Conceal (Ruthless Love #3)
Prologue
Tatiana
Ilove love.
I know that sounds childish and na?ve, but the idea that there’s some invisible force, powerful feeling, or I don’t even know what, that brings two people together in a way that goes beyond reality is addictive.
It’s a myth, or urban legend, that I’ve never felt before.
I’ve watched Disney movies about romantic love, read Shakespeare about tragic love, and I have a platonic love for my best friend that is bone deep.
And I love my brother as much as I can. Our age gap meant that by the time I wanted to chase him around and hang out with him, he was being trained by our father to take over the family business.
I don’t know if it’s a childhood fantasy or internalized misogyny, but I’m convinced my life will start once I fall in love.
And I’ve been trying.
The moment two people lock eyes across a crowded room and share some internal knowing.
The passionate make-out sessions where you can’t keep your hands to yourself.
The grand gestures and beautiful weddings where you declare your loyalty to each other in front of everyone you know.
I paint lovers holding hands beneath cherry blossom trees.
I collect dog-eared romance novels. I can quote half the lines from You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle.
Somewhere between Disney princesses and Shakespearean tragedies, I became convinced that love was the most powerful force in the universe.
Growing up the daughter of the Maryland Bratva and second to the Pakhan means every boy in our world stayed as far away as they could.
High school was a humiliation ritual of fake friends and awful rumors.
My parents enrolled me in a private school, but being close to DC meant that the kids there were diplomats’ and politicians’ kids, or trust fund nepo-babies.
While my family’s “official” line of business is “imports/exports”, everyone in three states knows what the Chernov last name really means.
Being the daughter of the Maryland Bratva’s Pakhan isn’t exactly conducive to a normal upbringing. Some people wanted to be my friend because they thought I was rich.
Others avoided me because they thought my father would have them killed if I wanted him to.
In either case, I usually ended up alone.
Except for Mikhail. He’s been my constant companion since we were kids, and I found him hiding in a dark alley between two restaurants in Baltimore.
He was about my age, but his baggy clothes were torn and dirty, and he was as skittish as a mouse. He still had dried blood caked around his ear, and I knew he was mine.
It took some convincing, but my father never really paid me any attention, and my mother is drunk or on some cocktail of downers more than she’s not, so they let me drag this random boy home with us.
Dr. Morozov checked him over and determined he had partial hearing loss from a fractured skull, thanks to his drunken father. We’ve been best friends ever since.
But a best friend doesn’t fill that hole in my chest. I want to feel what falling in love feels like. I want someone to fall in love with me. I want that happily-ever-after.
Which is why it’s so disappointing when I walk in on my boyfriend having sex with someone else.