The Very Rude Boys Next Door by Chloe Kent
Chapter One
Anastasia Koltov wondered if she would spend the rest of her life trying to outrun her vicious uncle. Was she doomed to forever be looking over her shoulder?
But deep down she knew she wouldn’t be able to escape him for the rest of her life even if she died trying. He was too cunning for that to happen. And it wouldn’t be long before he found her either. Fedor Koltov never failed at anything, and he treated women like objects; they were of no consequence and were meant to be shunted around at his convenience.
She dropped her head against the window of the cab she had hailed from the airport and held back her tears. She wasn’t cut out for being on the run. All her life she had been treated as a princess, and all she knew was how to be swaddled in luxury, adored, and protected by her parents, but then that had changed drastically, and the heartache now became a part of who she was.
Six years ago, her sweet parents had died in a car accident, and she had been forced to live under her uncle’s rule as dictated by the senior members of the Koltov family. And every night she had dreamed of escaping, but with her resources cut off entirely, her trust fund taken away, and constantly surrounded by bodyguards, she had zero means to do so.
Except she was now forced to put her dreams into reality when her uncle decided to marry her off to a man who made her skin crawl, as a way to unite the two powerful families. No matter how much she had pleaded, had fallen to his feet, and begged he not sell her off to the lowest scum of a man alive, her uncle had remained steadfast in his decision. She should have known better than to think he would have had his own brother’s daughter’s best interest at heart.
With the help of Viktoria, her father’s and Fedor’s only sister, she had escaped, boarded a flight, and was now heading to the lakeside house her aunt had also arranged with one of her friends, where Anastasia could stay. It was just another layer of protection to keep her uncle from finding her a bit later than he would have.
Viktoria had promised she would be safe there. No one knew her in New York and certainly not in Lakeside Banter, where the house of her friend was located. Viktoria had called it a quaint and peaceful area. And no one knew she had left Moscow either.
Not yet anyway. Well, they wouldn’t know for at least another three weeks if she were lucky, when Anastasia was meant to arrive back home from her outing with her aunt in Paris.
She was buying time, yet she had no solution, no idea how she was going to save herself from doom, but there was no way she was going to marry a man who outwardly dealt with a side of the Mafia business that she abhorred, and she was now beginning to think her uncle may be involved in as well. The one thing that the highly feared and utterly respected Bolshov, Baskin, Semonov, and Damov Bratva refused to dabble in. They earned their fierce reputation by dealing with men and kept women and children out of it, unlike Boris Yveltin, the man her uncle had sold her to marry.
She had even had her wedding gown delivered; the whole thing was still going to happen no matter what she said. After concocting a plan between herself and Viktoria, Anastasia had pretended all was well, that she had accepted she was going to marry Boris and showed some false enthusiasm about the style of her wedding gown. But then Viktoria had managed to somehow get her brother to agree that she take Anastasia for a few weeks to Paris, where she could build her trousseau for her upcoming wedding.
Her uncle had agreed only because Boris Yveltin had thought it was a good idea his bride-to-be had everything she wanted.
Viktoria had gone to Paris. Anastasia had not.
Under the starlit sky, the glittering waters of a lake came into view as the cab driver pulled into a gated parking lot.
After refusing the driver’s help with her bags, Anastasia wheeled them behind her and stared at the row of houses. In the darkness she couldn’t make out much. It looked smaller than her aunt had led her to believe, but then maybe the driver had dropped her off at the back of the house instead of the front: she couldn’t make sense of anything in the dark.
She did have a moment of sheer panic when he drove away. He was basically the only person she knew in America, and now he was gone, too, after he had said not two words to her.
Chastising herself for being overdramatic, she pulled up her big-girl panties. There was no time to be helpless.
Squinting her eyes under the crescent moonlight, she found the house. Number 2A.
She fumbled to locate the key, which was meant to be in a potted plant and she cringed as she dug into the damp soil looking for the damn key.
In her exasperation and failure to find the key, she tried the doorknob and sighed in relief when it opened. Viktoria told her she had arranged with her friend to hire someone to take care of the housekeeping and to fully stock the fridge and pantry as well.
As she closed the door behind her, some of her tension slipped off her body. She had made it this far.
Kicking off her shoes, she flicked on the light, and instantly headed toward the kitchen for water. She filled a glass and drank it too fast; her body had not stopped trembling since the moment she had boarded the flight from Moscow.
She needed to sleep. That was something she hadn’t done in too many days. On her way out, under a glass cloche, on the kitchen counter, she noticed a platter of eclairs, and her tummy growled in response. She took one and then another and another. Soon she had wolfed down the half-dozen treats.
Overly full, she left her bags in the entranceway and picked the first bedroom she came to, and without putting the lights on, she stripped down to her underwear, felt around for the bed, and crawled into it.
She fell asleep instantly, and even her thoughts about her uncertain future couldn’t keep her awake any longer.
Sometime during the night, she had kicked the covers off, then sleepily removed her bra and panties. It was so blisteringly hot, and she was too tired and not conscious enough to find the remote to the air-conditioner.
Her last thought before she fell asleep again was that the linen had a sultry scent to it, not like regular detergent, but more like male cologne.
She would never know what woke her up first. The blazing hot sun streaming a thousand rays of light into the room, or the weight of three pairs of eyes on her.
It took her a few moments to drag herself through her drowsy consciousness and orient herself.
She had fled Moscow to escape marrying a madman.
But now they had found her.
The disturbing realization pounded against her skull.
Her uncle’s men had found her.
Without wasting a precious moment, she reached for her handbag, which she had placed on the side table next to her. She fumbled but eventually found the handgun she had been covertly handed before she boarded the cab, another thing her aunt had arranged. But that wasn’t enough, and she found the Taser as well.
It was only as she leaped off the bed, with her weapons in hand and aimed at them, that she realized belatedly she was stark naked. Damn the hot weather that had forced her to strip down to her bare skin.
It took a few moments longer to realize the three men before her seemed way too unafraid that she was armed and with a clear intent to blow their balls off if they came any closer; they had actually allowed their gazes to lazily peruse her nakedness as if they had the right to do so.
“You might want to put those things down before you hurt yourself, sweetheart,” one of them said as he advanced on her.
“Come any closer, and I’ll blow your head off,” her Russian-accented voice quivered around her, and she wished she sounded surer of herself. But she wasn’t. All she had done to escape her uncle from bringing her back to Moscow to marry an evil man would be for nothing, because that’s exactly where she would land up again: her life, as she knew it, over. And she hadn’t even been given a chance to find a way out of it.
But some rational part of her brain, in almost a few seconds, forced her to make a deeper analysis of the situation.
The three men before her didn’t look Russian. Over six feet tall with hair that ranged from dark blond to just dark brown, and eyes that spanned the spectrum of blues, grays, and browns, they had American written all over them, and the smell of cigars and beer mixed with the male scent of their cologne lingered through the air around her.
And not one tattoo in sight.
Her gaze tripped over their bodies, their necks, which were visible from the T-shirts they wore and bared their biceps, forearms, and hands for her scrutiny.
She swallowed at the physiological effect they seemed to have on her, that each one of them was big enough to crush her. That the power in their vein-mapped forearms and their hands made her catch her breath, her nipples swell, and a peculiar tightness develop between her legs.
It didn’t help that she was naked and entirely too self-conscious of it. But she also was not going to divest herself of a single weapon to grab a sheet to cover herself unless she was able to create a distraction of sorts.
But apart from all that, the realization that they weren’t Russian Mafia, let alone Russian at all, meant they weren’t there for her. But that only eliminated one aspect, although that was the most crucial. It meant these were just three possibly moderately inebriated men, who decided to let themselves into her house with the intent to do what? Harm her?
Oh no.
They picked the totally wrong day to do it.
She was mad. She was furious for being taken advantage of by men who knew they were more powerful than her, and she wasn’t going to let that happen today.
“You have ten seconds to leave, or I’m going to start shooting.”
“Now, now. Put those things down and let’s talk, okay?”
“Get out of my house. I’m not saying it again.”
“All right, now just hold on there a minute—”
And that just toppled over her fury. She was a perfect shot, thanks to Viktoria who had taken her under her wing—secretly, of course—and taught Anastasia how to fend for herself in a male-dominated world.
She aimed the gun at their leather boots and fired a neat hole in the floor just inches away from them. In the instant they were too stunned that she had actually fired the gun, or she assumed they would be, she released her hold of the Taser, grabbed the sheet, and clumsily wrapped it around her, then reclaimed the weapon she had set down.
“Fuck’s sake,” one of them chuckled. “She made a hole in the damn floor.” He actually sounded more impressed than angry.
“You sure you want to play it this way, sweetheart?” another asked, too lazily for someone who had a gun pointed at his nuts.
“Yes. Get out,” she shouted. Armed with her gun, her Taser, and now a sheet to conceal her nakedness, her confidence and her fury quadrupled. She advanced on them, waving both weapons in her hands with a careless ruthlessness, making them inch backward and not come any closer to her in case she pulled the triggers of both her gun and the Taser.
She didn’t back off, not until she had made them step backward toward the foyer. She also couldn’t hear what they were saying over her rage and her determination to see them out of the door, so she could lock herself back in.
“I think we should talk like civilized people here,” one of them volunteered as he stalled just at the door.
She'd had enough. Taking aim, she fired another shot in the wall, that just missed one of their heads.
“All right, calm down. We’re going.”
She frowned for a split second. Was he laughing at her when he said that? How much more serious did she need to be?
When they finally stood on the other side of the threshold, looking at her quite amused, she delivered her final warning.
“If you try this again, you won’t leave alive.” With that, she shut the door, put her weapons down, then bolted it, using every lock that was available. She then exerted all her dormant muscles as she pushed a heavy oak cabinet to block the door. She then checked the windows and the backdoor as well.
It was only then she slid down to her haunches and panted in mixed relief. Where was the security if three strange men could just enter the gated community and her house?
Still shaken to her core, she slowly rose from the floor and forced herself to shake it off. She was okay, and she had dealt with what could have become a very volatile situation by keeping her wits about her.
But as she made her way to the kitchen for some much-needed water, their words slowly inched into her mind. She stopped mid-step and turned around in a circle as she took in her surroundings.
This was nothing like what Viktoria had told her. There was nothing luxurious about the house in which she would be hiding from her uncle.
What Anastasia saw was comfort, warmth, a soft woman’s touch that somehow seemed nurturing and powerful at the same time even though the furniture seemed a bit worn as well as the carpets.
Oh no.
With her heart beating thunderously in her ears, her body rigid, her lips pursed, she headed toward the bedroom. She slipped into the first bedroom, the one she had slept in and tentatively opened the closet door.
Oh no.
Still with the sheet around her, she stumbled into the next bedroom and then the one after that, opening the closet and then squeezing her eyes shut as realization dawned. She didn’t even bother looking further. She had already garnered enough information to tell her she had made a terrible, embarrassing mistake.