Russian Mobster's Pregnant Mistress (13 page)

ANOTHER STORY YOU MAY ENJOY

Russian Mobster’s Arranged Love

By: Bella Rose

Free preview below!

Russian Mobster's Arranged Love

By: Bella Rose

All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2016 Bella Rose

Click here

to subscribe to my newsletter for a chance to win free books!

Chapter One

The bell on the front door of the flower shop jingled a merry little tone that filled Katrina Sokolov with a sense of nostalgia. She had been away from her father’s shop for nearly a decade. Katrina loved school, but it was also good to be back home with her father and sister.

“Can I help you, Maksim?” her father asked.

Katrina glanced up from her place at the tiny desk in the back of the store. She had been researching the online courses she needed to take in order to finish her foreign policy degree. Now her attention was focused on her father. She had never heard him sound this way with a customer.

“Good morning, Denis.” The man called Maksim sauntered further into the store.

Katrina looked him over in fascination. She was an academic in every sense of the word. It was simply how she looked at things. Her brain analyzed and collected data, and she never made a judgment without first having all the facts.

She was about to make an exception for this man called Maksim. The only word that popped into her head when she saw him was
scary
. He had a brawny six-foot tall body and hands that looked like they could crush skulls. His hair was dark and shorn close to his scalp. He looked like a thug, and not the kind who wanted to buy flowers for his mother.

“Katrina.” Her father glanced sideways at her, refusing to meet her gaze. “Why don’t you run down to the corner and get us some good coffee from Mamacita’s?”

“It’s after one o’clock.” Katrina frowned. Why would her father want coffee in the middle of the afternoon?

She stared for a moment, trying to reconcile this odd behavior. It had been so long since she’d been home. During her years at Saint Asonia’s Academy in Miami, she had come home at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but she had spent summers at school doing special study programs. When she’d graduated high school and gone to college, her father and sister had come to spend Christmas with her. Since coming home, she had realized how much her father seemed to have aged while she’d been gone.

Her father drew a few folded bills from his wallet. “Please, Katrina, just go get us some coffee.”

“But—” Katrina shut her mouth abruptly when Maksim shot her a look of pure annoyance.

O-kay
. She gave an exaggerated sigh and closed the browser window on her laptop. Casting more than one surreptitious glance at this Maksim character, she slipped her feet into her sandals. What was this guy’s problem anyway? Who really needed total privacy to buy flowers? It was ridiculous!

“Katrina!” Her sister Nika appeared from the rear area of the store where she had been stripping thorns from the roses they used in most of the arrangements. “I’d really like one of Mamacita’s blueberry muffins. And a latte, with real whipped cream, please.”

Katrina wrinkled her nose at her sister. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were trying to get rid of me for some reason.”

Her father and sister exchanged a look of alarm before their faces settled back into their bland looks of indifference. Katrina frowned again and grabbed her purse. What was going on? If looks could kill, Maksim would have scorched her backside by now with the sheer ferocity of his glaring disapproval.

Katrina pushed her way out of the shop. The quaint main street of Hollywood, Florida offered a lot to tourists. Consequently there were always about a million people on the sidewalks gawking at the palm trees, the blue sky, and the variety of storefronts. Pausing near the curb outside her father’s shop, Katrina threw her head back and closed her eyes. The sun was warm on her cheeks. She loved how the air always seemed scented by the bougainvillea and lilacs her father grew in the courtyard just beside their building.

She glanced back at the shop and the three tiny second-story windows of their upstairs apartment. When she’d been growing up, she had felt self-conscious about the fact that her family lived above their store. Those feelings had faded with time. Now she sometimes missed the cramped but cozy quarters she had shared with Nika and their father for so long.

Something inside the shop caught her eye. Frowning, Katrina peered through the flowers Nika had painted on the windows. She could hear the low murmur of a harsh male voice. Maksim pointed emphatically at her father.

What. The. Hell? Why was this asshole threatening her family? At least that was what it looked like. Maksim’s face was contorted with anger, and her father looked apologetic and small. When had he started to look so frail?

Katrina watched her father bow his head. His hair had long ago turned white and often stuck up at odd angles. He was a dreamy, forgetful sort of man who often got lost in the fronds of a plant as he carefully pruned and arranged greenery. As a child, Katrina had held an image of her smiling father with his hands in the dirt as he cared for his precious plants. To see that softhearted person being threatened by some no-good thug made Katrina mad as hell.

Yet what could she do about it? Her father and Nika plainly hadn’t wanted her around for the anticipated confrontation. Was Maksim a disgruntled customer? If so, Katrina was all for telling him to go find another flower shop to send flowers to his mother. If her son’s ugly behavior was anything to go by, the woman was probably a shrew anyway.

Frustrated, Katrina took the only option left open to her at that moment. She resolved to discover the truth behind this Maksim person’s involvement with her father and their store. But for now, she had been sent for coffee and a ridiculous blueberry muffin.

***

Ivan Petrov took an absentminded sip of his iced mocha and watched the barista behind the counter at Mamacita’s Bakery & Coffeehouse. He couldn’t help but wonder what it might be like to have that sort of job, the kind where he had regular shifts and the work was simple and to the point. A barista’s only worry was whether or not they managed to put the ingredients into the machine in the correct order. Coffee made incorrectly was tossed and the order redone.

If only life was that simple. Ivan shift on his stool. He’d picked a place in the back corner where he had a view of the entire room. He always did that. It was a force of habit. In fact, it was probably something he had picked up from his father. Nicolai Petrov had been almost paranoid when it came to his personal safety. The irony of that particular hang up was that he’d died last year of a heart attack. The doctors had told Ivan and Maksim that their father’s high-cholesterol diet and complete lack of physical activity was responsible for his death at the age of sixty. In the end, none of his father’s paranoia had paid off, and he’d been finished off by his own poor decisions.

Ivan wondered sometimes if he and his younger brother Maksim had ever really paused to grieve their father. Or perhaps the truth was that neither one of them felt that there was anything to mourn. Their father had been a mean son of a bitch who cared for nothing beyond his financial holdings and his standing in the
mafiya
community.

Which was why Ivan was currently sitting in Mamacita’s drinking coffee at the absurd hour of one-thirty in the afternoon. Nicolai Petrov had been a bully and a tyrant. His territory in the Hollywood, Florida community was filled with those he had squeezed dry of everything. Money, resources, even their sons and daughters had been appropriated to fill the ranks of the Petrov mafia. Now Nicolai was dead, and Ivan was left holding the reins of something he wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to deal with.

Ivan had an idea that it might be possible to be kind and honest in his dealings with the people in his territory. Yet most of these individuals had been ruled by fear and governed by hatred for so long that they didn’t know how to respond to a softer touch. To be seen as weak would have been the end of Ivan. Not just as the head of the Petrov family, but probably his life as well. So Ivan sent Maksim to play the strong arm as they tried to collect the mountain of debt their father had left unresolved with the hope that once they were on their feet, they could somehow create a softer way of running things.

Someone jostled his leg. Ivan glanced up, surprised. He found himself staring at a very shapely derriere. A young woman was bent over, trying to balance a carrier full of coffee cups and a bakery bag. She appeared to have dumped a hand full of napkins onto the floor and was trying to retrieve them.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” Ivan asked, trying not to laugh. He didn’t want to offend the poor girl.

She stood abruptly and turned around. “Oh my gosh, did I just run you over? I’m so sorry! I have such a hard time paying attention to what I’m doing. Generally my mind is a million miles away. Sorry!”

Ivan tried to speak, but his words seemed to have deserted him completely. He had never been so forcefully attracted to a woman before in his life. Part of it was that she was uncommonly pretty. Her hair was pale as corn silk and thick. The long mass hung down her back and nearly brushed her waist. She had pulled it away from her face and secured it with some sort of clip, which made her azure eyes stand out all the more. She was slim with a softly rounded backside and muscular legs. Her tiny shorts gave him a fantastic view of her thighs, and her snug T-shirt showed off a set of high, pert breasts.

Wait. Was she talking? Was he supposed to be answering? Ivan realized he’d been sitting there like an imbecile without speaking for what had to be forever.

“My name is Katrina, by the way.” She smiled, and Ivan was struck by the intelligence in her blue eyes.

He cleared his throat, trying to find his intellect. “I’m Ivan. I don’t think I’ve seen you around here. Have you just moved? Or are you a tourist?”

“Actually, I’ve just been away at school for a very long time.” Her smile was wistful. “So I suppose I’m a little like a tourist in that everything seems so very new! It’s amazing how much a place can change over the years.”

She set her tray of coffees on his table. Ivan watched her very methodically check the stability of each cup. He wondered what her last name was and whether or not he knew her family. Then a horrible thought occurred to him. What if he had sent Maksim to shake her family down for money owed to the Petrovs? That would definitely fall under the heading of
not good
.

“So Ivan.” Katrina’s smile was warm and more than a little welcoming. “Are you a tourist? I certainly don’t remember you from before.”

“Not a tourist,” he told her. “I’ve been away at school as well. And I suppose you might say I’ve come home to take over the family business. My father passed away last year.”

“I’m so sorry.” She reached out and brushed his forearm with her fingertips. “I cannot imagine losing my papa. That must be so hard.”

The place where she touched him burned at the contact. It was all he could do to remain still. “I’m lucky in that I have my brother to share the burden with.”

“That is lucky,” she agreed.

“Speak of the devil.” Ivan spotted Maksim entering Mamacita’s. “There’s my brother now.”

Katrina turned, her blue eyes widening to the size of saucers at the sight of Maksim. “Wait.
That’s
your brother?”

“Yes.” Ivan frowned. Maksim could sometimes appear scary, but he was really a giant teddy bear. “He only looks frightening. Promise.”

“Unfortunately, I’ve seen him in action, and I have to say that frightening is an understatement.” She pursed her lips, her expression one of regret. “You’ll have to excuse me. I need to get back to my sister and my father.”

“Of course,” Ivan murmured, watching her go.

Maksim took a seat at Ivan’s table. He stared at Katrina with mild interest. “What were you doing with her?”

“You know her?”

“Not really, but you just had me shake down her father for more cash,” Maksim told him lazily.

“Shit.” Ivan felt his mood hit an all-time low. “That fucking figures.”

Chapter Two

“Ugh! How can those two even be related?” Katrina moaned.

She walked energetically back to her father’s flower shop, determined to get some answers. Question number one: who was the totally hot guy with the absolute dickhead for a brother? Question number two: why was dickhead brother in her father’s shop pitching some kind of male hissy fit? Had her father somehow messed up the order from Ivan’s father’s funeral?

Katrina frowned. Ivan had told her that his father had passed away last year. Surely they weren’t arguing about flowers from a funeral that had taken place a year ago. Maybe it was something her father’s shop had done for the gravesite? Hopefully the problem had gotten straightened out today. Katrina wanted badly to believe that.