His lips pressed together, barely containing an amused smile.

“Does your father know that?”

“Of course my father knows. He sent me to do business with the Bratva in Chicago.”

Well, fuck. That meant he was going to be around for a while.

Damn it. I had finally built a life, friends, and a place away from the mafia where I could just be me. But God loved to laugh at the plans we made for ourselves.

“You don’t have to look so disappointed about it.”

I gulped. “I am not.”

He shook his head and stepped back, releasing me from the wall. “Tell that to your resting murder face, Xeniya.”

Chapter Twenty

Xeniya Morozova

Age 19

Two weeks passed during which Severin stalked me every day, showing up in all my classes—even the ones he definitely wasn’t enrolled in. He was a business major. There was no world in which he belonged in Intro to Cybersecurity or Computer Science III. But the professors didn’t notice because the classes were so big that anyone could technically sit in.

But why would you want to?

Well, because Severin was unhinged and had made it his life mission to be in my business. For no discernible reason. Just because he could.

At least he was actually enrolled in the Abnormal Psych class. But the last two weeks had been insufferably awkward because Chad made it his goal to always sit next to me, and Severin made it his goal to prevent that from happening. Unfortunately, I had two sides. So they both sat next to me, muttering under their breath about how much they hated each other. I gently reminded Severin that he could not, in fact, murder a politician’s son for sitting next to me. Severin simply growled in response.

So second year was going great.

Meanwhile, Rachelle was having a blast watching it all go down. She’d once squealed to me, when they were out of earshot, that “The two hottest guys on campus were fighting over me.”

To which I said, “No, Severin is just an overly protective friend.”

Like a brother. Except we would never be siblings. And speaking of overprotective brothers, Severin had brought my twin brother to Chicago with him, so now I had two alpha mafia assholes interfering in my life.

It was all fucking amazing.

I just wanted a normal life, and they were ruining it. Severin had even ruined my Americanized nickname the first time he heard it.

He’d asked, mockingly, “Sienna?”

“It’s easy. Americans can’t pronounce Kseniya,” I responded. Kseniya was the Russian spelling of my name, but to make it easier for everyone, I had spelled it with an X since I was twelve.

“So it has nothing to do with wanting to distance yourself as much as possible from the Russian mafia?”