Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
What the hell is going on?
Lev raises an arm, and it’s then I notice the gun in his hand.
A gun he has aimed right at Wilson.
Wilson throws up his hands. “It was a misunderstanding, I swear.”
“That’s the lie they all say,” Lev says, walking right up to him and pressing his gun to his forehead. “Right before I put a bullet between their eyes.”
I gasp. “Stop.”
All the air seems to disappear from the room, and the tension feels like it’s about to pop.
“What’s going on?” I beg Lev. “Please tell me.”
“Your fiancé tried to blackmail me. Found some interesting footage on the CCTV feed at his club and thought he’d use it to make some money.”
Wilson is blackmailing Lev?
My head is still cloudy from lack of oxygen, but I’m sure I didn’t mishear what he said.
“It wasn’t like that,” Wilson cries. “I was doing the bratva a favor.”
“You emailed me the footage anonymously and told me if I paid you, then the police wouldn’t get their hands on it. That’s not a favor, mudak. That’s blackmail. Now, I want every copy of that CCTV footage, and I want them now.”
“There is only one copy and it’s on a flash drive. I don’t have it, but I can get it to you, I swear,” Wilson says.
“Where is it?”
“A safety deposit box in Oregon. Then I mailed the key to my grandma in Houston. It was insurance. If anything happened to me, I told her to take the key and open the box, then send whatever she found to the police.”
I can’t believe what I am hearing. CCTV footage. A mysterious flash drive. A safety deposit box. The police. How did I not know he was involved in this stuff? Although, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I didn’t know about his affair either.
“What is on the flash drive?” I ask.
“None of your goddamn business,” Wilson snaps.
“No, go ahead and tell her. Let her know who she was about to marry.” Lev’s eyes settle on mine. “What kind of bullet she dodged.”
Sounds like you dodged a bullet. I remember him saying that to me on the plane the day I met him. And somehow, him bringing it up now twists a knife in. Because clearly he knew exactly who I was and what had happened to me when we met, yet he let me go on about it on the plane.
How could I be so foolish?
“Keep her out of it,” Wilson says.
Lev smirks darkly. “Don’t you want her to know how your cameras in the club caught the murder of The Chicago Sea Angel, yet instead of sending it to the police, you contacted the bratva whose vor was on that same footage and decided to blackmail the pakhan?”
I gasp. The Chicago Sea Angel was a girl who was pulled from the harbor. She was beaten pretty badly before she was murdered and dumped in the water. Turned out she was a student at Chicago U who was paying her way through college by doing some escort work. Her face was splashed all over the media. They had no idea who murdered her. There were no leads.
I look at Wilson. “You knew who killed her, and you didn’t tell the police?”
Wilson is quiet while he looks for his next lie.
“Who are you?” I snap, realizing I never really knew him at all.
Lev drags his gaze back to me.
“Dodge meet bullet,” he says.
I glare at him and he smirks, then offers me his hand.
“And who the hell are you?” I ask him.
“He’s bratva, Brooke,” Wilson says.
“Bratva?”
“Russian mafia.”
Slowly, the pieces come together.
This is the man who Wilson said would gut us and chop off body parts? I struggle to swallow. This man—the one who spent the night making me come on his cock until I was a boneless mess and couldn’t walk for days afterward without feeling him there?
My body flushes with a combination of lust from the memory and fear from the man standing in front of me with a gun.
When I don’t take Lev’s hand, he wraps his strong fingers around my wrist and guides me to my feet with little effort.
Once I’m standing, I glare at him and yank my wrist free from his grip when the realization hits me. All this time, he knew who I was. Which means he orchestrated our encounter on the plane to see if I knew the whereabouts of my loser ex-fiancé. He didn’t strike up a conversation because he was attracted to me. He was trying to find out where Wilson was.
Images of that night fly at me with startling clarity.
Him bending me over the outdoor table and plunging his cock so deep into me I saw stars.
The way his fingers dug into my hips as he dragged my pussy back and forth over his cock.