Page 9 of Dark Promise

Nadia laughs. “Maybe, but he’sgorgeous. From what I saw of him at your engagement party, I’m guessing he probably fucks like a stallion.”

I stare at her open-mouthed.

I refuse to say that I agree with her. He is gorgeous and his body is mouth-wateringly perfect and I’d be lying if I said I’d never imagined him in all sorts of positions doing all sorts of things. To me.

Dark things.

The kind of dark things I’ve only shared with my therapist.

But it doesn’t matter. That version of Nikolai-the-Stallion will remain locked away in with the rest of my forbidden fantasies, since there’s no way, ever, that they’ll become a reality.

Absolutely never.

3

Nikolai

Las Vegas,Nevada

The first timeI tried to kill my father, I was eleven years old. I went for him in a flurry of fists and feet and teeth, tears of grief and rage and hate stinging my eyes. He backhanded me, sending me sprawling to the floor, blood filling my mouth. Then he strode from the room without a backward glance, leaving me to clean up the corpse lying in a puddle of blood.

I thought he had done his worst to me that day. I was wrong. The worst was yet to come.

I quickly learned not to let myself care about anything or anyone.

And that was working out for me, until it wasn’t.

Until Sabina Russo got engaged, and a roar of possessive rage started burning in my gut.

When the former heads of our two families—my uncle Vlasta and Leo’s father Salvatore—had been alive, there had been an understanding, a truce that divided Las Vegas cleanly, keeping bloodshed at bay.

But now both men are dead, and the truce is ashes. My father made sure of that when he hired a hitman to kill Salvatore Russo. The fallout was as inevitable as it was catastrophic. The Russos know who gave the order. And now the city is on the brink of war.

My father thrives on chaos, on power plays and bloodied battlefields. But I see the costs. I see how it weakens us. Because that is what my uncle Vlasta taught me to see. My father is going to tear down everything my uncle spent decades building, and his father decades before that. I can’t let that happen.

I am going to take my father down. But I’m not foolish enough to make my move without a careful plan. Without allies.

Approaching Leo about Sabina was part of that plan. An offer of alliance wrapped up in a proposal. A strategic plan.

One he turned down.

But that was before Halloween. Before I stopped seeing her as a pawn and started seeing her as a goddess wrapped in gold, a woman who understands masks and deception as only someone born into our world can.

She is fire and steel. She is a queen who deserves more than the sniveling boy she is engaged to. She pulls me in like no one else ever has.

In our handful of exchanges since my denied request, I’ve told Leo none of this. At least, not yet.

I haven’t told him that the thought of her in any union that doesn’t include me elicits a dangerous cocktail of possessive rage.

I haven’t told him that I fucking jack off to the memory of her in my arms, the taste of her lips, the sexy little sounds she made, to the memory of a single kiss. To the images I conjure of pinning her beneath me, fucking her until she screams.

Yeah…definitelydidn’t tell him that.

I hadn’t pushed the matter after Leo’s refusal. Not then.

There’s still time. She hasn’t even set a wedding date yet.

Now, I stride past the guards at the front doors, down the corridor, and past a second set of guards into my father’s vast office on the top floor of a high-rise in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip. The floor-to-ceiling windows offer a panoramic view of the brightly lit city and the nightly show of the Bellagio Fountains. Positioned to enjoy the view is a massive black-lacquer desk, sleek and polished, with intricate gold inlays. Behind the desk is a custom-made black leather chair, hand-stitched and accented with dark wood. And in the chair sits my father, Mikhail, his deep-set eyes fixed on me.

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