Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
“Any word from my brother yet?” I ask, hoping he doesn’t notice the way my hand trembles when I reach for the wine glass. Before answering my question, he asks one of his own.
“Wine?” I blink at the label, taken aback. Marqués de Villa de Leyva. A nod to my homeland.
“Mmm. Please,” I say. He pours me a generous glass, and I close my eyes and inhale. My father died when I was eighteen. While others drank this exact wine to honor his death, I drank for another reason altogether—in celebration of the end of tyranny. The first layer of it, anyway. “So? Anything?”
“Yes. Javier has a few associates lurking nearby, but none of them have made a move yet.”
I smile at snapping cameras. We hold our wine glasses up next to each other as if they’re kissing and clink the rims. “He will,” I say, smiling at the camera. “Get me the names of who’s here and I can tell you exactly how. We’re not impermeable. He will either think you’ve captured me against my will and our marriage was a power move or that I’ve betrayed him and given myself over to the enemy, plotting an attack against him.” I shrug. “In both cases, he’d be right. Still. We have to be careful.”
He nods but doesn’t otherwise respond as his family enters the large room. I notice Viktor first, because he’s so huge it’s hard to miss him. I wonder idly if he books two plane tickets when he flies. His wife Lydia stands next to him, a full-figured, stunning woman with thick, wavy brown hair, wearing a red dress that shows off every curve and dips dangerously low, all the way to her navel. She catches my eye and blushes, wiggling her fingers at me. I smile and hold my glass to her.
Cheers to the women who married into this family because they had no other choice.
Aleksandr, the tall one with dark black hair, is sitting, talking to his mother, his wife Harper on his other side. I know them mostly from research. Harper was a Bianchi before she married into this family, and I know for a fact she can outshoot every damn person here.
I find all the brothers from the warehouse, but someone’s missing… hmm. Who’s missing? Oh, right, Nikko, the assassin. His wife Vera is often off somewhere doing fieldwork, and even though he was here earlier, he’s likely off on the trip with her.
And Mikhail. Where’s Mikhail? The eldest brother and leader of all, I need to keep my eye on him.
Wait… there he is. Walking in here now.
Others are present—people I don’t know and people who don’t matter for my purposes. Cousins and aunts and uncles, or associates and paid help, smaller, less powerful men from the Romanov Bratva, businessmen and women. Who knows, and who cares?
The one who matters the most is sitting right next to me.
Mikhail nods and gives Lev and me a little, informal bow before he reaches for his wine glass and clears his throat. His wife Aria, with a slim pair of glasses perched on her nose and her wild mane of curly hair momentarily tamed in a bun, eyes me with curiosity.
“Tell me again about Aria,” I whisper to Lev. “I couldn’t find much about her online except that she’s good with computers and married to Mikhail.”
Lev leans in. It feels somehow intimate whispering like this as if we’re friends. Allies. And even though we’re married, we’re neither friends nor allies… yet.
But we could be.
“Aria’s the world’s best hacker,” he says with no hint of exaggeration. He simply states this as fact, which gives veracity to his statement, in my opinion. “There’s no one she can’t find, nothing she can’t do. She sees the world’s most impermeable firewalls and encryption as a personal insult and challenge."
“Oh, wow.” Oooh. Now, that is awesome. The more I think about it, the more it would make sense for me to lean into the Romanov family and all they bring to the table. Here, each one of their skills builds a solidified front, whereas in my family, one only sees another’s strengths as a personal threat to their safety.
World’s best hacker… world’s best hacker. Hmm. I could do something with that.
I take a sip of the wine and look at Mikhail.
“A toast,” he says, clearing his throat as he waits for the ensemble of guests to quiet. “Ever since Lev joined our family, he’s had to make a show of himself. Prove his worth as younger and smaller than the rest.” Mikhail’s lips twitch. “It was nothing we demanded of him but something he did on his own because Lev is fierce and proving himself mattered to him.”
The room quiets down. Viktor looks at Lev with pride, and Aleks sits up straighter in his seat. “And some of us thought we were better by sheer age and brute force until Lev taught us otherwise.”