She's treated him three times in nine months.
He asked for her specifically on the third visit.
The marriage was supposed to be political convenience.
Nessa Reyes is an ER nurse at Stroger Hospital who has learned to read patients the way other people read rooms. She knows the man in Bay 4 has been knifed before. She knows the man in Bay 6 is going to try to argue about the local anaesthetic. And she knows, by the third visit — fractured radius, walked in calm, asked for her specifically — that this is not a patient situation anymore.
Luka Danylo is forty-three years old, has been Theo Zenko's most trusted captain for twenty-three years, and has never in those twenty-three years let anyone close enough to stay. He tells himself his visits to Stroger are operational. He checked the timeline. They aren't.
When the Zenko-Conti territorial dispute threatens the Pilsen neighbourhood that Nessa's family has called home for three generations, a solution presents itself: a marriage of alliance, formalising a connection between the Reyes family and the organisation Luka serves. Political. Temporary. Carefully negotiated.
Nessa makes a list of every question she needs answered before she'll say yes. She holds him to every single one.
What neither of them planned for: an apartment with thirty-seven plants and a grandmother's cookbook. Coffee made for two on autopilot, because there are two people. A monstera cutting that's been failing for two years in the wrong medium that starts rooting in three days when the conditions change. A pregnancy that wasn't in the terms. A baby girl born six weeks early who opens her eyes, finds her father's face, and immediately pays the right kind of attention.
Brutal Arrangement is a full-length dark Bratva romance about an arranged marriage that becomes everything neither person knew they needed — the grumpy/sunshine slow burn version, where the sunshine is an ER nurse who gives thoroughly specific aftercare instructions and the grumpy is a man who names his plants in Ukrainian and keeps a pothos called Vasyl because he was difficult at first and then decided to grow.
Features:
• Arranged marriage that becomes the real thing
• Age gap (he's 43, she's 25; the gap is acknowledged, the dynamic is earned)
• Grumpy/sunshine: she is loud and warm and completely immune to him; he has thirty-seven plants and feelings he finds out about later
• Slow burn built from ER visits and aftercare instructions and a very specific list of questions
• Unplanned pregnancy mid-book; both of them handle it exactly as they handle everything
• Explicit heat — unhurried, thorough, entirely them
• Four brothers with distinct opinions and an aunt in Kyiv who sends jars
• A monstera cutting used as the central metaphor for the entire novel, which sounds unlikely and works completely
• No fade to black. No convenient misunderstandings. No one is naive about what they're walking into.
Brutal Arrangement is Book Three in the Zenko Bratva series. Each book is a standalone romance with a guaranteed HEA. This one ends in Kyiv, with the vinegar question finally answered.
He asked for her specifically on the third visit.
The marriage was supposed to be political convenience.
Nessa Reyes is an ER nurse at Stroger Hospital who has learned to read patients the way other people read rooms. She knows the man in Bay 4 has been knifed before. She knows the man in Bay 6 is going to try to argue about the local anaesthetic. And she knows, by the third visit — fractured radius, walked in calm, asked for her specifically — that this is not a patient situation anymore.
Luka Danylo is forty-three years old, has been Theo Zenko's most trusted captain for twenty-three years, and has never in those twenty-three years let anyone close enough to stay. He tells himself his visits to Stroger are operational. He checked the timeline. They aren't.
When the Zenko-Conti territorial dispute threatens the Pilsen neighbourhood that Nessa's family has called home for three generations, a solution presents itself: a marriage of alliance, formalising a connection between the Reyes family and the organisation Luka serves. Political. Temporary. Carefully negotiated.
Nessa makes a list of every question she needs answered before she'll say yes. She holds him to every single one.
What neither of them planned for: an apartment with thirty-seven plants and a grandmother's cookbook. Coffee made for two on autopilot, because there are two people. A monstera cutting that's been failing for two years in the wrong medium that starts rooting in three days when the conditions change. A pregnancy that wasn't in the terms. A baby girl born six weeks early who opens her eyes, finds her father's face, and immediately pays the right kind of attention.
Brutal Arrangement is a full-length dark Bratva romance about an arranged marriage that becomes everything neither person knew they needed — the grumpy/sunshine slow burn version, where the sunshine is an ER nurse who gives thoroughly specific aftercare instructions and the grumpy is a man who names his plants in Ukrainian and keeps a pothos called Vasyl because he was difficult at first and then decided to grow.
Features:
• Arranged marriage that becomes the real thing
• Age gap (he's 43, she's 25; the gap is acknowledged, the dynamic is earned)
• Grumpy/sunshine: she is loud and warm and completely immune to him; he has thirty-seven plants and feelings he finds out about later
• Slow burn built from ER visits and aftercare instructions and a very specific list of questions
• Unplanned pregnancy mid-book; both of them handle it exactly as they handle everything
• Explicit heat — unhurried, thorough, entirely them
• Four brothers with distinct opinions and an aunt in Kyiv who sends jars
• A monstera cutting used as the central metaphor for the entire novel, which sounds unlikely and works completely
• No fade to black. No convenient misunderstandings. No one is naive about what they're walking into.
Brutal Arrangement is Book Three in the Zenko Bratva series. Each book is a standalone romance with a guaranteed HEA. This one ends in Kyiv, with the vinegar question finally answered.
Used availability for Cora J Riley's Brutal Arrangement