Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 94640 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94640 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Semyon Kopolov.
Gorgeous and formidable.
My childhood crush and brother’s best friend.
They call him the Ice King—cold, ruthless, unforgiving.
He’s the reason my mother’s dead.
Now he’s my husband.
Once he was my protector.
The boy who carried me when I fell and swore to shield me from monsters.
Until he became one.
Forced into marriage, I’m trapped with the man I swear I’ll never forgive.
But the harder I try to escape, the harder I fall.
My body betrays me, and my heart whispers lies.
I tell myself he’s not the boy I once loved,
Yet I’m forced to face my greatest fear:
I’m falling for my enemy
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
SEMYON
I shake my head and exit the warehouse, the relentless bite of a Moscow winter hitting me. I pull my coat tighter and check my watch.
Behind me, I hear the telltale sounds of Rodion cleaning up the mess I left—the heavy scrape of a body being dragged across the floor, the dull thump of a weapon hitting the ground, and his unmistakable carefree whistling. Like one of the fucking seven dwarfs.
Only my brother would whistle while running the cleanup crew.
But he’s impeccable, reliable, and takes pride in what he does.
I wasn’t planning on delivering an ass-kicking right before the huge benefit I’m supposed to attend, but here we are.
Sliding into the driver’s seat, I flip down the mirror to check myself. My hands are clean, my suit is immaculate, and not a speck of blood mars the fabric. Good.
My phone buzzes, the ringtone unmistakably Rafail’s. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Took longer than I thought.” My jaw tightens as I start the engine. The dickhead had more fight in him than I expected, and I wouldn’t let Rodion intervene. I fight my own battles.
“How’d it go?”
“As good as can be expected. The job’s done.” I blow out a breath and glance at the time. “Got ten minutes to show up fashionably late.”
“Good.” There’s a pause. Too long. I know immediately something’s wrong. He didn’t call to make sure I handled a job. Rafail knows better than that.
“Rafail. What is it?”
My older brother and I are tight and have been since he became our legal guardian after our parents’ deaths. He’s ruled our family with the proverbial iron fist, and as second-oldest, I’m his right-hand man. We don’t waste words or time explaining things to each other.
“I’ve got bad news.”
In the background, I hear Polina, his wife, murmuring in her low, soothing voice. She whispers something in Russian, and Rafail mutters back before speaking to me again.
I grit my teeth. I hate showing up late to anything. I plug the address into the GPS and throw the car into reverse. Rodion will get himself there.
When Rafail doesn’t tell me right away, my patience begins to wane. “You wanna tell me, or do you and Polina need to have a little pillow talk first?”
“Semyon,” Rafail says warningly. He’d take any shit I’d throw at him, but bring his wife into it, and he gets his hackles up. Fair.
I put the car into drive and ease onto the road before gunning the engine. “I just kicked someone’s teeth in while making sure I didn’t get any blood on this fucking white shirt, Rafail. Patience? Fresh out.”
Rafail sighs heavily on the other end of the line. “Elizar Borozov was sighted on a plane heading to Costa Rica twelve hours ago. He fucked you over. We’ve had two shipments ambushed and our backup safe house exposed because of him.”
I grip the wheel tighter, a haze of red clouding my vision. Eli. My fucking friend. The kid I grew up with. The one I trusted. Gone, betraying us in the process.
“Are we positive he left?” My best friend has as many enemies as I do.
“Yes.”
I glance at the GPS. Ten minutes out. My voice drops, cold and venomous. “So I’m boarding a plane to Costa Rica tonight.”
I’m already mentally combing the streets.
“No. I wanted to talk to you first.”
“What’s there to talk about? Eli was supposed to give us the details on the shipment and the harbor security leak in exchange for pardoning his fucking debt. That was literally all he fucking had to do to keep him off our shitlist. And now you’re telling me he’s gone? Vanished, still owing us four mil?”
This one’s personal.
We spent every afternoon by the creek in Zalivka, the city outside of Moscow where we both grew up, throwing rocks and climbing trees, swearing that nothing would ever come between us.
He was the one I cried to when my parents died. As teens, we bought each other condoms and borrowed each other’s weapons. We shot weapons by the creek until Rafail caught us and kicked both our asses. We didn’t stop—we just got more discreet.
But the liquor came too easily. The lies were harder to detect. I should’ve seen it all coming.
I shoot Eli a text, watching the message hang before failing to deliver.
After all these years, after everything we’ve been through, he fucking betrayed me. All of us.
As if his family can fucking afford it.
“The problem’s bigger than that, Semyon.” My pulse beats hard and fast. I blow out a breath as he explains. “Eli’s father couldn’t pay back the Irish, so he put up his daughter as collateral. If the Irish take her and the bakery, they get access to the harbor—dangerous for us.”
I know Rafail cares about the fucking harbor, but I’m stuck on Anya.
The Irish. Fucking The Irish. Our rivals, always looking for an opening.