Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Severin Volkov
The party had been utterly boring, and I’d done everything in my power to avoid my ex-fiancée, Neeve Callahan.
When I was twenty-three, my father negotiated a deal with Cormac Callahan for me to marry his eldest daughter, who was seventeen at the time.
Suffice it to say, I had no interest. But I agreed.
I broke up with my girlfriend—love of my life, Xeniya Morozova.
I did it to keep her safe. At the time, I didn’t know it wouldn’t matter.
She died three days later, and I never got the chance to take it back while she was still alive.
Eventually, I called it off.
Because there was never anyone I wanted to marry besides Xeniya, and I promised myself I never would.
Which was why tonight felt so fucking awful. Because while I had every intention of calling off my next engagement too, it was still part of the deal I planned to negotiate with the Irish.
I would marry one of their princesses. In return, they would offer me stability, protection, and intel.
I just needed to prolong the engagement long enough to secure my foothold in the Russian mafia. Then I would convince whichever poor girl they’d choose for me to call it off.
I could get inventive if I needed to.
Perhaps I’d push another man into her path. Maybe she’d get pregnant by him. It didn’t matter how I got her to call it off. I just would.
I would never marry, and I never intended to have heirs.
Mikhail could do that for both of us. Unlike my father, I would allow illegitimate children to become heirs.
After all, I was already raising Mikhail’s daughter almost entirely on my own.
My father refused to do it, and Mikhail was always overseas running our business in Russia.
Mikhail, unfortunately, was not very paternal and had no interest in taking Aurora with him. So, alas, I was her guardian.
She was not here tonight, of course. But most of the Russian mafia’s brigadiers were along with the Irish mob’s underbosses.
And, of course, my ex-fiancée, who might end the night as my current fiancée.
I had no interest in her. Redheads weren’t really my thing—or at least that’s what I thought until my eyes landed on her.
The redheaded goddess in the blush dress.
She was a whisper of a long-lost memory, like my brain had locked onto something long before I ever would.
I noticed the shape of her body first. Her waist dipped sharply inward before flaring out to her hips, the pale pink fabric molding to every curve. My gaze traced the slope of her ribs to the swell of her ass, then down the sweep of her thighs to her long, toned legs. She was carved to perfection.
Every inch of her reminded me of my Oduvanchik…
Of her.
If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel her legs locked around my waist, my hands gripping her hips as I drove into her, murmuring filth into her ear while she gasped my name.
I could hear Xeniya’s low, seductive voice again—the soft catch of her breath when I bit her earlobe, the way she pressed her lips together to muffle her cries as I fucked her senseless.
My Xeniya.
I grew hard just thinking about it.
But when my gaze lifted to the elegant line of this woman’s neck and the tumble of cinnamon curls brushing her shoulders, I knew she wasn’t mine.
She never would be.
Xeniya was dead.
I had watched her die. Over and over again. Rewinding the footage and torturing myself. Again and again.
One moment, she was alive and smiling—radiant, beautiful—and the next, she was nothing.
Gone in an instant.
Gone in a mist of red.
Red like this woman’s hair.
I took a long sip of whiskey, letting the burn smother whatever had lodged inside me. And yes, I probably should have drunk vodka like a good Russian, but there was nothing good about me.
“Who is that?” I asked Maks, my head guard.
But it wasn’t Maks who answered.
“That is Keira Callahan,” Dimitri Morozov said. “Cormac’s niece. She’s from London, and has a British accent, not an Irish one, and she’s the best hacker in the Irish mafia.”
Beautiful and smart. A hacker like Xeniya always wanted to be. Apparently, I had a type.
“I am sure it was absolutely necessary to note that she has a British accent,” Maks said, laughing.
“I’m thorough.”
Maks shook his head. “We know.”
Their banter faded into background noise as my attention fixed on the redhead again. She was on her third glass of champagne, drinking it like water.
Her skin was porcelain, nearly the same shade as the dress. She was pale. Too pale.
So far, I’d only seen the edge of her profile and the faint curve of her mouth. Her back had been toward me, but I already knew her face would match the rest of her. Stunning.
I inhaled when she finally turned.
For one reckless second, I hoped.
But I knew it wouldn’t be her.
Xeniya had golden-white skin with a slight olive undertone. She tanned the moment sunlight touched her. She got her coloring from her mother, an Italian mafia princess. But this woman was so pale she could have been a corpse.
As she faced me, the honey brown of her eyes caught mine—and lingered far too long. She studied me like a mortician, taking in my broad shoulders, corded muscle, and severe expression. Her gaze cut into me like a scalpel. Precise and quick. And she liked what she saw.
Her lips tilted with amusement before her eyes drifted away.
Her eyes were so vivid and unique that I could even make out the warm color beneath her square-framed glasses.
Freckles dusted her cheeks and her nose, framing her sharp, soprano-like cheekbones. Even the tilt of her mouth tugged at something familiar in me. But she wasn’t Xeniya. Strikingly similar but utterly different.
And just as tempting.
That was a problem.
I hadn’t fucked another person since my Oduvanchik. I had never intended to. But as I watched Keira Callahan lower her glass and glance back at me beneath thick lashes, I understood one thing with absolute clarity:
The woman was dangerous.
And she might become my newest obsession.
“You know,” Dimitri said, drawing my attention back to him, “she’d be a good option for marriage. Your father wanted you to marry an Irish mafia princess. She is Irish and a mafia princess.”
The glare I cut him could have drawn blood. I hated when anyone brought up what my father wanted.
“I am sure my father would be delighted to know that I am finally planning to take an Irish wife.”
“Are you?” Dimitri asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Interesting.”
I ignored the last comment and the amusement beneath it. “It’s the best way to broker an alliance, isn’t it?”
I wasn’t actually going to marry anyone—least of all an Irish girl—simply because my father wanted it. But no one needed to know that. I would burn this city and every enemy I had to the ground before I appeased my father.
If he wanted to use me as a political bargaining tool, I would make sure, even kidnapped, even dead, he never succeeded.
He would never get his way.
I would not marry a mafia princess.
But… I might as well fuck this one and pretend to get engaged to her.
Thirteen years of self-imposed punishment—of torture—was long enough.
Maybe it was time to unlock the cage. My cock certainly wanted its freedom.
But even the thought felt like a betrayal, and I didn’t know whether I would ever be able to go through with it.