Mafia Romance Bundle — 3 Books

Chapter 1

Valentina

My father's telephone starts ringing again while I'm naked in the sea.

The sound carries out of his empty house, thin and furious beneath the palms, then skips across the bright water to where I float beyond the dock. It rings twelve times before surrendering.

It'll try again.

Lawyers have stamina when they smell unattended property.

I float on my back with my ears beneath the warm water, listening to the distant churn of a boat. Sun burns red through my closed eyelids. When I open them, my wet curls drift across my cheek, and beyond the dock Miami's glass towers glitter in the haze. From here, the city looks clean enough to forgive.

I know better. I grew up there.

Seven days ago, my father ate six oysters, half a tomahawk steak, potatoes whipped with enough butter to stop a younger heart, and a chocolate soufflé he criticized for collapsing in the center. Then his own heart collapsed in the elevator between the restaurant and his penthouse.

He died before the doors opened.

At the funeral, women he hadn't touched in twenty years cried into black veils. Men he actively despised squeezed my hand and told me Pavel Malenkov had been a visionary. One developer kissed both my cheeks while mentally pricing the hotel behind me. My father's attorney asked whether I understood the responsibilities arriving with the estate before anyone had lowered the coffin.

My mother's been dead for nine years. I have no siblings, no stepmother, and no secret second family waiting to divide the ugly parts of grief into manageable portions. The chair beside mine remained empty while six hundred people watched to see how the sole Malenkov heir performed devastation.

I wore pale blue because Pavel hated predictable women.

Nobody approved. He would've.

I told him responsibility could wait until after dessert.

There'd been no dessert.

That feels like the week's most unnecessary cruelty.

The telephone begins again.

I sink beneath the surface.

Underwater, I don't have a father. I have no board, no funeral, no newspapers debating whether a twenty-three-year-old party girl can control a company whose elevators are older than she is. There's only blue-green light moving across my body and the clean pull in my lungs.

I stay down until my lungs ache for air.

When I surface, the telephone has stopped. A gull stands on the end of the dock with its head tilted, judging me for losing a battle against office equipment.

“He never answered it either,” I tell the bird.

The gull screams.

“Exactly.”

I roll onto my stomach and swim toward shore.

The island curves around a protected cove less than three miles from the mainland, close enough for the towers to glitter through the haze and far enough that nobody reaches me by accident. Sea grapes crowd one stretch of pale beach. Mangroves knot their dark roots along another. My father's house sits above both, long and low beneath the palms, made from coral limestone, green tile, smoked glass, and enough bronze screening to turn sunlight into patterns across every floor.

It's beautiful because Pavel paid people with better taste than his own.

The service courtyard is the exception. An ugly limestone wall cuts across one side, too thick, too blank, and placed precisely where it ruins the clean line from the kitchen passage to the water. I asked him once why it existed. He said infrastructure in the tone he used when he wanted a conversation buried under a dull word.

I hated the wall before he died.

Death hasn't improved it.

I pull myself onto the swim platform. Water streams from my hair, splashing the hot boards between my feet. My white bikini lies in a careless heap on a lounger beside my phone and an untouched towel. I brought both outside to satisfy habit, then decided there was nobody left on the island whose opinion required fabric.

Yesterday I sent the chef home after he tried to coax me into eating lunch. The cleaner followed when she began folding black funeral dresses I had thrown across three rooms. I dismissed the gardeners this morning because one of them kept watching me through the bougainvillea with the expression people use around explosives and newly orphaned women.

The dockmaster took the early launch to the mainland after I told him I could tie up my own boat.

I can't, particularly.

But the boat is still attached, which makes us both successful so far.

My phone glows with nineteen unread messages. Helena Price accounts for eleven of them. The chairman of Malenkov Crown Holdings has called twice. Three numbers have no names. Two messages are from women inviting me somewhere with loud music because grief becomes embarrassing when it lasts longer than a week.

I turn the phone facedown.

The island belongs to me now. The hotels, towers, marinas, houses, parking structures, vacant lots, and acres of South Florida dirt hidden inside several dozen subsidiaries belong to me too, but those are words on paper. This place is warm stone beneath my feet. It's salt drying on my skin. It's a bedroom where my father slept six nights a year and a wine cellar stocked by someone who rarely finished a glass.

Pavel gave me anything that could be delivered.

Cars arrived under white covers. Jewelry appeared before birthdays he spent in another country. When I turned sixteen, he transferred this island into one of the family holding structures and told me it'd all be mine eventually.

His final voicemail remains unheard on my phone. He left it the afternoon before he died, most likely to remind me about an opening, complain about photographs of me leaving a nightclub, or ask whether I planned to attend a dinner where he'd spend twenty minutes introducing me and three hours forgetting I was there. I can't listen because if the message is ordinary, then his last words to me will be exactly like all the others.

If it's tender, I may never forgive him for waiting until nobody could answer.

He meant the company.

I chose to believe he meant the paradise.

A vibration enters the soles of my feet.

At first I mistake it for a yacht passing too close. The water inside the cove shivers. Palm fronds turn their pale undersides to the wind.

Then the sound drops over the house.

Rotors.

I step away from the lounger and look up.

A matte-black helicopter sweeps in from the west, low enough to make the glass walls flash. It circles once over the island as though assessing where best to plant a flag, then angles toward the helipad beyond the dock.

“No,” I say aloud.

The pilot can't hear me, which does nothing to improve his manners.

I snatch up my phone and call the mainland security office. The line rings while the helicopter descends. Wind tears at my wet curls. My bikini lifts from the lounger, tumbles once across the boards, and vanishes into the cove.

That saves me a decision.

The security line sends me to voicemail.

Of course it does. Pavel hired people to prevent strangers from reaching him, not to help his daughter after he became unavailable.

The skids settle onto the white circle. The engine keeps whining while the rotors slow, beating hot air and salt across the dock. I recognize nothing painted on the aircraft beyond a small black emblem near the rear door: a geometric mark built from three interlocking angles.

I've seen it before.

Not on a helicopter. On temporary walls around construction sites, stamped into steel deliveries, printed discreetly beneath the name Chernov Infrastructure. My father once spent an entire dinner complaining that Anton Chernov had underbid him on a municipal project, then purchased the concrete supplier when Pavel tried to delay him.

Pavel had sounded offended by the vulgarity of competent revenge.

The helicopter door opens.

Two men descend first. Dark trousers, light shirts, jackets despite the heat. They spread without looking at one another, one taking the dock, the other the path toward the house. A third man follows in a pale linen suit, brown-haired and easy in his body, the kind of handsome that earns invitations before anyone asks what he does for a living.

He looks directly at me, takes in the fact that I'm naked, and doesn't so much as stumble.

Professional. How tedious.

The final man steps down, and every other man on the helipad shifts subtly toward him, waiting for his next move.

He's enormous.

Not swollen or sculpted into something decorative. He's simply built on a scale that makes the helicopter appear less expensive behind him. Broad shoulders fill a black suit jacket. His body narrows only slightly at the waist, heavy and solid beneath tailoring sharp enough to make all that size civilized. Tattoos cover his hands and climb above his collar in black fragments. Salt-and-pepper hair is cut close at the sides, thicker on top. Gray stubble darkens a hard jaw.

The gray isn't a fashion choice. He's old enough to have stopped pretending maturity happens automatically, and young enough that nothing about his body has accepted decline. Men my age buy watches, cultivate stubble, and raise their voices until somebody mistakes volume for command. This man steps out of a helicopter and two armed men rearrange the island around him.

It's an obscenely attractive distinction.

His face is almost unfairly intact for a man who lands uninvited with armed guards.

Straight nose. Heavy brows. A mouth made severe by habit rather than shape. Steel-gray eyes settle on me from across the helipad.

They don't dart away.

They don't crawl downward either.

He looks once, completely, then returns to my face with the calm of a man who's inspected something valuable and found no visible defect.

Heat moves over my skin that has nothing to do with the sun.

I dislike him immediately.

The pale-suited man says something to him in Russian. The large man answers without looking away from me.

I don't speak enough Russian to follow the words. I speak enough men to understand the arrangement.

The handsome one is allowed charm. The armed ones are allowed violence. The silver-dark one in the center is allowed everything.

My phone remains useless in my hand.

The emergency cabinet is mounted beside the dock gate ten feet to my right.

I walk toward it.

Wet footprints mark the boards behind me. The pale-suited man watches with interest. One of the security men touches two fingers to his earpiece. The large man remains still while I open the cabinet and remove the orange marine flare pistol.

It weighs less than a proper gun and looks significantly more ridiculous.

I point it at his chest anyway.

Both security men draw their weapons.

Metal clears leather with two neat sounds. One gun aims at my head. The other fixes on the center of my bare torso.

My body goes cold despite the heat.

The large man lifts one tattooed hand.

“Lower them.”

His voice is deep without effort, American shaped around something older. Nobody hesitates. Both guns drop, though neither disappears.

The pale-suited man looks faintly disappointed.

The large man walks toward me.

I keep the flare pistol raised. “This is private property. You had no permission to land here.”

He stops several feet away. Up close, he's older than the men who normally orbit me and much more dangerous-looking than anyone should be under tropical sunlight. Fine lines cut beside his eyes.

His gaze holds mine. “Why are you naked?”

“Because I was swimming before you dropped armed men into my garden.”

The corner of his mouth shifts. It isn't a smile. It's the recognition that one might exist under different conditions.

“Valentina Malenkova,” he says.

I tighten my finger around the flare pistol's grip. “If you already know my name, introductions should be easy for you.”

“Anton Chernov.”

The name lands exactly where I expect it to.

Construction. Concrete. Ports. Men my father called criminals only when he was jealous of their margins. Stories told at Miami tables after enough wine had made the speakers brave: Anton Chernov built half his legitimate fortune from the ground up and washed the other half through it.

I glance at the interlocking emblem on the helicopter. It resembles three steel supports forced into the same narrow space. Even the logo looks incapable of yielding.

His gaze flicks to the flare pistol. “Put that down.”

“Leave.”

“No.”

The simplicity is more offensive than a threat.

I raise the barrel another inch. His men tense. Anton doesn't.

“My father died seven days ago,” I tell him. “If you flew here to offer condolences, you're late. If you flew here for business, call my attorney. If you flew here because you confuse a black helicopter with a personality, circle the city until somebody is impressed.”

The pale-suited man looks toward the water, hiding the beginning of a smile.

Anton notices. Of course he does.

“Lev,” he says.

The handsome man smooths his expression. “Yes.”

“Check the house.”

I shift the flare pistol toward him. “Lev checks nothing.”

Anton doesn't look away from me. “No staff answered when we called.”

“I dismissed the household staff,” I say. “The security office disappeared on its own.”

His eyes move across the vacant dock and the open path to the house. “You shouldn't be here without protection.”

The concern would be easier to tolerate from somebody who hadn't arrived with guns. I tighten my grip on the flare pistol. “You don't get to decide that.”

Lev remains beside the helicopter, clearly deciding that checking the house isn't worth crossing the naked woman with the flare gun. Smart. I like him best so far.

Anton takes another step.

My pulse strikes hard beneath my tongue. He's close enough now that firing wouldn't be a warning. The flare would hit him, burn through black wool, and turn this very expensive invasion into screaming flesh.

He knows it.

He looks down the orange barrel, then back at me.

“Your father sold me this island,” he says.

For a second, the sentence fails to assemble.

The bay glitters behind him. Rotor blades tick overhead as they slow. Somewhere near the roof, a palm leaf scrapes across bronze screen.

“No,” I say.

“Along with the controlling interest in Malenkov Crown Holdings.”

I laugh once because the alternative would be giving his absurdity serious space inside my head. “My father didn't sell you my company.”

“He accepted my money.”

“My father accepted money for breathing near people. That doesn't mean you bought the air.”

Anton reaches inside his jacket.

The security men raise their weapons halfway. I hold my ground while he removes a folded document wallet rather than a gun.

He offers it to me.

“I'm not putting down the flare.”

“Use your other hand.”

I take the wallet. Heavy cream paper sits inside beneath a clear protective cover. The first page carries my father's full legal name, the name of the holding company, Anton's signature, and a date from three weeks ago.

The language below swims into dense lines. Purchase. Controlling interest. Subsidiaries and holdings. Consideration received.

Pavel's signature slashes across the bottom in black ink.

I know the shape. I've watched it appear on birthday cards delivered by assistants.

“This is fake.”

“The signature is genuine,” Anton says.

“Then it's void.”

“That'll be an expensive argument.”

“For you.” I close the wallet and press it back against his chest. The muscle beneath his shirt doesn't yield enough to be polite. “Then sue my dead father. You're standing on my island.”

My phone begins vibrating on the dock table.

Helena Price flashes across the screen.

Anton glances toward it. “You should answer.”

I back toward the table without lowering the flare pistol. Anton makes no attempt to follow. I pick up the phone and accept.

“Helena, I'm having a minor trespassing problem.”

“Are you alone?” Her voice is clipped hard enough to cut.

I look at the four men occupying my helipad. “That question feels insulting under the circumstances.”

“Valentina, listen carefully. Is Anton Chernov with you?”

The use of his full name drains some of the performance from my posture.

Anton watches me.

“Yes.” I put the call on speaker and set the phone beside my abandoned towel. “He says Pavel sold him the island and the company.”

Silence answers first.

Then Helena exhales. “The contract is authentic.”

“No,” I say.

“Pavel signed it. The signature has already been verified against the corporate records. Funds cleared through escrow.”

I stare at Anton. He doesn't look satisfied. He looks patient, which is worse.

“One contract doesn't give him the right to land here,” I say.

“There are three.”

The words sharpen the air.

Helena continues before I can ask. “We found two additional agreements during the overnight review. One with a Kirov entity. One with Vlasenko. Same shares. Same subsidiaries. Same effective time.”

Rico Kirov.

Boris Vlasenko.

Even people who pretend not to know Miami's criminal families lower their voices around those names.

I look at Anton. “You knew.”

“Yes.”

No excuse. No surprise. He came anyway.

Helena's voice pushes through the thud of my pulse. “Each agreement records full payment. Each buyer is seeking emergency relief. Nobody has priority that we can establish this morning.”

“He sold the same company three times.”

“That's what the documents indicate.”

“And then he died.”

“Yes.” Helena softens the single word, which makes me hate it more.

I turn away from Anton and look toward the house. Smoked glass reflects the cove, the palms, and a woman standing naked with a weapon while four men wait to see whether her inheritance exists.

My father gave me everything except explanations.

Now three criminal organizations have receipts.

Humiliation arrives beneath the fear. Pavel didn't merely make a terrible deal and leave me to repair it. He performed the same betrayal three times, took the money, and left his only child standing naked in front of the consequences. Every person at the funeral who called him brilliant may have known more about his final weeks than I did.

I wonder how many of them squeezed my hand to feel whether I was already shaking.

“What happens?” I ask.

“A judge may freeze extraordinary transactions today and appoint supervision over the company. Routine operations should continue. You need to return to Miami, stop dismissing employees, and meet me before the first appearance.”

“I'm not leaving the island,” I say.

“Valentina.” Helena turns my name into a warning.

“It's mine.”

“At this moment, that's the question everyone is paying lawyers to answer.”

The sentence lands lower than cruelty because Helena doesn't intend it cruelly.

I end the call.

For several seconds, only the water moves.

Anton stands on my helipad in his black suit, surrounded by men who obey the smallest movement of his hand. He has a contract carrying my father's signature. Two other Bratva bosses have their own. Somewhere in Miami, clerks are stamping requests to place my entire life under court supervision while the body responsible lies in marble beneath a ridiculous quantity of white roses.

I lift the flare pistol again.

Anton looks at the weapon, then at me.

“Now that we agree the island matters,” he says, “we can discuss what you intend to do with it.”