He came to warn her off.
He should have brought better arguments.
Prudence Vanek doesn't scare easily. Eight years in the FBI's financial crimes division — four organised crime families, one man with a gun in a Bratislava car park she talked down by discussing his portfolio diversification — has made her constitutionally unimpressible. When she comes home to find a man sitting in her kitchen in the dark, she doesn't scream. She puts the kettle on.
Casimir Zenko came to redirect her investigation. She's been pulling threads in the Zenko Holdings financial architecture for nine weeks and she's getting close, and the correct move is to sit in her kitchen and explain, calmly, why she should look somewhere else. He expected a frightened woman. He got a woman who offered him Yorkshire Gold and told him his misdirection was deliberate within forty minutes.
He goes back the next night. And the night after that.
The investigation doesn't stop. The case keeps building. The Conti family has a former British MP in their financial structure, three Lords in their network, and a legislative scandal that's going to go transatlantic and very loud. Pru is the one building it. Caz keeps turning up in her kitchen with tea he's made in the pot because she's a pot person, and biscuits he replaced at eleven at night because he said he would, and food from every corner of the city because she said surprise me and he always does.
This is not a case she can walk away from. He's not a man she can stop wanting to know.
Beautiful Threat is a full-length dark Bratva romance set in Chicago — where the FBI and the Bratva share the same city and occasionally the same kitchen, the slow burn runs at the same pace as a federal investigation, and the man you're supposed to be building a case against is the most honest person you've ever met.
Features:
• Enemies to lovers — actual enemies, she is building a federal case against his family
• Forbidden romance with genuine professional stakes
• Slow burn over thirteen weeks of kitchen evenings and chess games
• Bratva hero who replaces biscuits at 11pm, drives to Devon Avenue on Thursdays, and is also genuinely dangerous
• FBI heroine who is meticulous, precise, and completely undone by a man who puts the kettle on
• Explicit heat — the first time was good, every time after was better
• A transatlantic corruption case that becomes one of the biggest of either career
• A grandmother's chess set, a North Shore lake house, and an aunt in Kyiv who sends jars
• No fade to black. No naive heroines. No easy choices.
Beautiful Threat is Book Two in the Zenko Bratva series. Caz Zenko has been a secondary character since Book One and is significantly more complicated than he looks. Pru Vanek is his match in every sense. This one ends where it should — with both of them, both cases, both worlds running exactly as they should be.
He should have brought better arguments.
Prudence Vanek doesn't scare easily. Eight years in the FBI's financial crimes division — four organised crime families, one man with a gun in a Bratislava car park she talked down by discussing his portfolio diversification — has made her constitutionally unimpressible. When she comes home to find a man sitting in her kitchen in the dark, she doesn't scream. She puts the kettle on.
Casimir Zenko came to redirect her investigation. She's been pulling threads in the Zenko Holdings financial architecture for nine weeks and she's getting close, and the correct move is to sit in her kitchen and explain, calmly, why she should look somewhere else. He expected a frightened woman. He got a woman who offered him Yorkshire Gold and told him his misdirection was deliberate within forty minutes.
He goes back the next night. And the night after that.
The investigation doesn't stop. The case keeps building. The Conti family has a former British MP in their financial structure, three Lords in their network, and a legislative scandal that's going to go transatlantic and very loud. Pru is the one building it. Caz keeps turning up in her kitchen with tea he's made in the pot because she's a pot person, and biscuits he replaced at eleven at night because he said he would, and food from every corner of the city because she said surprise me and he always does.
This is not a case she can walk away from. He's not a man she can stop wanting to know.
Beautiful Threat is a full-length dark Bratva romance set in Chicago — where the FBI and the Bratva share the same city and occasionally the same kitchen, the slow burn runs at the same pace as a federal investigation, and the man you're supposed to be building a case against is the most honest person you've ever met.
Features:
• Enemies to lovers — actual enemies, she is building a federal case against his family
• Forbidden romance with genuine professional stakes
• Slow burn over thirteen weeks of kitchen evenings and chess games
• Bratva hero who replaces biscuits at 11pm, drives to Devon Avenue on Thursdays, and is also genuinely dangerous
• FBI heroine who is meticulous, precise, and completely undone by a man who puts the kettle on
• Explicit heat — the first time was good, every time after was better
• A transatlantic corruption case that becomes one of the biggest of either career
• A grandmother's chess set, a North Shore lake house, and an aunt in Kyiv who sends jars
• No fade to black. No naive heroines. No easy choices.
Beautiful Threat is Book Two in the Zenko Bratva series. Caz Zenko has been a secondary character since Book One and is significantly more complicated than he looks. Pru Vanek is his match in every sense. This one ends where it should — with both of them, both cases, both worlds running exactly as they should be.
Used availability for Cora J Riley's Beautiful Threat