She was the leverage. Then she became the problem.
Alexei Koval doesn't make emotional decisions. At thirty-five, he runs the most disciplined criminal organisation in Moscow with the same precision he applies to everything — and when Viktor Danilov steals forty-two million dollars and vanishes to southern Europe, Alexei applies that precision to the obvious solution.
Take what Viktor loves most. Wait for him to come back.
Mara Danilov is a surgical resident who has spent three years building a life that has nothing to do with her father's criminal connections. She is careful, precise, and deeply inconvenienced by being taken from a hospital car park at four in the morning by the Pakhan of the Koval Bratva.
She asks for a lawyer. He gives her a room. She asks to leave. He gives her a library.
Alexei tells himself the leverage arrangement is temporary. It will last until Viktor returns. It will be managed, controlled, exactly as planned. He is not prepared for the specific quality of a woman who reads his dead brother's military history atlas like it matters, who argues with footnotes, who makes the counterclockwise stirring mistake look like a position.
He is not prepared for the moment he stops seeing leverage and starts seeing her.
Mara tells herself she is gathering information, surviving a difficult situation, maintaining professional composure under unprecedented circumstances. She is not prepared for a man who sends her specific things — not generic comfort, but the exactly-right things — who remembers what she says at eleven at night and produces it three weeks later in exactly the right context.
She is not prepared for the moment she stops waiting to leave and starts wondering what staying would mean.
The war with the Volkov faction is escalating. Viktor is somewhere in Europe. The compound has an atlas with margin notes in three handwritings. The coffee is always on the desk at eight-thirty.
And the thing between them, which started as leverage and has become something that doesn't have a clean operational category, is the most dangerous thing either of them has ever held.
Bratva's Captive is a dark Bratva romance featuring a captive setup, forced proximity, slow-burn tension, and explicit heat. HFN ending with series arc continuation. Content warning: violence, organised crime, captivity, explicit sexual content. Intended for readers 18+.
Tropes: captive/keeper, forced proximity, he fell first, slow burn, grumpy hero/capable heroine, dark romance. No cheating. HEA. Explicit 18+.
Alexei Koval doesn't make emotional decisions. At thirty-five, he runs the most disciplined criminal organisation in Moscow with the same precision he applies to everything — and when Viktor Danilov steals forty-two million dollars and vanishes to southern Europe, Alexei applies that precision to the obvious solution.
Take what Viktor loves most. Wait for him to come back.
Mara Danilov is a surgical resident who has spent three years building a life that has nothing to do with her father's criminal connections. She is careful, precise, and deeply inconvenienced by being taken from a hospital car park at four in the morning by the Pakhan of the Koval Bratva.
She asks for a lawyer. He gives her a room. She asks to leave. He gives her a library.
Alexei tells himself the leverage arrangement is temporary. It will last until Viktor returns. It will be managed, controlled, exactly as planned. He is not prepared for the specific quality of a woman who reads his dead brother's military history atlas like it matters, who argues with footnotes, who makes the counterclockwise stirring mistake look like a position.
He is not prepared for the moment he stops seeing leverage and starts seeing her.
Mara tells herself she is gathering information, surviving a difficult situation, maintaining professional composure under unprecedented circumstances. She is not prepared for a man who sends her specific things — not generic comfort, but the exactly-right things — who remembers what she says at eleven at night and produces it three weeks later in exactly the right context.
She is not prepared for the moment she stops waiting to leave and starts wondering what staying would mean.
The war with the Volkov faction is escalating. Viktor is somewhere in Europe. The compound has an atlas with margin notes in three handwritings. The coffee is always on the desk at eight-thirty.
And the thing between them, which started as leverage and has become something that doesn't have a clean operational category, is the most dangerous thing either of them has ever held.
Bratva's Captive is a dark Bratva romance featuring a captive setup, forced proximity, slow-burn tension, and explicit heat. HFN ending with series arc continuation. Content warning: violence, organised crime, captivity, explicit sexual content. Intended for readers 18+.
Tropes: captive/keeper, forced proximity, he fell first, slow burn, grumpy hero/capable heroine, dark romance. No cheating. HEA. Explicit 18+.
Used availability for Cora J Riley's The Devil's Captive