Andrei just wants to survive the bad girl. Liza wants to survive him wanting to be "just friends."
"He was all the way across the road in the window of another building, but Andrei's rifle was aimed right at me—at my heart—and I prayed to god with all I had that he wouldn't miss. Although I didn't have to pray that hard, he never missed.
It was only appropriate it be the heart."
Andrei Romanov returns to Kurov after the war in Chechnya and finds himself in an empty apartment with his sister's dog—an animal deemed too violent to be around people. It's the 1990s and the economy is in ruin, forcing him to take the only work available at the local bratva syndicate run by an old family friend.
Liza just moved to Kurov with her boss, who is running the newly opened Olympic Casino. Because the casino hires its muscle straight from the local bratva, tensions are running high between the two mobsters as they have to share the city. Liza is sent to work under Mikhail "The Grizzly" as a liaison for the casino, but it's a dangerous game. He knows she's a spy in plain sight. Instead of turning her away, he sets his newest hire to babysit.
That happens to be Andrei.
Neither of them expects the other to be who they are, and the forced proximity is about to change everything, especially when crossing the line between them is strictly forbidden.
Tropes:
- Workplace Romance
- 1990s Russian Mafia / Bratva
- Forced proximity
- Friends to Lovers
- Hurt / Comfort
- Morally Gray FMC / MMC
- Femme Fatale / Villainous FMC
- He Falls First
- Who Did This to You
Please note: this is a very dark romance. Triggers include but are not limited to: gore and violence, prostitution, SA (not between MCs), animal attacks (no animal is hurt), violence toward children, mass shootings, PTSD, suicide intent, poverty, and gambling.
