Sasha Rybakova owns a tattoo parlor on Salem Street in Boston's North End and has been keeping boundaries with men since she was nineteen. She is six months pregnant with her first child, fourteen months married to the loud one — Lev Aleksandrovich Vasiliev, the third son of the Russian Bratva, the brother who grins, the brother who has, in nine months on her parlor's leather couch, courted her by sitting still.
Six weeks before her wedding-anniversary, the father she has not seen in eleven years writes her a letter. The letter says he has changed. The letter says he is sorry. The letter says he wants to walk her down the aisle.
The letter is not an apology.
The letter is a setup.
Lev knows it before Sasha tells him. He knows because he is the brother of the family's work — the one who, in two years, has been doing the small specific quiet things in Brighton on Tuesday afternoons that the Vasiliev family does not talk about. The grin is the misdirection. The cover is the work.
Sasha has been keeping a letter in her bottom drawer.
Lev has been keeping a notebook in his.
On a Wednesday evening in late May, in the kitchen of their loft, they open both drawers.
HIS SAVAGE MERCY is Book Three of The Vasiliev Reign — a darker, sharper, hotter chapter in the series. A tattoo-parlor heroine who refuses to flinch. A husband who tells her everything. A wedding-anniversary that becomes a re-doing. A daughter born screaming. A father-in-law who finally, at sixty-eight, says the family's name out loud at the dining-room-table.
The savage half is the work.
The mercy half is the room.
The room is theirs.
Standalone HEA within the series. No cliffhanger. No on-page violence to the heroine.
Six weeks before her wedding-anniversary, the father she has not seen in eleven years writes her a letter. The letter says he has changed. The letter says he is sorry. The letter says he wants to walk her down the aisle.
The letter is not an apology.
The letter is a setup.
Lev knows it before Sasha tells him. He knows because he is the brother of the family's work — the one who, in two years, has been doing the small specific quiet things in Brighton on Tuesday afternoons that the Vasiliev family does not talk about. The grin is the misdirection. The cover is the work.
Sasha has been keeping a letter in her bottom drawer.
Lev has been keeping a notebook in his.
On a Wednesday evening in late May, in the kitchen of their loft, they open both drawers.
HIS SAVAGE MERCY is Book Three of The Vasiliev Reign — a darker, sharper, hotter chapter in the series. A tattoo-parlor heroine who refuses to flinch. A husband who tells her everything. A wedding-anniversary that becomes a re-doing. A daughter born screaming. A father-in-law who finally, at sixty-eight, says the family's name out loud at the dining-room-table.
The savage half is the work.
The mercy half is the room.
The room is theirs.
Standalone HEA within the series. No cliffhanger. No on-page violence to the heroine.
Used availability for Cora J Riley's His Savage Mercy