Petra Cole has a system for everything.
The system is twenty years old, precisely maintained, and has survived the foster system, a chemistry degree, and six years of managing thirty-two young humans simultaneously. It covers the school week and the Saturdays and the group chat and the specific challenge of having feelings she prefers to examine from a safe analytical distance.
The system did not cover Dimitri Volkov.
Dimitri is Aleksei Zolotov's head of security — six-four, ice-blue eyes, multiple scars that have made peace with themselves, and an economy of words that means every single one of them lands somewhere. He has been in the area of Petra's school since August. He has been at her table since October. He has been watching her in the way of a man who has decided something and is not going to say it until he's completely certain.
He said something in April.
He said: *The pretext is a pretext.*
What follows is not simple and was not planned and cannot be managed, no matter how good the system is. Dimitri is the variable Petra failed to account for. He knows it. She knows it. The notebook she's been keeping since she was eight years old now has a page that says *The variables you fail to account for are always the ones that matter,* and his name underneath it.
Then June arrives.
And the variable becomes a fact.
RUINED is a full-length dark Bratva romance set in Chicago — controlled, precise, emotionally devastating, and built on the combustion of a meticulous woman and a silent man who notices everything she thinks she's hiding. With a crisis that changes the geometry, a pregnancy that neither of them planned for, and eleven things delivered one at a time in the specific economy of a man who never wastes a word, this is a story about the plan that finally couldn't be made in advance.
Content Warning: Dark romance. Explicit sexual content. Accidental pregnancy. Graphic violence. Power imbalance. Strong language. HEA.
The Broken Saints Series — Book Three. Can be read as a standalone. Series reading order recommended.
The system is twenty years old, precisely maintained, and has survived the foster system, a chemistry degree, and six years of managing thirty-two young humans simultaneously. It covers the school week and the Saturdays and the group chat and the specific challenge of having feelings she prefers to examine from a safe analytical distance.
The system did not cover Dimitri Volkov.
Dimitri is Aleksei Zolotov's head of security — six-four, ice-blue eyes, multiple scars that have made peace with themselves, and an economy of words that means every single one of them lands somewhere. He has been in the area of Petra's school since August. He has been at her table since October. He has been watching her in the way of a man who has decided something and is not going to say it until he's completely certain.
He said something in April.
He said: *The pretext is a pretext.*
What follows is not simple and was not planned and cannot be managed, no matter how good the system is. Dimitri is the variable Petra failed to account for. He knows it. She knows it. The notebook she's been keeping since she was eight years old now has a page that says *The variables you fail to account for are always the ones that matter,* and his name underneath it.
Then June arrives.
And the variable becomes a fact.
RUINED is a full-length dark Bratva romance set in Chicago — controlled, precise, emotionally devastating, and built on the combustion of a meticulous woman and a silent man who notices everything she thinks she's hiding. With a crisis that changes the geometry, a pregnancy that neither of them planned for, and eleven things delivered one at a time in the specific economy of a man who never wastes a word, this is a story about the plan that finally couldn't be made in advance.
Content Warning: Dark romance. Explicit sexual content. Accidental pregnancy. Graphic violence. Power imbalance. Strong language. HEA.
The Broken Saints Series — Book Three. Can be read as a standalone. Series reading order recommended.
Used availability for Cora J Riley's Ruined