Page 150 of Immaculate Deception (Romanoff Bratva)

When they do adjust, however, I see… a storeroom.

It’s filled with guns, weapons, and ammunition. Boxes labelled with chemistry-looking symbols that I suspect are drug-related are littered across high metal shelves and opened safety deposit boxes bursting with bundles of cash sit on a table in the center.

Money.

Drugs.

Weapons.

The trappings of a mafia don, all spread out and glistening under the lights.

“Gennady has been conducting normal business with our loyal clients while I’ve been gone,” he explains. “Once we knew the safehouse was, in face, safe, he started storing everything here to keep it away from Zotov and the Albanians. This is what a few weeks of work looks like for me.”

I turn around and face him. “And?”

“And,” he says, gesturing to the room, “this is my life. Drugs and money and guns. Crime and danger. I know you think you know what my life looks like. But I want you to see it for yourself.”

He’s trying to warn me.

Trying to scare me away.

After everything we’ve been through together, he thinks this room could send me running into the night, terrified. It’s sweet how innocent he thinks I am.

But I’m not innocent. Not anymore. Maybe not ever.

“Dima, the first night we met, you pulled a gun on me.”

He clenches his jaw. “I remember.”

“You know something? I dreamed about you every night after that. The whole time I was pregnant, I dreamed. I dreamed about you before I knew who you were. Then I dreamed about you after I knew who you were. I dreamed about you when I was locked in that sick bastard’s mansion, thinking I’d never see you again.”

My lower lip starts to tremble. “I’ve been through so much in the last few months, Dima. All I want is a tiny slice of normal to call my own. All I want is a happy ending. I just want to get my son back and go somewhere quiet. And I want you to come with us. Please,” I say, my voice cracking with hope and desperation. “Please.”

Dima looks down at me. His eyes are burning like coals. Hot. Dark. Impossible to read.

Is he caving? Is he willing to throw his whole legacy aside to be with me?

I want that so bad. But I just don’t know.

“Please,” I say again in the tiniest voice imaginable.

Instead of answering, he kisses me.

That’s the only thing that’s ever truly made sense from the start. Nothing else has—not the guns or the betrayals or the endless running and fear.

But Dima’s kiss?

That’s always been perfect. That’s always been exactly what it’s supposed to be.

He tastes like mint. When he picks me up and sets me on the table in the center of the room, I mold my body to his like that’s how we were always supposed to be. Pressed together, connected, one.

He moves his hands down my waist and hips with a kind of reverence I’ve never experienced before.

This man may be dangerous, but underneath it all, he’s passionate and caring. He’s loyal and fierce.

And he’s sexy as hell.

I lift my hips, and Dima slips his sweatpants off of my hips. He didn’t have any panties for me to borrow, so I’m bare underneath them. Dima growls as he cups my center, feeling my wetness.

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