Vow of Deception (Deception Trilogy #1) by Rina Kent

I wrap my arm around her back, lift her under her knees, and carry her bridal style. She’s too thin and bony; it should be a crime.

She stiffens, even though her fingers grip my shirt. “I can walk on my own.”

“You’re missing a shoe.”

“I can manage.”

“Or you can stay still.”

“You…” She clears her throat, and as if not wanting Kolya and Yan, who are following close behind, to hear, she whispers, “You said I smell.”

“Let me worry about that.”

She opens her mouth to argue, then seems to think better of it and purses it shut.

Once we’re inside one of the department stores and get in one of the elevators, I hit the button and the four of us go to the tenth floor. The mall is closed, but the manager stayed late at my request.

As soon as the doors open, we’re greeted by her and three of her most trusted workers, whom Kolya forced to sign an NDA in blood before we went to fetch Winter. The manager, a woman in her fifties who seems to have a painted smile on her lips, nods at our arrival.

Winter misses the gesture because she’s completely entranced by the view ahead of us—the designer clothes hanging under the strong white lights, the luxurious sitting areas, and the high-class décor.

Her nails dig into my shirt as if she’s considering this place a threat. However, she considers me a threat, too, so the gesture means nothing.

I set her to her feet and she staggers before standing upright. When her huge eyes scan her surroundings, she visibly shrinks at the grandiosity of it all. It takes her about a minute before she finally stares at the manager, acknowledging her smile with a nod.

“I want her as good as new,” I say.

Winter’s nose scrunches at my words, but she doesn’t protest like I expect her to.

“Yes, sir,” the manager tells me and directs her smile at Winter again. “Please follow me.”

Winter lifts her nose, then does as she’s told.

My gaze follows her as she hobbles on her one shoe until she disappears around the corner, but my focus remains on the empty spot she left behind for a second too long.

The clearing of a throat pulls me out of the moment.

“Are you going to stay here, sir?” Kolya asks in Russian. “Yan or I can drive her back.”

“It’s fine.”

I sit on a red leather sofa and pull out my phone. Kolya and Yan stand on either side of me, their hands crossed in front of them. Yan, in particular, isn’t a fan of what I’ve decided, and his scowling features—that rival Kolya’s impassive ones—were a constant during the entire ride.

“Relax, would you?” I say in Russian.

They each widen their stance but don’t change position. They might be my two closest guards, but they’re as different as night and day. Kolya, who’s my age, is the more diplomatic one—the talker, the pacifier, who may or may not carry a bomb with him at all times in case those pacifying methods don’t work.

Yan is younger, more reckless, less of a thinker and more of a muscle person, who’s always ready to snap someone’s neck and amputate someone else’s arm at the same time. His character is evident in his hair that he keeps long, even though every one of my other men gives him shit about it. He pays them little to no attention because he’s also hotheaded and already has strikes against him that he’d need to answer to.

They’ve been with me since I was young. Kolya and I basically raised Yan, though. They were groomed by my father to be my inner circle. He actually only brought them in to spy on me, but things have long since changed.

Kolya’s muscles flex as he retrieves his phone. Yan has always called him a mountain, because of his physique and his personality. My younger guard is lean, which makes him faster, but he’s still jealous that no amount of training could make him as big as Kolya.

My second-in-command pockets his phone. “Igor has been trying to reach you, sir.”

“Ignore him.”

“Mikhail, too.”

“Don’t pay him any attention. Unless it’s the Pakhan, I have no one to answer to.”

He gives a curt nod as I go through my emails. I periodically change my phone number, and since I recently did so, the elite group of the brotherhood are bugging Kolya on my behalf.

My position in the Bratva is high enough that I get away with disrespecting the other leaders. There are four heads of the brigadiers, Igor and Mikhail being two of them. I’m an Obshchak, meaning the only person I answer to is the Pakhan himself.

The only other member on my level is the Sovietnik, Vladimir, but he’s not demanding. We co-exist for the Bratva as we have been for the past twenty years, ever since we were both officially recruited by Nikolai at the age of fifteen.

Or, more like, Vladimir was recruited. I was born into this world. But even though my father was some sort of nobility in the Bratva, I had to put in the extra work to get where I am. I even surpassed his rank, and continue to do so.

Others think I’m doing it for family honor, when, in fact, I’m interested in squashing everything my father did. If I suppress him, no one talks about him.

My session of reading my emails is interrupted by a number flashing on my screen. I don’t save names on my phone, even though it’s encrypted and I can virtually destroy it the moment it’s stolen.