The Mafia Don’s Claim
“I can’t get married to you.”
The words left her lips like a challenge and a plea at once. Vera kept walking backward, never breaking eye contact, until her spine met cold plaster. He closed the distance in two measured strides.
Towering over her petite frame, Julius placed his hands on either side of her head, caging her between the wall and the hard line of his body. The heat of him soaked through her thin dress. Her heart thundered so loudly she was certain he could hear it.
“Your opinion doesn’t matter here.”
His voice was deep, almost emotionless, yet it slid down her spine like ice and fire at the same time.
One of his knees nudged between her thighs, not quite touching, a silent reminder of how easily he could take whatever he wanted.
That was the moment everything changed.
Vera had spent twenty-one years believing she was ordinary. Beautiful in a soft, unthreatening way, wide eyes the color of winter sky, a mouth that smiled too easily, a body that still carried the delicate curves of youth. She had been raised in the quiet safety of her aunt and uncle’s home after her parents’ deaths.
She grew up with her cousin, went to school, dreamed of ordinary things, art school, a quiet apartment, someone who would love her gently. She never knew that the blood in her veins belonged to Mikhail Volkov, once the most powerful boss of the Russian mafia, or that the uprising which slaughtered her parents had been only the opening move in a war that never truly ended.
They never told her that the man who now stood over her, pinning her to the wall like a possession already claimed, was the only force powerful enough to keep those enemies at bay.
Julius was not a man who courted. He did not ask. He did not soften. At thirty-four he ruled the combined Greek and Italian underworld with a ruthlessness that had become legend. His organization stretched across continents, controlled ports, banks, politicians, and blood.
