Page 80 of Wicked Mafia Sinner

I look at Raine startled.

“Keep watching.”

I do and that is when I see a now familiar large man in dark clothes carrying a woman out of my house.

“Oh my god!”

I clap a hand over my mouth to keep from cursing. The woman–me–is wrapped in a towel. My ass is barely covered. Yeah, I remember the cold breeze and trying to get it to cover my ass and my boobs. My sticky hair flaps against Rowan’s back and I look like a bag of flour tossed over his shoulder instead of a full-grown woman. Hand to God, he looks like a Viking raiding a suburban bungalow.

My face flames as I watch myself get carried out of my apartment building by Rowan Volkov. "Oh my God. That was caught on video?" I look to each of the Red Letter men, to Soren and then my sister. Everyone has a smile on their face.

"Sorry, babe." Raine's sympathy is undercut by the ghost of a grin she's not even trying to hide. "This went viral three days ago. It's been viewed nearly five million times."

Five. Million. Times.

My heart threatens to stop cold.

Five million people have watched my barely-covered ass get carted out of my house. Five million people have opinions about my towel coverage and my gardening boots and whether this was a kidnapping or a really aggressive date. Five million people have seen more of my upper thighs than my gynecologist.

"My God. I'll never be able to show my face anywhere again. Ever. Forget book signings. Forget grocery shopping. Forget existing in public as a functioning human being."

I throw a death glare at Rowan.

He is beaming with pride watching himself carrying me like a caveman's prize while five million strangers watch.

"You think this is funny."

Rowan's thumb traces a circle on my knuckle. "Da." The accent thickens the syllable. The man is proud of himself. “To be fair, no one was looking at your face.”

I'm going to kill him. Right after I kiss him.

"The comments are very supportive. Someone called it 'the most unhinged meet-cute since the invention of the internet.' There's fan art." Raine watches me glare up at Rowan and him wink at me.

"You two are something."

I shake my head. "Don't start."

"I'm not starting. I'm observing." She pauses. "You do realize the entire internet ships you. Wanna see the fan art?"

She pulls up people’s social media posts with the hashtag #stealinghisqueen and sure enough I’m featured in tens of different styled renderings.

While I’d love to fall down that rabbit hole, I can’t let a detail go. "But how did that video show you where to find me?" I turn back to Raine.

Raine's eyes cut toward Soren and then the Red Letter men. "My boss is a friend and he recognized the man behind you."

For the first time in my life, I don’t have a come back for that except, "What a fucking small world.”

Rowan's thumb traces a circle on my knuckle. “It most definitely is, malyshka.”

Soren turns to Rowan. He closes the distance in two strides and wraps his arms around Rowan.

"Fuck, brother." Soren's voice goes rough against Rowan's shoulder. "It's been a long ass time."

Rowan's arms come up. Slow. Rusty. But his hands grip Soren's back with a force that tells me this man is filed somewhere important, in a category that predates the Syndicate and the compound and the empire.

"Da. It has."

"You look old."