Two years ago, Lena Marsh did something she doesn't talk about.
She doesn't talk about it with Mara, who would be wise about it. She doesn't talk about it with Dasha, who would be loud about it. She doesn't talk about it with Petra, who would make a plan about it. She doesn't talk about it with Nikolai Arkov, who was there.
She doesn't talk about it because the morning after, he said: *This doesn't need to be anything.*
And she said: *I know.*
And they'd both meant it.
For two years and three months, Lena Marsh has been extremely fine about it. She's a bartender who works nights, an aspiring food journalist with a column that's actually about people, and a woman who has been watching everything and writing it down since she was seven years old. She's very good at watching. She's very good at not saying what she sees.
Nikolai Arkov is Aleksei Zolotov's head of intelligence — Ukrainian, not Russian, which matters to him; quiet in the specific way of someone whose job depends on it; and the man who has been reading her column from the month after the party and who drove past Ruthie's on a Saturday two years ago because he wanted to know where she went.
He tried to stay away. That was the enemies phase. The enemies phase was him managing his feelings.
It lasted two years and three months.
Then he sat down across the Tuesday dinner table and said: *I was wrong.*
Lena Marsh looked at him. She picked up her pen. She said: *Start from the beginning. And I'll write it down.*
RELENTLESS is a full-length dark Bratva romance set in Chicago — quiet, observational, and built on the slow unravelling of two people who watch everything and spent two years watching anything but each other. With a food columnist who writes between the sentences and an intelligence man who has been reading between them for two years, a notebook that holds everything, and one corner booth in a South Side diner that holds the whole of it, this is the final book in The Broken Saints Series.
The series is complete. The booth is still full.
Content Warning: Dark romance. Explicit sexual content. Graphic violence. Two-year enemies/slow-burn phase. Intelligence work with moral weight. Strong language. HEA.
The Broken Saints Series — Book Four and conclusion. Can be read as a standalone. Full series reading order strongly recommended.
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She doesn't talk about it with Mara, who would be wise about it. She doesn't talk about it with Dasha, who would be loud about it. She doesn't talk about it with Petra, who would make a plan about it. She doesn't talk about it with Nikolai Arkov, who was there.
She doesn't talk about it because the morning after, he said: *This doesn't need to be anything.*
And she said: *I know.*
And they'd both meant it.
For two years and three months, Lena Marsh has been extremely fine about it. She's a bartender who works nights, an aspiring food journalist with a column that's actually about people, and a woman who has been watching everything and writing it down since she was seven years old. She's very good at watching. She's very good at not saying what she sees.
Nikolai Arkov is Aleksei Zolotov's head of intelligence — Ukrainian, not Russian, which matters to him; quiet in the specific way of someone whose job depends on it; and the man who has been reading her column from the month after the party and who drove past Ruthie's on a Saturday two years ago because he wanted to know where she went.
He tried to stay away. That was the enemies phase. The enemies phase was him managing his feelings.
It lasted two years and three months.
Then he sat down across the Tuesday dinner table and said: *I was wrong.*
Lena Marsh looked at him. She picked up her pen. She said: *Start from the beginning. And I'll write it down.*
RELENTLESS is a full-length dark Bratva romance set in Chicago — quiet, observational, and built on the slow unravelling of two people who watch everything and spent two years watching anything but each other. With a food columnist who writes between the sentences and an intelligence man who has been reading between them for two years, a notebook that holds everything, and one corner booth in a South Side diner that holds the whole of it, this is the final book in The Broken Saints Series.
The series is complete. The booth is still full.
Content Warning: Dark romance. Explicit sexual content. Graphic violence. Two-year enemies/slow-burn phase. Intelligence work with moral weight. Strong language. HEA.
The Broken Saints Series — Book Four and conclusion. Can be read as a standalone. Full series reading order strongly recommended.
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Used availability for Cora J Riley's Relentless