Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I realize the player is getting played when he slings his head to me and grins. “I can’t inherit what is rightly mine until I’m married.” With his father’s attention solely focused on what should be an uneven pairing but is more matched than first thought, he explains, “My father seems to like you, and he believes what we have is genuine. So much so, he’s having our prenup drafted as we speak.”
“I haven’t agreed to marry you.” He tossed out the word a handful of times the past three months, but I never took his hints. I was planning to dump him the instant my father’s visa was approved.
“No, but you will.” He drags his finger down my nose in a way people could misconstrue as cute if they didn’t know him as well as I did. “And you are hundreds of thousands of dollars cheaper than the pro who offered to take your place two weeks ago.”
I knew that wasn’t his sister’s perfume in the cab of his car when he collected me before his first surgeon’s appointment.
When I pull away from his touch, he laughs. “Don’t be like that, Polina. When he loses”—he nudges his head to the ring—“you’ll be entitled to ten, maybe even twenty percent of the money I bet against him.”
As I return my eyes to the ring, Vas’s growl rumbles through my chest. Yev isn’t losing as predicted. He’s prancing around the ring like he did in Alek’s bedroom when Anastasia used him to make Alek jealous. The smile he wore back then is nowhere to be seen, but his attitude is in excess, and he has the attention of every female in the room—even the taken ones.
He only has eyes for one, though. As he drags them over my flushed cheeks, parted lips, and crinkled brows, his lips droop lower before he shifts his focus to Vasily. I don’t know what he sees, but within a minute, his opponent is flat on his back, seeing stars, and Feo the Flatliner is announced the winner of this match.
10
POLINA
The crowd goes hysterical when the referee raises Yev’s arm into the air, and Vas’s father is just as jubilant. He leaps into the air, hooraying and clapping like he didn’t take his son’s advice on which opponent to bid on.
His overjoyed nature grows when Yev thanks the crowd by bowing at them.
I’m awarded with a prolonged gawk not even a blind man could miss.
That’s how scorching it is.
I’m saved from lifelong scars when Leon butts shoulders with me and asks, “Do you know him?”
While unconsciously nodding, I sling my eyes from Yev to Vasily’s father. I’m shocked and incapable of processing more than that at this moment. Yev has always been cocky, but I had no clue he had the skills to back up his reputation. I thought he was all talk.
Most street kids are.
Upon spotting my head nod, Mr. Cabanow mutters, “You’ll have to introduce us.” When my head bob freezes, he doubles the likelihood of it returning. “Perhaps after that we can discuss your father’s visa application?”
“That’ll be wonderful. Thank you so much.”
He touches my hand gripping his arm before fetching his coat from the back of his seat and signaling to a man in a dark jacket at the end of the bleacher to fetch his car. “Perhaps at your engagement party? I hear that is imminent.” After connecting his eyes with his son’s, he pretends to twist his lips closed. “I hope I didn’t spoil tonight’s surprise.”
When Vasily assures him the cat is already out of the bag, he farewells me with a cheek peck before telling Vas to call his secretary in the morning to organize a meeting. “Your inheritance is making millions in interest each year, so I wouldn’t recommend taking it all out at once, but once you’re married, those decisions will no longer be mine to make.”
He leaves Vasily to mull over his words by exiting via the same entrance we used to enter.
He’s barely out of eyesight when Vasily’s attention shifts from the money he doesn’t have yet to money he’ll never get if he pisses off the man slowly making his way toward us.
Sasha is one of the Yurys’ main bookies, and he accepts payments in only two ways.
With cash or body parts.
“What did you do?” I ask Vasily when Sasha’s hand slips under his trench coat to brace his concealed gun.
My stomach swirls when he snarls out, “He was supposed to fucking lose, and I wanted to double the glory.”
I could slap him, but that would only hasten the process of my father’s latest application being denied, so instead, I think tactically. “How much did you bet?”
“Ten thousand.” I stupidly believe things aren’t as bad as they seem until he adds, “As a down payment. The total bet was two hundred thousand.”