The Bastard's Betrayal (Scandalous Scions 1)

“Thanks for letting me borrow the phone.” She looked up and froze. The old woman wasn’t looking at Rose. She was looking at something over Rose’s left shoulder, her expression terrified. Fuck, Dante must be back already. She handed the phone back and started to turn. “I can explain…”

Rose trailed off.

It wasn’t Dante standing behind her, violence written across his face. It was a man she’d only seen in pictures, one of the people her father had warned her about as active threats to her existence. He was a lean, dark-haired guy with a remarkably normal face considering his reputation. Just handsome enough to be utterly forgettable, at least until a person looked into his empty gray eyes. She numbly passed the phone back to the old woman and stood there as she rushed into her car and practically left half her tires on the pavement peeling out of the parking spot.

I thought he’d be taller. She pressed her hand to her mouth to keep the words inside.

“You know who I am.” His thick Russian accent should have felt familiar, but she couldn’t see past the threat.

“Da,” she answered in Russian. “I know who you are. The Mad Wolf.” The one their Russian extended family sent when the situation had gotten messy and they wanted to make an example of the offending parties.

Casimir Romanov.

Chapter 16

Dante made it in and out of the store in record time, the small box with the Plan B tucked safely into his jacket. The few people in the aisles had all seemed remarkably normal, but that didn’t stop him from keeping his head on a swivel. His odds of finding Rose still sitting in the SUV were about fifty-fifty. She seemed to take the stakes seriously, and she would want these damn pills, but she was also resourceful and loyal to her family. She might put herself at risk to try to escape.

He didn’t run back to the vehicle, but he moved quickly, scanning the parking lot all the while. Dante was a few cars away when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Too fast to be a normal shopper. He pivoted and headed in that direction, following the instincts that had kept him alive more than once.

Then he heard the quiet Russian cursing and started to run.

He veered around a box truck in time to see a dark-haired white man grab Rose by the throat and slam her into the ground. Dante crossed the space between them in the blink of an eye, moving so fast, he barely registered the decision to take the first step before he had his gun pressed to the stranger’s temple. “Release my woman. Now.”

“Ah, the Italian.” The accent confirmed what Dante already expected. This was one of the Russian Romanovs. The man didn’t look at him. He just kept gripping Rose’s throat like he wanted nothing more than to crush her. He could do it. He could easily do it before Dante pulled the trigger.

True fear licked through Dante, but he forced any trace of it out of his voice. “Take your hand off her neck. Next time I ask, it won’t be so nicely.”

The Russian seemed to consider that for a moment and slowly eased his hands off Rose. He didn’t move from where he had her pinned to the ground. She coughed, the sound raspy and painful. The sensitive skin of her neck was bright red; it would bruise later. But she was alive, and that was all that mattered. Rose didn’t rub her throat. She just glared at both of them. “Dante Verducci, meet Casimir Romanov.”

Fury washed through him, overwhelming his fear. He’d heard of the Mad Wolf. Who hadn’t? He was the fucking boogeyman of the underworld, the man mafia parents scared their children with before putting them to bed. He was the reason Lorenzo had never tried to fully remove Kirill Romanov and his family from LA. The Russian Romanovs might be distant cousins, but they took that sort of thing seriously. The last family that tried had been wiped off the face of the earth.

The fact he was here, going after Rose instead of Dante, was a bad sign. It meant her suspicions were correct and Jovan’s people were only too happy to use this as an excuse to remove the thorn in their side and teach Dmitri Romanov a lesson in one blow. “I don’t give a fuck who he is. I’m going to take great joy in skinning him alive before I crush his throat like he tried to do to you.”

Casimir gave a dry chuckle that sounded like someone had already done damage to his vocal cords. “You will try.” He shrugged, apparently unconcerned about the threat of Dante blowing his brains out. “You will fail.”