Unprotected with the Mob Boss: A Dark Mafia Romance (Alekseiev Bratva) by Fox, Nicole (ebook reader online .txt) 📕

enough that she falls onto her back. When she reaches for me, the ring scrapes against my skin, but the sting only makes me want her more.

* * *

In the parking lot, Ally is drunk as hell and I’ve called Ilya to pick us up. Under normal circumstances, I’d drive and be fully capable, but I know it’s something Ally can’t handle since the crash.

She abruptly steps away from me. She reaches back like she didn’t realize what she’d done. Her fingertips brush against my arm.

“It’s my parents. I’m gonna say goodbye.”

I grab her arm before she can leave. She gives me a questioning look. I take her hand, slide off her ring, and pocket it.

“I don’t think you want to have a brawl in the middle of the parking lot. You can tell them later,” I say. She gazes at me, that defiant look complementing her face. She reaches toward my breast pocket like she’s going to take the ring back out. Instead, she dives forward, kissing my cheek.

She walks across the parking lot and greets her father, her hand touching his arm in a reassuring gesture. I can’t see his face, but his body relaxes after five or six seconds. Her mother, on the sidelines, catches me watching. I straighten up as she starts walking over. I force a smile as she stops, turning, so we’re both facing her husband and her daughter.

“You’ll have to excuse my husband,” she says. “She’s our only child.”

“I understand,” I say.

“And it was very surprising to find out that she’s been secretly dating someone.”

“You’re both very important to her,” I say. “We just weren’t certain how we felt about each other until a couple of months ago. By then, she didn’t want to hurt you and we let it go on without clearing the air. I apologize for that.”

“I see,” her mother says. “And what happened a couple of months ago?”

I watch Ally and her father hug. When they pull apart, she has a huge smile on her face. She nearly stumbles in her heels as she takes a step back, but she’s nearly bouncing now as she talks, her hands moving with her words.

“It’s hard to explain,” I say. “I just saw her and … I knew that if she left me, I’d just be going through the motions for the rest of my life. I hadn’t realized it before her, but I’ve spent my life putting a checkmark next to every one of my accomplishments and believing that material success was happiness. I don’t know anymore. I might want more.”

Her mother nods. “You love her. She brings something into your life. From the way I’ve seen her look at you, I think you do the same for her and that’s all you can ask from a partner.”

When I called Sophie to help Ally get ready, she broached the topic of relationships. She talked about how marriages work because both people get what they need out of it. She said there’s compromise, but the relationship doesn’t survive on compromise like a contract does—it survives on two people who want to give what the other person needs. I dealt with her lecture because I didn’t want her to back out of helping Ally, but if I hadn’t needed her help, I would have told her that my marriage with Ally was a contract.

And now Ally’s mother is saying nearly the same thing as Sophie. But she also thinks I love Ally, so this whole discussion is comprised of fables.

“So, your relationship is like that with your husband?” I ask.

“Oh yes. He can be boneheaded and sometimes he says the first thing that pops into his head. But sometimes that’s a good thing.” She smiles. “Just be good to Ally.”

“Because her father will kill me if I’m not. I know,” I say.

She shakes her head. “No, you should be good to Ally because she is fair. If you’re good to her, she’ll be good to you.”

Ally’s father is waving her mother over. She holds out her hand. I shake it.

“It was nice to meet you, Lev,” she says. “Hopefully, we’ll see each other again soon.”

“Yes, we will,” I say. As she walks toward her husband, he raises his arm and she tucks right in underneath it. The chief is a thorn in my side, but his love for his wife is undeniable. His relationship is more genuine than anything I’ve ever had.

My parents used to be like that—the couple that everyone wanted to be part of. Or, at least, they were like that until my father started gaining power and all the dominoes fell.

Ally skips over to me. She opens up her arms and I let her collide straight into me. I wrap my arms around her. When we kiss, I try not to think about power—the kind that corrupts, the kind that other people have over you, and the kind that detonates when it’s in the center of two people who refuse to surrender it.

14

Allison

As Lev and I kiss, he cradles my head. It’s easy to forget everything he told me earlier when his body heat anchors me to this spot in the parking lot. We’re both drunk and I love it because the rest of the world has become blurred and time becomes inconsequential.

My shoulder jabs against the ring in his pocket. He pulls it back out. I hold my hand out. Instead of sliding the ring on again, he takes my hand, flips it over, and sets the ring on my palm.

I slide it on. It’s twisted—a ring that costs more than a year of my rent from a man that only wants to marry me because of my father—but with the way that I’ve felt about Lev lately, it also feels like a memento for something that will inevitably go up in flames.

He tilts my chin up. I close my eyes as he kisses me again. It’s all pretend, but it’s nice to live in a