Page 2 of Nurse for the Russian Mafia

Then he’s gone, through the door, and I wonder if I imagined the whole thing.

Anyway, it would never work. He’s my dad’s best friend. I’d just be asking for trouble.

Chapter Two

Alexander

The medical staff does a good job of stitching up my bullet wound, the wound I didn’t tell Samantha about.

Only the men lower down on the food chain complain about things like that. I’ve lived my whole life working my way up with blood and grit, my fists and my determination, and wits. I now stand at the top of a giant empire and if there’s one thing a boss never does, it’s complain.

I sit up in bed, ignoring the chords of pain thrumming loudly through my body. They work through me like attacking knives, but I don’t let them cut me too deeply. I know that the nurses and the doctor will tell me to stay here, to rest up. But they don’t understand my life. If I stay here longer than a couple of hours, the lesser men, the pathetic hyenas that always snap at the heels of the alpha, will come sniffing around.

If they think I’m going to wait here for a cold hunk of lead to be fired into my skull, they’re dead wrong.

I ignore the beep-beep-beep of the machines and stand up, my muscles tensing and twitching, every vein in my body pressing tautly against my skin like veins of mineral through hard rock. I’ve lived through worse than this. I’m not worried about the pain.

I make my way to the staff changing room, walking briskly. I can barely feel the tugging of the bullet wound. It’s a small thing…

Compared to her.

Samantha.

Seeing her again after these two years I’ve been away on business, it was like coming home after a Viking raid to find that the withdrawn girl with the flowers in her hair has blossomed into a magnificent rose.

She was always a dorky little thing, scurrying underfoot while her father and I talked. We’re old friends, and I’d always just considered her my friend’s daughter.

Nothing else.

But now.

She has become the woman that fills me with a fierce urge to do right by her. I want to find every man who’s ever tried to claim her and line them up, one by one, and beat them all into submission until they recognize who she belongs to.

No, fuck that. I’ll take them all at the same time.

Anything for Samantha, with her curling oak-colored hair, with her wide hips, perfect for bearing children … and just as perfect for sinking my hands into. I hate skinny girls with nothing to hold onto, girls who are afraid to eat, who weaken themselves and abuse their bodies with neglect. Her thighs linger in my mind, the way the nurse’s scrubs clung onto them, just begging me to peel them away and reveal her plus-size perfection beneath. I want to nibble her thigh, to feel my teeth sink in, to listen to her sigh of pleasure.

I wouldn’t change a thing about her.

I reach the staff changing room and walk to the nearest locker. I grab the padlock, a chunky thing, an object that weak men use to make themselves believe they are safe, and I crush it in my vice like grip. I feel the metal contort and the mechanism groan. It snaps away. I toss it to the floor and I’m glad to find men’s clothes inside.

I button up the black shirt as far as it’ll go, but it’s too damn small. Why are modern men so puny and thin, like girls? The pants just about fit me. My body tries to escape the confines of the fabric as I leave, and my wound pulses, but I ignore it all.

All that matters is her.

I have spent years using my finely-tuned intelligence to climb my way up the ladder of power. I’ve bested men who thought they were better than me and, as a result, women throw themselves at me with no regard for their self-respect. In clubs, women just fall to their knees like they worship me. It’s disgusting.

I prefer a woman like Samantha.

No, not a woman like her. I need Samantha, just her, forever. Nobody else will suffice as my queen, as the woman who will stand on my arm and watch over my kingdom with me.

I push out of the hospital, sucking in the cool night air. I fill my lungs and walk down the street. My senses are alert to any minor change in my surroundings. Like a jaguar stalking through its habitat, I am impossible to sneak up on.

I have laid claim to Virgil’s daughter, even if she doesn’t know it yet.

Samantha is mine.

I knew it the moment I stumbled, bleeding, into the hospital waiting room. That moment when she screamed, I almost thought she was like other women, scared, skittish. But then she snapped into action and I saw just what a capable mother she would make. I imagined her corralling a dozen children, utterly in control.

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