Chapter 11 Ransome
RANSOME
“Ah, the high and mighty Ransome Rozanov! What a rare privilege. To what do we street rats owe the pleasure of your company?” Maverick’s blinding white grin contrasts against his tan face, which is covered in grease as he wipes his hands on a towel.
The air in the garage smells like sweat and motor oil and empty beer cans. Eau de Maverick. It’s not nearly as nice as jasmine, rose, and patchouli.
“Have you been racing again?” I growl. I’m not in the mood for Mav’s bullshit.
Maverick is my best friend. With no living family, he was more or less adopted into the Rozanov clan.
At this point, he’s as good as blood. He’s loyal, he’s dumb as a brick, and he’s reckless.
The latter two are the reasons he’s almost died multiple times.
The first is the main reason I keep him around.
The thick-headed moron keeps me grounded. He also keeps me permanently irritated.
“Racing? If you mean driving no less than twenty over the speed limit on any given road just to keep my edge, then yes, you caught me. If you mean low-key dueling for pinks with Chadovich slime in the less patrolled streets of NYC… then also yes. Guilty as charged.”
He’s about to stick his head back into the guts of the hot rod he’s working on, but right before he does, I slam the hood down, nearly decapitating him on the spot.
“Yo! What gives?”
“You need to cool it,” I warn.
Maverick squares his shoulders. “What’s got you in such a sour mood?” he asks, slumping away to grab a beer from the garage fridge. He offers me one, but I don’t take it. A filth-covered IPA isn’t going to take the edge off. Not this time.
I used to love being in here with him. Right now, though, everything about this place makes my skin crawl. My nerves are raw. My chest is tight.
I used to spend hours in the garage with Mav and Baron…
And Nik.
But those days are gone. Those days are dead. Those days are, quite literally, six feet under and growing cold in one of the city’s most expensive cemeteries.
“I don’t see why you get so bent out of shape about it.
” He pops the cap off his beer and takes a long slug.
“We have the cops in our back pocket. They don’t even jump when they hear a car backfire anymore.
And it feels good making Tristan and his dumbass friends eat gravel.
” He grins and leans back against the work bench.
“You know why.”
Maverick studies me. Blinks. Takes another sip. “Your brother died years ago, Ransome. And it was an accident.”
The mention of Nik’s death feels like stitches being ripped from skin that never healed. I grit my teeth.
“You think Nik’s accident was an accident? You’re really that fucking dense?”
He shrugs. “We got no proof otherwise. Shit like that happens, especially when you’re us.”
“Which is exactly why you need to stop fucking around. My dad’s playing me like a puppet right now in an attempt to keep the peace with the Chadovichs.”
“What peace?” he scoffs. He tosses his empty bottle towards the trash and misses.
It bounces off the rim and rolls across the floor toward me until I stop it with my foot.
Then I scoop it up and toss it into the can.
“As long as Tristan is roaming the streets, making a fuckin’ mess of things as he is wont to do, there will be no peace. ”
I grimace when I see the residual grease on my hands from touching the bottle. “We had drinks today,” I tell him. “My parents, me, the Chadovichs.”
“And?” he asks, opening the hood of the car again.
“And they want a truce.”
Maverick stops. As much shit as I give him, he’s not actually stupid. He knows the game. And he knows how things work when one city has two families fighting to be on top.
“Let me guess. You’re getting married, aren’t you?” He says it like it’s a joke. It makes me want to put my fist through those pearly whites. “So who’s the unlucky bride?”
“Jenica.”
Maverick lets out a low whistle. “Goddamn, brother. I mean, hey, look at the bright side—that’s not the worst bullet that could have come out of this li’l game of Russian Roulette. She’s a fox.”
“She’s a Chadovich.”
“Seeing as how this is about a truce between us and the Chadovichs, yeah, I’d say that makes a fair amount of sense, ol’ buddy. That’s how these truces usually work.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“That’s not how these truces usually work.” He shakes his head and starts flipping a wrench in the air, then bends back into the exposed engine. “So what’s the plan then?”
“I have six months before my dad steps down. And once I’m pakhan, I’m vetoing this bullshit.”
“Can you do that?” he asks from inside the hunk of metal.
“A pakhan can do anything he wants.”
He stands up straight again. “Listen, man, I support your ambition to ransack the monarchy and rewrite the rules. But six months is a long time to kick the can down the road.”
“You think I haven’t already thought about that?”
Maverick is unfazed. “Oh, I’m sure you have. So that’s why I ask—what’s the plan? The actual plan?”
“I’m not going to marry her, I can tell you that much.”
“Even you can’t delay this shit that long. You’d have to marry someone else to stop those wedding bells from ringing. And no, I won’t marry you. You’re not my type.”
For a beat, I almost tell him to fuck off. Then the gears catch. He’s right. My idiot best friend actually had a good idea for a change.
The only clean way to jam up an unwanted wedding is to make it legally impossible. If I’m already married, then I can’t exactly get married again, can I?
No. They’d have to find some other way to make their pathetic truce work. The cameras would pivot, the fathers would grind their teeth, and “tradition” would run headfirst into an unyielding brick wall.
A contract marriage—that’d do it. Fast. Quiet. Paperwork airtight—prenup, NDA, timelines, an exit clause dated six months and one day from now. Something that looks holy to the public and reads bulletproof to the lawyers.
But who is reckless enough to play the part?
Marrying a clueless civilian would mean putting a bullseye on her forehead—one tabloid headline and the Chadovich jackals would smell blood and pounce. Another Bratva daughter just tightens the leash around my throat. A socialite keeps the optics clean, but the leaks would never stop.
What I need is someone who can obey orders, keep secrets, handle pressure, read a room without asking questions. Someone who already knows the schedule I live and the masks I wear. Someone already in my orbit.
Someone like… Amara.
I decide I’m tired of the conversation, grunt goodbye to Maverick, and head home—to my penthouse, not the estate.
The last thing I feel like dealing with is other people, and when your family owns a twenty-thousand square foot mansion, people think they can come when they like and stay as long as they please.
You never know who you’re going to run into.
As I drive downtown, I ponder. Maverick is right about one thing: Jenica is physically attractive. But that doesn’t change several factors.
One, I am not going to bend to arranged marriage, Bratva tradition or not. I’m no fucking puppet.
Two, I need more than a Pilates-sculpted ass and a pretty face if I am going to come home to the same woman every night. Jenica may be a good lay (I assume; I don’t know and have no intention of finding out) but that doesn’t make up for the blood running in her veins.
I get home, park, and take the elevator upstairs.
I hang my keys on the hook as the door closes behind me and reset the lock.
I change it every couple days—one of the many security layers necessary when you walk around with the name Rozanov.
The code is already different than it was when Amara was here.
My mind flickers back to the other day. To seeing her with that dipshit at the Thai place, his hand territorially clamped on her upper thigh. The panic in her eyes that her supposed-to-be friend didn’t even notice because she was too busy batting her eyes at her own date.
Amara… I can’t believe I’m even considering it. She is a woman, though, isn’t she? A smart, hard-working, dedicated woman who shouldn’t be hanging out with gutter-dwelling imbeciles with cheap tequila on their breaths, wandering hands, and nothing but fucking on the brain.
Who’s to say she couldn’t play the role?
I set the thoughts aside. I’m going to drive myself fucking crazy like this. I take a shower and go through the motions of shedding all the skins I have to wear as Ransome Rozanov.
CEO.
Future pakhan.
Friend.
Son.
Fiancé-to-be…
Fucking hell. That last one has to go. I cannot, and will not marry Jenica Chadovich. No matter what.
In need of enough whiskey to take the edge off but not enough to get sloppy, I open the cabinet and reach for a highball glass.
Then I stop.
There’s a water glass out of place. I’d never put it back there, not like that. Not with that smudge right on the rim.
And there is a smudge. When I hold it up to the light to be sure, there it is. A lip pressed into the glass. It’s half-erased, like someone tried to rub it in a hurry but didn’t quite finish the job.
Instantly, I know: It was her.
She put her mouth to this glass. This fucking glass. The thought has my dick hard and my mind racing all over again.
I fill the glass with two fingers of rye and take it to my office, setting it down under my desk lamp so I can see the half-lip-print.
I don’t drink at first. I just stare. I just imagine.
Her lips, touching things that belong to me…
Her eyes, wide and dark, innocent, but… not that innocent…
Her scent. Fuck, her scent… It has this way of snaking around my lungs and seeping into my cells, intoxicating me to the point of being dizzy.
I take a sip.
It has the intended effect. As my nerves ease up a little, I think about Maverick and the conversation we just had. That’s another scent that has more power over me than I care to admit.
Everything about the garage floods my head with memories of my brother. Nik was always in there with us, taking cars apart and putting them back together. Laughing with us, joking with us, just fucking being with us.
I need to bury those memories before they get out of hand. So I take another sip, and down the hatch it goes.
And Nik stays where he ought to be: six feet deep.
I settle back in my chair. As I do, my eyes wander the room, stopping on the office closet. My gaze narrows.
I don’t open that door often. I don’t keep much in there, so there’s no need to. But it’s ajar. About three inches.
I get up and pull the door fully open. My eyes scan from top to bottom and—hold on.
What the fuck is that?
I bend down, picking up a foreign object off the floor.
It’s a hairclip. Gold, shiny, with a… phoenix, I think? … carved into the metal. Instinctively, I bring it into my nose and my senses are immediately flooded, like a wave breaking through a dam.
Jasmine. Rose. Patchouli.
I turn it over in my hand, and my frowning lips tug slowly into a smirk. Two details missed. The lipstick on the glass, and now, this.
“Amara…” I whisper, closing the closet. “You’ve been a bad girl.”