Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 103852 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103852 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
People think whoever has the largest and better equipped battalion wins. What they fail to understand is that if a battalion doesn’t gather enough information about the enemy, they will never get far. They might win a battle or two. They might kill a thousand or a few, but the one with more intel is the winner of the war.
Being raised to never accept any losses has turned me into a master of acquiring information. I’m even better than both my monster parents combined.
I internally scoff at that. Why would I call them monsters when I’ve become worse than them?
But then again, monsters might recognize each other, but they don’t necessarily like one another.
They’re more interested in digging each other’s graves.
In winning.
That’s what I should be focused on—winning. My main mission with Lia Morelli is to acquire information. But the lines blurred somewhere between her erotic moans and the way she looked at me while she came apart around my fingers, and then once again when she licked them as if she’s been doing it for eternity.
I’ve never been as hard as I was in that moment. I’ve lost sight of my mission, like I did when she parted her lips and completely let go.
That’s why I left. I need to play my cards right and that won’t happen as long as I’m in her vicinity.
“Did you find out anything?” Yan asks. He always has a terrible way of broaching subjects.
Kolya shakes his head at him.
“What? That’s what you wanted to ask, too.”
“Shut it, Yan,” my senior guard scolds.
“I don’t see why I should.”
“Yan…” I release a long sigh. “I told you to read the atmosphere before asking. Have you ever learned anything from me and Kolya?”
“I learned that you’re too silent. If I don’t talk, no one will.”
Kolya glares at him.
“What?” Yan retrieves a cigarette and lights it. “You’ve been boring me since birth.”
Usually, I’d tell him to put the cigarette out, but I couldn’t give a fuck right now.
“Then why are you still here?” Kolya asks.
Yan taps a fist to his chest. “I was personally handpicked to guard Boss. That honor doesn’t come easily.”
“Obviously an error on the part of whoever picked you,” Kolya mutters under his breath.
Yan gets worked up and starts enumerating ‘all the shit’ he recently went through in the Spetsnaz Special Forces so that he could come back to serve me. Kolya meets that with cold indifference because Yan only spent two years there, which is nothing compared to the time my second-in-command served.
I let their back-and-forth go in one ear and out the other. I try to use that time to implement my next plan, but all I keep thinking about are plump lips, perky tits, and a soft, pink cunt.
But that’s not all. It’s the way she moaned. The way she stared, dazed after she orgasmed. I want that sight in my brain, not as a spur-of-the-moment thing, but as a constant that I can revisit again and again until she’s completely out of my system.
Kolya and Yan grow silent when we arrive at Sergei’s mansion. I step out, doing the first button of my shirt. Since I spent last night watching and exploring Lia’s apartment, I didn’t get any sleep.
That’s not a first.
I’ve spent all-nighters watching my screens and emailing my hackers, back and forth until I got the information I needed.
My abnormal sleeping schedules started after that day—the day my own mother broke my arm because it would help her get my father to her side. I didn’t trust that she wouldn’t do it again, that to become Georgy Volkov’s wife, she wouldn’t use me, over and over, to get in his favor.
She did succeed and became the lady of the house, even when most of my father’s guards loathed her.
Since that night, though, I’ve always slept with one eye open in case she shows up at my door and takes the life she gave as she promised.
Yan stays by the entrance with several other high-ranked guards of the other brigade leaders. He’s offering Mikhail’s soldier a smoke and teasing Kirill’s, asking how that female-looking guard—Aleksander—got to be Kirill’s second-in-command and not him. Yan sometimes acts like a clown, jabbing and teasing, but his sole purpose is to get deets from them.
He might be reckless, but he understands my philosophy well and plots accordingly. It’s one of the few reasons I keep him close.
Kolya follows me inside the Pakhan’s dining room and it’s clear that we’re the last to arrive.
Sergei sits at the head of the table, Vladimir on his left, while my chair on his right is empty. Mikhail, Igor, Kirill, and Damien occupy the rest of the seats. Their senior guards stand behind them like sturdy walls, all scowling, sometimes at nothing, other times at each other, depending on whether their bosses are making a fuss.