He tends roses by day.
Bare-handed, like something that gentle could belong to a man like him.
By night, he ended the man who broke into my shop.
He never raised his voice.
My silver-fox neighbor is the most dangerous man in this city.
He smells like cedar. Gun oil. Bad decisions.
I came to Chicago to outrun grief.
A bookshop. A fresh start. Nobody who knew me.
Then I crashed my sofa through his fence on moving day.
He caught it one-handed.
He looked at me like he already knew my taste.
Silver at his temples. Scarred knuckles. Big enough to ruin me slow.
He says men like him don’t get to keep things.
I say he hasn’t earned the right to stop trying.
The way he pins me to the counter.
The way he growls milaya like a filthy vow...
The way his hands go gentle in the dirt.
But wait.
The man he spared thirty years ago just crossed an ocean.
Hunting the one soft thing left in his life.
Me.
He has to keep us alive.
Long enough to finish what he started.
A steamy dark Bratva romance: silver-fox don, neighbors-to-lovers, thirty-year vendetta, guaranteed HEA.
