Page 86 of British Bratva: A Russian Mafia Romance

I didn’t know what I was looking at when he opened the first box. It was full of velvet pouches, lined up in neat rows, filling the inside of the rectangle completely.

Maxim plucked a bag up at random, and spilled out a trickle of diamonds into his palm.

“Oh my God.” My jaw hinged open as I realised that every single bag in the box was likely to be full of the same.

“On the board, please Maxim. No funny business.”

“Come now Yuri, I’m not about to steal from you after all this.”

“Better for all of us you handle them right then.”

Maxim snorted softly, but he strewed the dozen or so diamonds out onto the velvet covered board that Yuri had supplied.

They were a mixture of cuts, all glinting and beautiful, just waiting to be inserted into a ring, and when the light hit them, the rainbow prisms in the sparkle was amazing. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything quite like it.

“You have the gradings for each stone?”

“Of course. They have serial numbers. We can match them to the certificates.”

“Getting them set won’t be a problem?”

Yuri smiled. “My friend, I can send you to the right people, you just let your fiance take a seat and have a look at all the options.”

He pulled out a chair I hadn’t noticed was tucked into the table, and Maxim stood back out of my way. I felt like some kind of princess picking out her jewels, and it was so surreal it almost felt like it was happening to somebody else.

“Are these all yours?” I asked Maxim, looking up at him in awe.

The pair of them smiled at me and Yuri let out a little, muted laugh.

“You probably don’t want to know the full answer to that, Liz. I have a share. That’s all that matters.”

A little prickle went up my spine. I understood exactly what he wasn’t saying. Somehow, in some capacity, Maxim and Yuri had both helped out with the heist that happened here, and now their cut, along with what I assumed was the Bratva’s was stored here, right where it had been stolen from all along.

I weighed the information, and realized I didn’t feel bad. This was thrilling, to be sitting here picking out my engagement ring from a secret stash of jewels lost to the world, because they’d been so cleverly stolen away.

I rolled one of the diamonds over, under my finger, surprised by the sharpness of the cut. The way it flashed in the harsh artificial light was wonderful. Eye catching.

I sat up straighter in the chair and pushed the velvet board away. “I want to see the rest. Show me everything.”

There was a range of jewellery, necklaces and brooches, earrings dripping in diamonds and pearls. And then there were the rings.

Yuri pulled them out on two display boards. “They can all be resized, or reset completely. You have your standard diamond solitaires over here. Princess cut, as large as you like. Safe choice. Double and triple stone rings. These are a favourite, where the two stones twine around each other, or bypass each other. They can have a double snake head worked into the metal. Might not be what you’re after. Pave diamonds. Eternity rings. Then into your sapphires and your rubies. Aquamarines.”

Everything was fussy. The stones stood out too high. Glinted too much. I picked up a slim band with a tiny, flat-set stone and slid it onto my finger. I squinted at it, trying to see whether it fit there.

To me it looked like a child’s ring. Maxim must have agreed. He put his hand on my shoulder, fingers squeezing at the tendons that sloped up towards my neck. “It’s your wedding ring you don’t take off. You’re not going to be boxing in it, luv.”

“I know that,” I murmured, casting him a glare, even though I was privately glad he’d reminded me.

This was for show. It was for everything he meant to me and everything we were going to be together.

I picked out a sapphire and diamond ring where the emerald-cut stone was so deeply blue it was almost black, on each side smaller baguette cut diamonds sloped away from the central stone in a geometric design towards the curve of the band.

“Very nice. Edwardian. Burmese Sapphire. Platinum.”

“Yuri, you missed your calling. You should have been up there selling this stuff.”

His smile glinted. “Before all this, I was. You lot pay better, for much less risk.”

I slipped it onto my finger, drawing in a surprised breath when in slipped perfectly over my knuckle and nestled in at the base of my finger as though it was always meant to go there.

I held my hand out in front of me, and the urge to smile was incredible. “It’s perfect.”

I looked to Max, already knowing it was the one, and he was smiling too.

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