He’d been in love with me for two years.
I am Mila Galina Petrov. Half-Russian witch of the South End. Bartender at Coven. Twenty-seven years old. Best friend of Saoirse Volkonsky, ex-Kavanagh, the new wife of the Pakhan of the Volkonsky bratva.
He is Yegor Andreyevich Sokolov. Russian-born, raised in a kitchen outside Petersburg, second of the Pakhan, the only man in the city of Boston who has, in two years of looking at me three hundred and eleven times across the bar of Coven, never, in two years, in any room, in any way, said a word to me he did not, on the small evidence of careful Russian-edged calculation, mean.
On the night of Saoirse’s wedding, in the alley behind Coven, in a sleet that was technically supposed to be rain, he kissed me.
He took me home.
In the morning, in his own kitchen, in his own t-shirt, with the mug of coffee in my hand at twenty to ten, I told him the night before was not, in any honest sense, anything.
He let me tell the lie.
He brought four different women into my bar over the next four months. Tall blondes. Brunettes. Architects. A small braid called Elena.
I went on one date with a thirty-year-old Irish IT guy from a different bar two blocks west, in a black dress my best friend had picked out for me from the small back of my own wardrobe, and I cried in the bathroom at quarter past nine.
When I came out, his car was at the kerb.
He had not, in any of the four months, been in the Back Bay.
—
A second-chance Bratva romance. Pining enforcer. Sassy half-Russian witch heroine. Front-garden wedding with lilac. HEA with twins on the way. The Volkonsky Four #2. Standalone with HEA. 18+
I am Mila Galina Petrov. Half-Russian witch of the South End. Bartender at Coven. Twenty-seven years old. Best friend of Saoirse Volkonsky, ex-Kavanagh, the new wife of the Pakhan of the Volkonsky bratva.
He is Yegor Andreyevich Sokolov. Russian-born, raised in a kitchen outside Petersburg, second of the Pakhan, the only man in the city of Boston who has, in two years of looking at me three hundred and eleven times across the bar of Coven, never, in two years, in any room, in any way, said a word to me he did not, on the small evidence of careful Russian-edged calculation, mean.
On the night of Saoirse’s wedding, in the alley behind Coven, in a sleet that was technically supposed to be rain, he kissed me.
He took me home.
In the morning, in his own kitchen, in his own t-shirt, with the mug of coffee in my hand at twenty to ten, I told him the night before was not, in any honest sense, anything.
He let me tell the lie.
He brought four different women into my bar over the next four months. Tall blondes. Brunettes. Architects. A small braid called Elena.
I went on one date with a thirty-year-old Irish IT guy from a different bar two blocks west, in a black dress my best friend had picked out for me from the small back of my own wardrobe, and I cried in the bathroom at quarter past nine.
When I came out, his car was at the kerb.
He had not, in any of the four months, been in the Back Bay.
—
A second-chance Bratva romance. Pining enforcer. Sassy half-Russian witch heroine. Front-garden wedding with lilac. HEA with twins on the way. The Volkonsky Four #2. Standalone with HEA. 18+
Used availability for Cora J Riley's Filthy Lies