Page 1 of Hunted Bride

1

RION

Toward the end of my father’s funeral service, I feel a buzz inside my inner pocket. Discreetly, I extract and unlock my phone.

Mouse home, reads the automated message.

Interesting. Milena Morozov rarely gets home from her job at a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library until after four on Wednesdays. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings she has class at the university where she’s studying for her library degree.

I open the app that lets me track her inside her modest apartment. She’s doing one of her favorite things to combat a stressful day shelving books—eating cereal straight from the box.

Her glossy brown hair is tied back in a bun. She wears a dumpy beige cardigan over a lavender dress with books printed on it. Her thick-rimmed dark glasses sit on her small nose. On another woman, they could be mistaken for hipster spectacles, but everything about Milena Morozov is designed to be overlooked.

To hide.

But she can’t hide from me. Not even inside her own home.

Eating Lucky Charms straight from the box again, I see. Tell me about it, Mouse.

I don’t know why she lives like this. A shitty apartment in a decent but not fancy part of town. Her parents could buy her a nicer place. But no, my mouse has a stubborn streak. She’s shy, but she insists on supporting herself without family money.

There’s no audio on the security cam footage, but I see her reaction when her phone pings with my text message. She goes perfectly still. Her brows pinch as she reads what I’ve sent her. Furiously, she texts back. I blocked you.

I chuckle. An elbow digs into my side.

“Jesus, Rion, put your phone away for five seconds.” My sister, Lilia, presses a tissue to her eye. Her mascara is barely smudged, but that’s not because she hasn’t been crying.

Me, I’m still too numb to really process the grief of losing my father so suddenly. Not that I really believe in that woo shit. Trauma and grief processing and all that crap. Bratva men don’t talk about emotions.

We don’t have feelings. We crack knuckles. Cut off fingers. Break faces. That’s if we’re having a good day.

But your dad getting killed by a car bomb will do a number on even the toughest of men. Even me.

“Your father left a letter for me to read to the family,” our mother, Irina, says in elegantly accented English. She is almost coldly composed. Regal in her bearing. And yet I can tell she’s grieving from the subtle way her hand trembles and the sheen in her blue eyes. “Lilia, open it, please.”

Maybe I’m just disassociating. I’ve been more relentless than usual. Checking on my Mouse from hundreds of miles away with almost obsessive compulsion ever since my father’s death. Every step she takes, I’m watching.

Hence, her trying to block me. It took me less than ten minutes to get around her first attempt to stop me from contacting her. She doesn’t know how deeply I’ve wormed my way into her world. She doesn’t know who I am.

But I know everything about her.

I know her routines. I know she hates going to the gym but loves going for long walks. I know she eats dry cereal straight from the box when she’s stressed out, but otherwise tries to watch what she eats. I’ve seen the way she cries after her family makes shitty comments about her weight. I see which books she checks out of the library and leaves open on the nightstand beside her bed. She favors fantasy books with steamy scenes. Sometimes I’ll buy a copy and read the parts she returns to over and over again just to see what she fantasizes about.

Judging from her taste in books, Milena likes it rough. She likes to be chased. Pinned down. Hunted. Claimed by a possessive alpha.

Too bad she and I are more of a twisted mafia version of Romeo and Juliet than Mated by the Possessive Fae Alpha.

My cock twitches just thinking about how much I’d love to act that scene out. Which is just completely fucking inappropriate at your own father’s funeral. Obediently, I slide my phone back into my pocket and force myself to listen.

“Read it,” Irina commands when Lilia’s brow furrows in confusion.

“All it says is, ‘Obey your mother.’ What does that mean, Mama?” My sister turns to her with the question written on her face. Glancing around, I see everyone else is as confused as I am. At least I didn’t miss anything.

“It means that your father wanted me to choose his successor,” Mamochka says. Unease slides down my spine. Cold and unctuous. What the fuck? Everyone in the family knows that the oldest Orlov brother, Maxim, is next in line to lead the Orlov bratva faction. Yeah, Max can be a blowhard. He’s used to getting his way, being the oldest son.

“So pick. You know I’m the best choice,” Max shrugs. “I’m the eldest. I’ve been directing our business strategy for eight years.”

“Yet your bride remains unwed,” Mamochka counters.