Inked Athena (Litvinov Bratva Book 2)

We’ve been driving on the same bumpy, one-lane road for half an hour with nothing more than Highland cows and Nova’s simmering rage to keep us company.

She hasn’t spoken directly to me since we left the yacht. Smart girl—talking would mean acknowledging that I exist, and right now, she’s determined to prove I don’t.

Even when Myles swerves into the passing lane without warning, sending her tumbling toward my lap, she rights herself without a glance in my direction.

A camper van blasts past us, nearly taking off our side mirror.

“Fucking tourists,” I mutter.

“We’re tourists, too.” Nova’s voice drips with disdain. “Wherever the hell we are, I know it’s not Chicago.”

Again, Myles catches my eyes in the rearview mirror.

Again, I ignore him.

I planned to tell Nova where we were headed once we were on the plane, but she spent the entire flight either throwing up in the toilet or trying to steal a burner phone from Vlad. He caught her elbow-deep in his suitcase and discreetly sent her back to her seat, but I got a text less than a minute later informing me of the “incident.”

Nothing happens with her that I don’t know about.

Except, of course, in that stubborn head of hers.

Who was she going to call? I told her to trust me. I told her I was taking care of her. That should’ve been enough.

Clearly, it wasn’t, and mistrust breeds mistrust, or some shit like that, which is why I chose to keep her in the dark about our final destination. That and she really fucking pissed me off.

Myles is enjoying the tension a little too much. I continue to ignore him even as he starts to whistle “All Star” by Smash Mouth for the third time in as many minutes. Let him enjoy the tension. I’m too busy wondering how Nova will react when she sees where we’re headed.

I may have bought the castle during a low point, with visions of living happily off the grid and as far as humanly possible from Katerina, but those dreams are nothing but ash now. They crumbled to dust on the yacht and burnt to a crisp on the plane.

I need to be connected to the world because, whether Nova wants to acknowledge it or not, the world is coming for me. I need to be prepared.

That’s tough to do in the middle of fucking nowhere.

“Enough with the goddamn whistling!” I bark.

Nova flinches and curls closer to the door. “I don’t mind the whistling, Myles. It’s better to hear something than nothing at all.”

The dig lands exactly where she intended. I flex my fingers against the leather seat between us, fighting the urge to drag her into my space. I wanted to see her fire return—just not while we’re trapped in a car with my head of security playing shepherd.

I grit my teeth. “Maybe you would’ve heard something if you hadn’t decided to pull that little stunt on the⁠—”

“Are we almost there?” She leans forward, making it clear she’s speaking to Myles and not to me.

I haven’t seen her this alive in days. It’s beautiful. It’s infuriating. It’s exactly what I need and exactly what I can’t handle right now.

“It’s just up ahead. The next right.” Myles shrugs at me in the rearview mirror, and it doesn’t matter, anyway. I kept her in the dark as long as possible. We’re one turn away from me explaining why we’re gonna have to spend the next God-only-knows-how-many months in a decrepit Scottish castle. In terms of being away from Chicago, this is about as far as we could ever get.

She thinks she’s mad now.

Wait ‘til she sees our destination.

The dense canopy of Scots pines breaks just as Myles takes the final turn, revealing Castle Moorbeath in all its imposing glory. Something flickers across Nova’s face—surprise, wonder, maybe a hint of the same madness that possessed me to buy this monstrosity in the first place.

She gasps, and for the first time today, she forgets to pretend I don’t exist. “We’re staying in a castle? This isn’t ‘laying low.’ There are turrets!”

“The turrets were his favorite selling point,” Myles chimes in, clearly enjoying himself. “He was going to live up there and snipe anyone who came too close.”

“Shut up, Myles,” I grumble.

My best friend is getting too close to revealing exactly how bleak things were when I bought this place. And being here after years of letting it sit empty is a sign that things are beginning to take a bleak turn again. I’d rather Nova not know all the hairy details.

Luckily, she’s caught on to another detail.

“You own a castle? Like, the whole thing?”

“They don’t sell them in halves,” I mutter.

“That’s exactly why he bought it,” Myles says cheerfully. “Because he could have the whole thing to himself. He was tired of dealing in halves after settling with Katerina.”

I punch my fist into the back of Myles’s seat. “Watch the road. It’s narrowing up ahead.”

I turn back to Nova, ready to face whatever wrath is coming my way for bringing her to three hundred acres of wet, overcast solitude. But she’s gaping wide-eyed and slack-jawed through the window. She fumbles with the switch for a second before rolling her window down so she can take a deep breath.

As much as I want to believe my eyes are deceiving me, I think she actually might be smiling.

Myles pulls the car through an ancient stone gate crawling with moss and stops in front of the castle. No sooner than the engine is off, two fluffy shapes bound around the far side of the castle, bounding towards the car.

Nova squeals and flies out of the car to meet them.

I watch through the open door as she drops to her knees and greets two floppy-eared border collies. They look like they’re fresh from a dog food commercial.

“Look at the two of you!” she coos, accepting their face licks and cuddles with more excitement than she’s shown for anything in days.

Myles loops his arm over the passenger seat and turns to look back at me.

“Don’t fucking say a word,” I growl.

He snorts. “I wasn’t going to.”

He doesn’t need to. The truth is written all over Nova’s radiant face as she scratches behind the dogs’ ears and asks their names.

Nova loves it here.

Two weeks pass with relative ease. It’s a quiet existence. With Myles back in Chicago to shore up our operations there, I begin work before the sun is up and I don’t stop until long after it’s set beyond the pines.

Nova stays quiet, too, which would be troubling if I didn’t have the luxury of crawling into bed next to her each night. That’s the only thing holding us together—the fact that, when we’re skin on skin, everything else seems to fade away.

Now, it’s the middle of the night, and Nova is asleep on my chest. The peaceful in-and-out of her breathing is the only reason I haven’t snuck out of bed and gone back to work. There’s so much to do, but I’ve convinced myself it can wait.

Until I see my phone flashing on the bedside table.

With a sigh, I shift her body off of mine and slide to the edge of the bed to answer.

It’s Myles.

It’s early in Chicago, and I try to think of a single good reason why he’d be awake and calling me before dawn, but I come up empty.

I’m tense before I even accept the call. “Myles?”

“Are you alone?”

I get up, pad into the bathroom, and pull the door closed. “What is it?”

“Have you heard?” he asks.

No, and I don’t want to. I want to go back to bed with Nova. I want to kiss her awake and bury myself in her. I want to forget for five goddamn seconds that hell is constantly raining down on our heads.

“What is it?” I growl.

“It’s— Is Nova nearby? I don’t want her to overhear.” He sighs. “It’s bad, Sam. It’s really bad.”