Ravaged Throne: A Russian Mafia Romance (Solovev Bratva #2)
Nicole Fox
RAVAGED THRONE
BOOK TWO OF THE SOLOVEV BRATVA DUET
My husband doesn’t know about our son.
But that won’t be enough to keep him safe. Because our little baby boy is the heir to two thrones.
And there are a lot of bad men out there who want to stop him from reaching them.
So I ran into the mountains.
Into a nightmare of my own making.
I thought I’d gotten away…
But I was wrong.
Even there, in the freezing cold middle of nowhere, Leo found me.
And when he did, I lied to keep my baby safe.
But I should’ve learned a long time ago: Leo Solovev knows everything.
Except for how this story will end.
RAVAGED THRONE is Book Two of the Solovev Bratva Duet. Make sure you’ve read the beginning of Leo and Willow’s story in Book One, RAVAGED CROWN, before beginning this one!
1
WILLOW
I am not who I thought I was.
“Willow Powers” is a lie.
But the truth? That doesn’t feel right, either.
I guess that doesn’t stop it from being true. Nor does that stop it from driving me insane. It’s been on an endless loop inside my head for the last week. Viktoria Mikhailov. Viktoria Mikhailov. I am Viktoria Mikhailov.
The name still doesn’t ring any bells. The woman to whom that name belongs is a stranger.
Me? I’m nothing.
I look down at my ravaged fingernails. I tear at them when I’m nervous. One nail in particular has an ugly, jagged edge. It looks dangerous, like it could do some damage if I put my mind to it. But the moment I apply pressure, it folds like a piece of tissue paper.
I’m pretty sure that’s a sign of malnourishment. It bothers me only because of the child I’m carrying. A child I thought had been born out of something real. True love. Happily ever after.
What a fucking joke.
It was all a farce. If I hadn’t been so naive, I would have seen it much earlier.
“Dreaming about your beloved husband again?”
Her voice sends a shiver down my spine. It carries a dusky quality that promises all sorts of pain.
I turn from the barred window and watch Brit glide into the room. Her beauty always seems excessive, ethereal. Like someone layered too many filters on a photo.
But as I’ve learned, Brit is very, very real.
She’s dressed in dark jeans and a tight white blouse today. Her blonde hair is loose, falling around her shoulders. She looks as flawless as she has from the moment I first saw her.
In comparison, I haven’t showered in six days. My scalp itches. Over the last week, I’ve been losing progressively larger clumps of my once-thick black hair.
Time has warped for me inside this cage. I only know it’s been a week because she tells me so. But in my head, it’s been a lifetime.
“I don’t dream about anything,” I tell her quietly. That’s the truth: in the few restless hours of sleep I’m able to get each night, I see mostly darkness. It’s still preferable to this hell.
“No?” Brit asks, coming forward. “You look like the kind of girl who never stops dreaming.” Her tongue slides over her bottom lip as though I’m her next meal.
Before I can stop myself, I glance down at my arm. She grabbed me two days ago and left behind three long claw marks. It looks like I was mauled by an animal.
“Pretty Bratva princess,” she hisses, reaching out and grabbing a lock of my hair. I wrench away from her and her nose wrinkles. “You don’t smell like a princess, though.”
“Whose fault is that?” I snap, before I can will myself to bite my tongue.
Her eyes go wide and her head jerks towards the door as though she’s just heard something. There are moments when I wonder if there’s not something seriously wrong with the woman.
Apart from the obvious, of course.
When no one comes, she tightens her grip on my hair and pulls down hard, yanking me towards her. “He wants you dirty,” she tells me. “He likes his women dirty.”
I shudder, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t notice. She jerks her head towards the door again.
I haven’t seen Spartak Belov since he dragged me out of that warehouse. I haven’t seen Leo, either. Not in person, at least. But sometimes, when I close my eyes, the shadows converge…
And I see him.
Leo’s broad-shouldered silhouette against the dark sky beyond. The last glimpse of him I got before I was taken away.
He wasn’t even looking at me.
He has the power to move mountains. The power to take life at will and walk away without a mark on his conscience. He has the kind of power men chase their entire lives and never achieve.
And yet, he simply let Belov strut away with me in chains.
That’s the part about my sleep I don’t mention to Brit: when I don’t dream of darkness, I see the harsh lines of his unmovable face. So handsome and so cold.
I remember those quiet moments between our combined breaths. When he was inside me, and I felt whole.
Did I imagine that? Did I imagine the way he looked at me, with something warm and real in his eyes? Did I imagine all of it?