He saved her from two men in an alley. She thanked him. He never told her his name.
Elena Vasic has been following a financial trail through Chicago's underworld for six weeks. Someone sent men to frighten her off. Instead, a stranger appeared out of nowhere, dealt with both of them in under ninety seconds, and handed her a card with only a first name on it.
Aleksei.
He's warm. He's present. He listens in a way that makes her feel seen for the first time in years. He asks questions that open things rather than close them. Over three dinners he tells her about punctuation texts from his brother and a restaurant in Vienna and a decision he made at twenty-seven that cost him eleven years.
She doesn't know his last name. He hasn't offered it. She has a rule about charming men, and he is the most charming man she has ever met, and she is breaking her own rule in real time.
He knows exactly who she is. He has known since the night they met. She's the journalist who almost exposed his family. She's following a trail that leads to his door. And he has been the man who stands between his family and every threat that approaches them for fifteen years.
He should tell her. He knows he should tell her. He keeps asking for one more evening before the truth arrives.
She's going to find it anyway. She always does.
The Pakhan's Price is a full-length, standalone dark Bratva romance with an HEA. It contains explicit content, a hero hiding a significant secret, a heroine with her own agenda, slow-burn tension that earns its payoff, and the specific devastation of falling for someone who knew who you were from the start.
Book Two in The Zima Pact series. Each book follows a different Zima brother.
Elena Vasic has been following a financial trail through Chicago's underworld for six weeks. Someone sent men to frighten her off. Instead, a stranger appeared out of nowhere, dealt with both of them in under ninety seconds, and handed her a card with only a first name on it.
Aleksei.
He's warm. He's present. He listens in a way that makes her feel seen for the first time in years. He asks questions that open things rather than close them. Over three dinners he tells her about punctuation texts from his brother and a restaurant in Vienna and a decision he made at twenty-seven that cost him eleven years.
She doesn't know his last name. He hasn't offered it. She has a rule about charming men, and he is the most charming man she has ever met, and she is breaking her own rule in real time.
He knows exactly who she is. He has known since the night they met. She's the journalist who almost exposed his family. She's following a trail that leads to his door. And he has been the man who stands between his family and every threat that approaches them for fifteen years.
He should tell her. He knows he should tell her. He keeps asking for one more evening before the truth arrives.
She's going to find it anyway. She always does.
The Pakhan's Price is a full-length, standalone dark Bratva romance with an HEA. It contains explicit content, a hero hiding a significant secret, a heroine with her own agenda, slow-burn tension that earns its payoff, and the specific devastation of falling for someone who knew who you were from the start.
Book Two in The Zima Pact series. Each book follows a different Zima brother.
Used availability for Cora J Riley's His to Protect