He walked into my new bakery at half past eight on a Tuesday morning in June.
I am Francesca Castellano. Twenty-two years old. Baker. The baby of every group I have ever been in.
He is Roman Antonov. Consigliere of the Pakhan of the Volkonsky bratva. Thirty-eight. A widower for fourteen months. The kind of man who has, in fourteen months of mourning, not, in any honest sense, smiled at any human being in any room in the United States of America.
Galina sent him.
He sat at the small table by the window. He ate the small biscuit. He wrote a sentence on the paper napkin: I will, on a Tuesday morning at half past eight, in June, in July, and in August, be back.
He came back.
He came back for seventeen Tuesdays.
On the first Tuesday in October at twenty to nine, in the front of the new bakery at the front of Coven, in a small new green dress my mother in Quincy had sent me in the small post, with the small handwritten sign in the window that said Closed for breakfast, he kissed me.
He took me to the flat on Beacon Street.
He took me to meet an eight-year-old in Brookline called Lyuba, his late wife’s daughter from a previous marriage, who had not, in fourteen months in the small specific house of the cousin from Brookline, in any honest sense, smiled.
She said, in Russian, very simply: yes papa.
So did I.
—
A Bratva widower romance. Age gap (22/38). Instant family. Russian consigliere. Twenty-two-year-old baker heroine with three older sisters and a mother in Quincy. Galina the matchmaker housekeeper. Front-of-the-bakery wedding. HEA. The Volkonsky Four #3. Standalone with HEA. 18+.
Genre: Romance
I am Francesca Castellano. Twenty-two years old. Baker. The baby of every group I have ever been in.
He is Roman Antonov. Consigliere of the Pakhan of the Volkonsky bratva. Thirty-eight. A widower for fourteen months. The kind of man who has, in fourteen months of mourning, not, in any honest sense, smiled at any human being in any room in the United States of America.
Galina sent him.
He sat at the small table by the window. He ate the small biscuit. He wrote a sentence on the paper napkin: I will, on a Tuesday morning at half past eight, in June, in July, and in August, be back.
He came back.
He came back for seventeen Tuesdays.
On the first Tuesday in October at twenty to nine, in the front of the new bakery at the front of Coven, in a small new green dress my mother in Quincy had sent me in the small post, with the small handwritten sign in the window that said Closed for breakfast, he kissed me.
He took me to the flat on Beacon Street.
He took me to meet an eight-year-old in Brookline called Lyuba, his late wife’s daughter from a previous marriage, who had not, in fourteen months in the small specific house of the cousin from Brookline, in any honest sense, smiled.
She said, in Russian, very simply: yes papa.
So did I.
—
A Bratva widower romance. Age gap (22/38). Instant family. Russian consigliere. Twenty-two-year-old baker heroine with three older sisters and a mother in Quincy. Galina the matchmaker housekeeper. Front-of-the-bakery wedding. HEA. The Volkonsky Four #3. Standalone with HEA. 18+.
Genre: Romance
Used availability for Cora J Riley's Filthy Truths