Inked Adonis (Litvinov Bratva Book 1)

“Hello? Hope? Ms. Hope Levy?” I wave a chocolate croissant under her nose. “Are you still with me?”

Hope drags her eyes from her laptop for the fifth time in the last five minutes. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I’m here.”

I shake my head. “A human-shaped creature that looks like Hope is here, but you must not be Hope. Because the Hope I know would’ve called violent dibs on this chocolate croissant before I even opened the lid.”

To make up for being gone the last two weeks—and the fact that Sam made me fifteen minutes late on my first official day back in the Hope’s Helpers office by pinning me to the shower wall and eating me out until I cried—I came armed with pastries from La Cantina to woo my best friend into forgiving me for my absence.

So far, she’s shown very little interest.

She finally rips her gaze away from the screen, but her usual megawatt smile is dimmed to energy-saving mode. Before I can question it, she takes a deliberate bite of the croissant. “Fine. I’m here. Tell me about your billionaire sexcation.”

“There she is.” I sink into the chair across from her desk. “The fact that it took you this long to ask is concerning. Usually, you’re foaming at the mouth for details about my love life.”

She smiles in a way that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. But before I can ask about it, she leans forward. “So? Does he have super-secret bedroom moves unknown to those of us who tightrope the poverty line? I bet the sex ed at his private school was really thorough.”

“On second thought…” I check the nonexistent watch on my wrist. “Oh, my, would you look at that? I have a very important schnauzer walking appointment.”

“That’s not for another hour. Stop trying to get out of this and talk to me. How are things with Samuil?”

Just the mention of his name makes my face hot. I take a bite of my strawberry cream cheese danish to give myself time to come up with… something to say. Something that isn’t me jumping on her desk and recounting every detail of the bath we shared last night. Or the car ride the day before. Or, or, or…

Then again, Hope might actually love that. All of it.

“Things with Sam are… good.”

Hope flops back in her seat like I shot her. “‘Good?’ You abandoned me for two weeks with a hot billionaire, and you’re gonna sit here and tell me things are ‘good’? No. No way. Unacceptable.” Before I can respond, she reaches across the desk and steals my pastry away.

“Hey!”

“Details earn back your breakfast. I don’t make the rules; I just enforce them.”

“I paid for those!”

“And I had to walk Mrs. Crenshaw’s demon-spawn hairless cat while you were gone.” She takes a vindictive bite. “Life isn’t fair. Spill.”

Mrs. Crenshaw’s cat is indeed creepy. Also, it hates walks. Because—and I’m not sure Mrs. Crenshaw and her coke bottle glasses know this—it’s a cat. But she pays premium rates to have someone shepherd her trembling, naked gremlin down the sidewalk, so I live with it.

“Fine,” I relent. “We had sex.”

Hope swats my answer away with a bored hand. “Obviously! If you’d ghosted me for two weeks without getting laid, I’d fire you on principle.”

“We need an HR department,” I mutter. But Hope just waves my kidnapped breakfast back and forth like the hands of a ticking clock. I groan. “I’m moving in with him!”

The danish hits the floor with a sad splat.

“You dropped it!”

But before I can utilize the scientifically-sound, germ-free five-second rule, Hope hurls herself across the desk and grabs me by the shoulders. “You what? Moving in, like, together? You’re living together? With him?!”

“Yes, Hope. That’s generally what moving in together means. He’ll be there. I’ll be there. Sometimes, we might even be in the same room.”

Hope screams.

The screaming continues as I walk her through the last two weeks—adeptly maneuvering around the kidnapping, extortion, and possible murder that may or may not have occurred.

As my recap comes to a close with only the most surface-level highlights from the dinner, drive home, and bath from last night, Hope lets out a long, low whistle. “You lucky, lucky bitch. I’m not sure if I should be happy for you or wildly jealous. Actually, I’ve decided,” she announces. “It’s both. Mark my words, you’re gonna have a ring on your finger by Christmas.”

I shake my head. Moving in with Samuil has already maxed out my brain’s ability to process major life changes. If I try to think about anything beyond that, my neurons might go on strike.

Hope has no such issues, though. She opens her laptop, prattling on about the pros and cons of lab-grown diamonds, when suddenly, she freezes mid-sentence.

“Hope…?”

She blinks away from the screen and tries on a thin smile. “Sorry. Just checking reviews.”

“Since when? You think reviews are public journals for the miserable. You never check them.”

“Well, things changed while you were gone.”

My heart drops. Hope told me she would be fine without me, and I was distracted enough to believe her. But all the signs are there now that I should’ve called bullshit.

I know Hope. I know that fake tremble in her smile. I know that she wrings her hands when she lies. I know when she’s good and when she’s not.

And right now, she’s one stubbed toe away from a total mental breakdown.

“I’m so sorry, Hope. I should’ve— I’ve been rambling on about me, but I didn’t even think to ask what happened while I was gone.”

Hope chews on the inside of her cheek. “I’ll tell you, but don’t freak out, okay?”

“Too late. I’m freaked. Tell me what’s happening.”

“Katerina Alekseeva paid me a visit two days ago.”

She might as well have said the specter of death floated in for a chat. “Hope! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now,” she says. “Plus, it took me this long to recover. That woman is terrifying.”

“She attacked you?!” Katerina may be scary, but I’m instantly prepared for a no-holds-barred fight to the death if she so much as touched Hope.

“Verbally. And emotionally. In some ways, I might have preferred she hit me. She’s tall, but I could take her. She probably hasn’t eaten carbs since 2010.”

“This is about Rufus, isn’t it?” The guilt-snake around my ribs squeezes tighter. “God, this is all my fault.”

“Well, it’s sort of your fault,” she admits. “But Rufus is just the appetizer. The main course—the thing really eating her up inside—is that you’re fucking her ex.”

My jaw drops. “How could she possibly know that?”

“I’m sure she has evil, judgmental eyes everywhere.” Hope shrugs. “In any case, her issue isn’t that you’re walking her dog—it’s that you’re riding her man.”

“Sam is not ‘her man.’”

“Because he’s yours?” she asks coyly.

I roll my eyes, hoping she doesn’t notice my blush. “Focus, Hope. What did Katerina want?”

“Sam’s balls on a platter, your head on a spike, and for the world to worship at her feet.” When I continue to stare at her blankly, she sighs. “Revenge, NoNo. She wants revenge.”

“She wants me fired?”

Hope nods. “I told her to get bent, obviously. But then she threatened to unleash social media hell and bury us in legal fees. I’ve been glued to the screen, waiting for her army of paid trolls to descend. And now, descend they have. It’s a bloodbath.”

I launch to my feet. “I’ll quit. Right now. I’ll write a resignation letter in my own blood if I have to. Call her and tell her I’m gone. Your business can’t go down because of my⁠—”

“Oh, sit your ass back down,” Hope commands. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“But… the smear campaign… the lawsuit…”

“She gave me twenty-four hours to comply. I wrote her a check yesterday that made my hand shake. Hopefully, that’ll be enough to make her crawl back to whatever luxury condo in hell she came from.”

“You paid her?” I gasp. “Hope! You can’t afford⁠—”

“I didn’t. Your boyfriend did.”

The words stop me cold. “Come again?”

“I don’t even know how he found out,” she says with a shrug. “But a few hours after Hurricane Katerina blew through, a very hot delivery guy named Myles showed up with a blank check made out in Katerina’s name. He said Samuil sent him. He also said I had beautiful eyes. If I wasn’t still shaking from Katerina’s emotional terrorism, I might’ve asked for his number.”

“Sam didn’t tell me any of this.” My knees give way, and I fall back into my chair.

“I gathered that from your slack jaw.” She shakes her head. “It says a lot about a man when he can pay off your best friend’s blacklisted debts and doesn’t even feel compelled to use it to impress you.”

“He should have told me. You should have told me! This entire mess exists because of me.”

“Actually, this exists because your boyfriend’s ex is psychotic. Lucky for you, though, Sam’s taste improved dramatically post-divorce.”

She’s trying to lighten the mood, because that’s what Hope does—she turns darkness into light like some kind of emotional alchemist.

But I can’t think about Katerina’s awful taste or Sam’s improved judgment. All I can think about is Hope’s business going up in flames.

“If Katerina goes nuclear, you have to fire me, Hope. You built this business from the ground. You can’t let it get taken down because of me. I won’t let you.”

“When—if—that bridge appears, we’ll torch it together.” Hope’s smile slips just enough to show the fear beneath. “Armed with flaming pitchforks and enough holy water to drown the demon queen. Because there’s no way in hell that frigid witch is splitting up this dynamic duo.”

She slides the pastry box toward me, but my appetite has vanished. Sam swooped in and handled this like he handles everything—with money and power. And while part of me is pathetically grateful, another part feels like he just confirmed every fear I had about what moving in with him would mean.

That I’m not his equal. I’m something he needs to protect and manage.

“What’s happening in that head of yours?” Hope asks softly.

“Sam fixed this because he could. Because it was easy for him.” I trace patterns in the condensation on my coffee cup. “But Katerina… this was personal for her. And I don’t think a blank check will make her forget that I’m sleeping in her ex-husband’s bed.”

“You think she’ll try something else?”

“I think…” I meet Hope’s eyes. “I think Sam paying her off just proved I’m exactly what she said I am—his latest acquisition. And I think she’s going to make sure everyone in Chicago knows it.”

Hope reaches across the desk and squeezes my hand. “Then we’ll handle it. Together. The way we always have.”

But as I head out for my first appointment, her words don’t bring their usual comfort. Because for the first time since we started this business, I’m not sure friendship and determination will be enough to protect us from what’s coming.

Sam’s world plays by different rules.

And I just dragged my best friend into the game.