The Bastard’s Betrayal by Katee Robert

Chapter 1

Rose Romanov was in trouble.

She’d known it from the moment she got the summons from her parents. And it was a summons. She stared at the closed study door and tried to calm her racing heart. For twenty-seven years, she’d been the perfect daughter. Sure, there was some teenage rebellion shit, but she wasn’t a saint. No one expected her to be a saint.

More like the exact opposite.

Which was fine. As the heir to the branch of the Romanov empire in New York, she’d long ago made her peace with the path set out before her. It was better than the fate of most women in mafia families. Her father was something of a Renaissance man when it came to that. He’d fought the other Romanovs to protect her position, and she’d never once done anything to make him regret the decision.

Until Jackson.

Even now, even knowing she was about to suffer through a lecture at least, if not a flat-out ultimatum, she couldn’t help smiling. Jackson was her one rebellion, the moment a few months ago when she’d turned left instead of right and thrown everything into the current tailspin. He was just a guy, a normal guy who didn’t know who her parents were or what role they played in the NYC underworld. He just saw Rose, the woman, instead of Rose, the mafia princess.

She’d fight to keep that. Even if she had to fight her parents.

Things with him were never supposed to get to this point. When she’d seen him across the bar for the first time, all golden good looks and roguish charm, she’d only been looking for a night of pleasure. He’d given her that. But one night became two, became a few months. When she met him, she’d never expected him to provide her with a safe space outside of all her family shit. She loved her family. She did. But it was really nice to date someone who just saw Rose the person, rather than Rose Romanov, heir to the New York Romanov empire. Sure, she couldn’t be an unedited version of herself with Jackson, but she valued their time together.

Truth be told, she’d expected this conversation with her parents before now, but Mama and Papa were both patient hunters. They were willing to play the long game, and they had to be operating under the assumption that Rose knew Jackson couldn’t be endgame. And…they were right.

It didn’t matter how nice it was to hang out with him for lazy afternoons when she could sneak away. Or that he seemed so heavily invested in her opinions on everything from the most mundane to the big, serious topics. Or that they shared a surprising intimacy she’d never felt with another person.

Jackson wasn’t in the life, which meant her relationship was doomed the moment it began. She wasn’t willing to drag him down into the dark with her. She just thought she’d have more time. It had only been a few months. Surely after a lifetime of mostly good behavior, she was allowed more time with this man?

She took one last fortifying breath and opened the door to their shared study. Stepping inside sent a wave of home through her. She’d spent countless hours in this room. Her first memories were of playing on the floor with Papa, him sitting oh so seriously and listening to her babble on about whatever her favorite cartoon of the week was. He never lost patience or got distracted. Papa always acted like every word out of her mouth was priceless, at least when she was a child.

He’d learned a thing or two since then.

Her parents were on the other side of the massive desk, their expressions carefully blank. Another sign she was in trouble. Rose took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. This wasn’t the first difficult conversation she’d had with them, and it wouldn’t be the last. Staying calm and in control was vital when dealing with her parents. “Papa. Mama.”

Her father, Dmitri Romanov, terror of the city and most of the Eastern Seaboard, sat in his chair with his hands steepled before his face. With some men, the years faded them, made them more approachable. Not so with her father. His features had only gotten sharper, and his hair might be leaning more silver than black, but it was still thick. He was also wearing a suit at eight in the morning on a Sunday, which gave her pause.

Was something else going on? Surely a family discussion about her boyfriend didn’t require such formality?

She turned her attention to her mother, who was perched on the arm of Papa’s chair. Keira Romanov had always been petite like Rose and her sister Anya, but where time had sharpened her father, it had softened her mother. She wasn’t one of those women in her fifties who wanted the body of someone in their twenties, and it resulted in very good hugs. Her hair—always dyed a perfect warm brown—fell around her face and shoulders in carefully created waves. She wasn’t wearing the normal lazy Sunday clothing either; she had on one of her red dresses.

Red dresses meant trouble.

Rose considered sitting, but she didn’t like this. Not one bit. “What’s going on?”

“Shut the door.” Papa spoke curtly.

Oh shit. She quickly obeyed. “Is there trouble?” The Romanovs had been at peace for as long as she’d been alive. She’d heard stories of how Papa had almost gone to war with Mama’s family, but once they were married and eliminated the single threat within the city, things had settled down. There were skirmishes—there were always skirmishes—but if she’d learned anything, it was that things could change on a dime. It only took some new group to come into town and decide to start throwing their weight around.

“Sit down, Rose.” Mama was speaking Russian, which sent alarm bells ringing. When it came to business, she only switched to Russian when she was very, very serious.

Rose slowly sank into one of the two chairs across from the desk. “You’re scaring me.”

Mama sighed. “You’ve done a foolish thing, daughter. You should be scared.” She glanced at Papa. When Rose was little, it seemed magical how they could have entire conversations without saying a single word. Now, she recognized it as thirty years of shared life together. She couldn’t help a little twinge of envy at the thought.

She wanted that. Someday. With the right person.

Papa gave a sigh of his own. “We give you a significant amount of freedom. Too much, apparently.”

That had her straightening. “Excuse me? I’m twenty-seven. I do everything you ask of me and more. I deserve what little freedom I have.”

“Da.” He glanced at her mother.

Mama picked up a tablet from the desk. “We know you’ve been slumming it with some civilian, and we allowed it because, as you said, you do everything we ask and more. You’re a good daughter and an asset.”

Rose tensed. “I’m sensing a but coming, and it feels like a doozy.”

“This is the boy you’ve been playing with for the past few months, da?” Mama flipped the tablet around. On the screen was a picture of Jackson. He wore a white T-shirt and faded pair of jeans. The same thing he had on during their most recent date. He’d brought her flowers, just like he did on every date, even though it’d been months and she had a toothbrush at his apartment. Roses for his Rose. Jackson was a dork, but she liked it. She liked him.

Rose’s breath stilled in her lungs as she realized the implications of this photo. “You had me followed.”

“You slipped your detail. Again. It’s our job to ensure you’re safe.” Papa’s gray eyes were cold, cold, cold. That, in and of itself, was a warning she couldn’t afford to ignore. He only ever looked like that before violence occurred.

Oh, Papa would never touch her or her sisters or Mama, but the same couldn’t be said for anyone he considered a threat. Anya got the same look right before she slipped into the night to commit acts that would give a normal person nightmares. Anything to ensure the safety of their family, the security of their territory.

Rose’s hands weren’t lily white, either.

That didn’t mean she was going to roll over for her parents right now. She couldn’t pretend they didn’t get a say when it came to who she eventually settled down with, but right now she was just having fun. She was very careful to avoid ending up pregnant, and that’s the only thing they needed to worry about. “This isn’t your business.”

“Wrong.” Mama flicked a finger across the screen, scrolling to a new picture.

Rose leaned forward, frowning. A different picture of Jackson, but he didn’t look like Jackson in it. He had the same athletic build, and his golden hair was shorter than it was now and slicked back. Without his hipster beard, he was almost too pretty. Too flawless. He also wore a perfectly tailored suit that her practiced eye told her cost a small fortune. Way more than some college-dropout bartender should be able to afford. Still, it was undeniably him. “Where did you get this?”

“This man? His name isn’t Jackson.” Mama hesitated and looked at Papa. “Rose…”

She didn’t like this. She didn’t like this at all. Her parents didn’t hesitate, and they didn’t beat around the bush. “Say it.” No matter what they weren’t telling her, better to know and deal with it than to be left hanging. “Just say it.”

Papa was the one who finally spoke. “The man you’ve been sneaking off with, the one whose apartment you spent the night in last night. His name isn’t Jackson Smith. It’s Dante Verducci.”

The room took a sickening spin around her. She knew that last name, if only in theory. As heir, it was her job to keep her finger to the pulse of not just New York but the other cities where her Romanov cousins held power. They were powerful because they were stronger together, creating a network that spanned a good portion of the US coastline. But their enemies were just names to be memorized, especially Kirill and Sasha’s since they were in Los Angeles and Seattle, respectively.

“Verducci,” she said slowly. “As in the Verducci clan in LA.” They’d given her uncle Kirill—well, Kirill was technically Papa’s cousin, but they called him uncle—a lot of trouble over the last couple decades. “That’s impossible. Lorenzo Verducci only has one son. This isn’t him.”

“Dante Verducci is his nephew, the son of his late sister. She was out of the life for a bit, which is why we don’t have a complete file on him.”

“Impossible.” She didn’t know why she was arguing. Her parents wouldn’t have come to her with this if they weren’t sure they were right, but no matter which way she looked at this information, it didn’t make sense. “One, the Capparelli family would skin him alive if they knew he was in New York. They’re the only Italian game in town, and we have a hard enough time keeping them under control. They’re not going to let another family poach on their territory. Two, it doesn’t make any kind of logistical sense for Dante Verducci to be here, across the country from his territory.”

“Rose.”

She wasn’t finished. “Three, I am dating Jackson Smith. He’s a nice guy who was raised upstate, came to the city to pursue a degree at NYU, wandered off before he graduated, and has a very mundane, very non-criminal life as a bartender with a shitty apartment in Brooklyn. There is no way that guy is part of the Verducci family. He’s too…” Caring. Sweet. Safe. “Unless he’s in hiding or something?”

“Rose… He’s not in hiding,” Mama said.

Papa shook his head sharply. “You were duped.”

“Impossible.” What she and Jackson had? It was real. It felt real. He’d shared so much about his life. His sorrow about his dead mother. His conflict-filled relationship with his uncle… “Oh shit,” she whispered. Rose fought not to wrap her arms around herself. He’d peppered in real parts of his history, just enough to make the lie work.

She’d given him her heart, and it was all a lie.

A poisonous fury spiked through her. Duped. By Jackson fucking Smith. For months. Months and months where she’d given him a level of intimacy she didn’t dole out to just anyone. Where she told him small, mundane secrets. Where she slept with him. When she fell for him. They hadn’t exchanged those three little words, but they hovered on her tongue more and more lately. It was all a lie. She clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms. “I’ll kill him.”

“That won’t fix anything. Not at this juncture.” Papa took the tablet from her mother and set it face down on the desk. “There are consequences for your actions, intentional or not.”

Mama looked a little sick to her stomach. “No matter that it was unintentional, you sleeping with a Verducci puts us in a precarious position with the Capparelli family.”

Rose wanted to protest, but she knew the score. She leaned forward and pressed her fingers to her temples. The pressure did nothing to stop the headache pounding there. Consequences. There were consequences for her actions. As her father was so fond of saying, there was no excuse for ignorance, not with their resources. “I did a background check on him.”

“We know.”

Of course they did. Vasily would have passed on the report she asked for. She was heir, yes, but her parents still ran the business. Even if they had been making more noise about retiring in the past six months. Mama wanted to travel without having to worry about their enemies taking their absence as an invitation to start shit. They couldn’t leave Rose in charge alone, though. No matter that the Russian Romanovs seemed to have finally backed off their determination to see her as lesser because of her gender, the fact remained that their enemies weren’t as progressive. She needed a spouse. She knew it.

She just thought she had more time.

Unfortunately, it seemed the clock had just run out.

Rose lifted her head. “Do the Capparellis know?”

“Da.”

Fuck. “They’re using this to press their suit.” Romeo Capparelli had taken over the family business from his father a year ago, and he’d made clear his intentions to cement an alliance between their two families with a marriage pact. It was how things were done, after all.

“They already have.” Papa doesn’t look away, doesn’t blink. “Romeo wants Lorelei as his wife.”

“No. Absolutely not.” He was handsome and charming and had a smile that never lit up his dark eyes. She couldn’t sentence her little sister to a marriage to him. Lorelei was cunning and ruthless in her own way, but Romeo was a monster. He’d crush her just because he could. “I’ll marry a different Capparelli. One of his siblings—Fabian or Drucilla—or one of the cousins.” The other Capparelli siblings were just as merciless as Romeo, but at least they weren’t in charge of anything. She could find a way to control them.

Except Mama was shaking her head. “That won’t be enough. It’s Romeo who will be the groom.”

Rose straightened. “I know I fucked up, but it’s not like Romeo Capparelli realized there was a Verducci in his territory, either. This isn’t solely on me.”

“You’re fucking his enemy.” Trust Papa to cut to the chase. “He’s taking it personally.”

Damn it. She really had fucked this up. She tried to slow down, tried to think, but in Romeo’s situation, she’d do something similar. There was no denying the insult. If he’d been entertaining one of their enemies the way she’d been entertaining Jackson—no, Dante—then she would have demanded blood. He had them over a barrel, and he knew it. Fuck.

If she wasn’t willing to let her sister pay the price of her foolishness, then there was only one course of action. She knew it’d come to this eventually. Marriage and babies and that whole thing was part of the lifestyle. With IVF as an option, she hadn’t really worried overmuch about the gender of the person she’d eventually say “I do” to, but Romeo Capparelli?

She was exhausted just thinking about spending the rest of her life jockeying for power. “I’ll marry him.”

“He wants—”

She dropped her hands and cut off her father. “I don’t give a fuck what Romeo Capparelli wants. One Romanov daughter is as good as another. This is my mess. I’ll be the one to pay the consequences. Not Lorelei.” Not any of her sisters.

“If you’re sure.”

She wasn’t. She wasn’t even close to sure. By marrying Romeo, it sentenced her to a life of fighting to ensure her people and territory weren’t devoured by his. There was a reason heirs rarely married each other—something non-female members of the underworld normally didn’t have to worry about. It was why other families treated their daughters as pawns to be moved about to secure alliances.

Romeo wanted a Romanov daughter? She’d give him one.

Mama pushed off the chair and gave Papa’s shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll have an ironclad prenup drawn up. You’ll be protected.”

“I can protect myself.” She worked to take the bite out of her tone. Her parents hadn’t put her in this situation. Her own short-sightedness, her own selfishness had. If she’d given in to their gentle pressure a few years ago, she could have married some nice, docile little spouse whom she’d never have to worry about sinking a knife into her ribs. “I made my bed. I’ll deal with laying in it.”

“Rose—”

She pushed to her feet. “But Romeo will do me one courtesy before we officially enter negotiations.”

Papa lifted a single brow. “That courtesy?”

“I’ll deal with Dante Verducci myself.” Tonight. Right fucking now.

He’d made a fool of her, and she wasn’t going to let him live long enough to regret it.