Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
He forced his eyes to focus on the screen. Sonia looked so young and grief-stricken in the photographs taken at her mother’s service. She had been young. She still was. She’d never had the chance for a real courtship. She’d never had a chance at all. He understood better why she didn’t trust him with her story.
“You loved her, didn’t you?” he murmured aloud. “You bastard. You loved her, and you didn’t have the balls to kill the son of a bitch who wanted her dead.” Nikita Bogomolov had known his son loved Sonia and hadn’t wanted his son’s loyalty divided. One didn’t fall in love with their woman. They got a son, or sons, and then they murdered her, preferably in a gruesome way to show their boys the bratya was their first loyalty.
The Bogomolovs were leopards, and they were every bit as cruel and ruthless as the lair Alonzo had come from. He had to find the connection between the two families. If this was a lair out of Russia, chances were, they were in some way related to Alonzo. He texted Alonzo, rubbing at his temples. His stomach was beginning to react to the pain. He was seeing spots. He’d have to darken the room and lie down for a few minutes.
Cursing, he waited for Alonzo’s answer. It came a few minutes later. Maira Amurov had been given to Nikita Bogomolov. Maira had one son, Sasha, and then she’d been killed when she gave birth to a second child. Murdered by her own husband. That wasn’t known, of course. To the outside world, she’d died in childbirth. The little girl hadn’t survived either. Alonzo said Nikita had beaten Maira to death when the child wasn’t another boy.
Joshua stood abruptly, his desk chair rolling back as he paced across the room. How had Alonzo, his brother and cousins managed to stay sane in such an environment? Husbands murdering their wives, often right in front of their children? A man killing his newborn daughter?
Joshua pulled the heavy drapes to block out the sunlight. The darkness was a bit of a relief, but he needed medication. His grandfather had been like those men. Depraved. Vile. He would have been the type of man to kill his woman without a thought. Joshua hated the idea of Sonia growing up in a house with a man like that. Joshua had always thought his grandfather was the worst of the leopards, had every bad trait there was, but Nikita was just as vile. Not just Nikita, but Alonzo’s uncles and father.
He took the medication the doctor had prescribed. Drake’s doctor. The man was leopard and a highly skilled surgeon, yet he’d taken the time to figure out medication that would help a migraine. How did some men turn out like the Doc and Drake and others like Nikita and his own grandfather? That ran in his genes. It ran in Alonzo’s genes, and Joshua had worried for his cousin, Evangeline. He’d been so certain he wouldn’t find a mate of his own that he hadn’t worried as much about his own genetic code. Now he had to worry that another woman he cared for, Sonia, was once again mixed up in a lair where the leader was insane.
Cursing, he stretched out on the bed, wishing she was there with him. Her fingers in his hair. He loved when she did that – and she did it often. Little caresses that massaged his scalp and made him feel loved. Her touch was always gentle after they made love. Sex with her was wild and rough, but afterward, he was always tender, and she was so gentle and caring that sometimes he almost couldn’t bear it.
She had been hurt so deeply by the Bogomolov family, just the way his mother had been hurt by the Tregre family. How did she recover from that? How did she trust again? Especially when he had to tell her that he’d taken over Rafe Cordeau’s territory and he was involved with the Bogomolov family. More, he had to tell her that Nikita knew she was alive.
He took out his phone and stared down at it for a long time before he texted her. Where are you?
It took a moment before she replied. He knew she didn’t like him tracking her. Hasn’t Kai reported in?
Baby. He sent her a one-word reprimand.
Still at Jerry’s going over this enormous list of supplies, trying to trim it down.
I need to see you tonight.
Again, there was a brief pause. Is there something wrong? Are you all right?
She had a sixth sense, he knew she did, at least when it came to him.
Nothing big. Stupid headache. That was hard to admit to her, but if they were going to live together she had to know he wasn’t always going to be manly. Nothing a dark room and a little bit of meds won’t cure. And Sonia’s fingers massaging his scalp.