I've been carrying a dead man's USB drive for two years.
He made me promise. I keep promises. It's taken me twenty-four months, eleven cities, and one very loose-lipped contact in Faro to find the person it belongs to — and I find him in a Lisbon side street, mid-disagreement with three men, looking like he's enjoying himself.
His name is Niko Volkov. He is, it turns out, very difficult to locate. This was apparently intentional.
He's also the most chaotic, charming, infuriating person I've ever given a USB drive to, and he invited me to dinner before the disagreement was fully resolved, and I said yes, which I'm still examining.
The drive contains something Niko didn't know existed — four years of someone quietly building a war chest in the Volkov family name, waiting for the right moment to arrive as a rescue. The someone is patient. The architecture is elegant. And we have, by Niko's calculation, a very small window before everything moves.
So he asks me to come to Chicago.
I've discharged the promise. The drive is delivered. I have no operational reason to get on a plane to Chicago with a man I met this morning in a side street.
I go anyway.
The building in Chicago is nothing like I expected. No locked doors '' a philosophy, apparently. A grey cat named Kafka who assesses everyone within ten minutes of arrival. Niko's sister, who speaks four languages and finds things. His brother-in-law, who says four words and means more by them than most people manage in forty. And Grigori, who cooks something that requires three days and cries at appropriate moments and sometimes inappropriate ones.
Niko is chaos with a spine. He sits in working chairs at two in the morning. He names his objectives so the parameters are accurate. He makes coffee at five because he was already awake and of course he was.
He also, apparently, has been thinking about a girl in a Madrid restaurant for three years without knowing her name.
Orest, you absolute menace.
Bound is a dark Bratva romance featuring a dry-witted heroine who keeps her promises, a charismatic hero who has been circling home for too long, and the very specific genius of a dead man who trusted the universe to arrange things correctly given sufficient time. Interconnected standalone — can be read without Books One and Two, but best enjoyed in order. HEA guaranteed.
Content warnings: dark themes, morally grey characters, mild violence, mature sexual content 18+
He made me promise. I keep promises. It's taken me twenty-four months, eleven cities, and one very loose-lipped contact in Faro to find the person it belongs to — and I find him in a Lisbon side street, mid-disagreement with three men, looking like he's enjoying himself.
His name is Niko Volkov. He is, it turns out, very difficult to locate. This was apparently intentional.
He's also the most chaotic, charming, infuriating person I've ever given a USB drive to, and he invited me to dinner before the disagreement was fully resolved, and I said yes, which I'm still examining.
The drive contains something Niko didn't know existed — four years of someone quietly building a war chest in the Volkov family name, waiting for the right moment to arrive as a rescue. The someone is patient. The architecture is elegant. And we have, by Niko's calculation, a very small window before everything moves.
So he asks me to come to Chicago.
I've discharged the promise. The drive is delivered. I have no operational reason to get on a plane to Chicago with a man I met this morning in a side street.
I go anyway.
The building in Chicago is nothing like I expected. No locked doors '' a philosophy, apparently. A grey cat named Kafka who assesses everyone within ten minutes of arrival. Niko's sister, who speaks four languages and finds things. His brother-in-law, who says four words and means more by them than most people manage in forty. And Grigori, who cooks something that requires three days and cries at appropriate moments and sometimes inappropriate ones.
Niko is chaos with a spine. He sits in working chairs at two in the morning. He names his objectives so the parameters are accurate. He makes coffee at five because he was already awake and of course he was.
He also, apparently, has been thinking about a girl in a Madrid restaurant for three years without knowing her name.
Orest, you absolute menace.
Bound is a dark Bratva romance featuring a dry-witted heroine who keeps her promises, a charismatic hero who has been circling home for too long, and the very specific genius of a dead man who trusted the universe to arrange things correctly given sufficient time. Interconnected standalone — can be read without Books One and Two, but best enjoyed in order. HEA guaranteed.
Content warnings: dark themes, morally grey characters, mild violence, mature sexual content 18+
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Used availability for Cora J Riley's Bound