Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 67553 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67553 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“Yeah, but you made me help you tie a lure onto the line instead of letting me put my jacket back on…” he pointed out as he stood up and stretched.
He reached for the jacket I hadn’t realized he’d discarded and shrugged it back on. As he moved, his Henley lifted and revealed a dip in his lower belly that disappeared into his jeans.
Holy. Fuck.
I quickly looked away, hoping he didn’t catch me ogling him.
The soft laugh of my brother as Bronc hopped in had me thinking I was in the clear.
Bronc shifted to the spot between Tibbs and me and said quietly, “Do not, under any circumstance, get any ideas about that guy.”
I looked up at him sharply. “What?”
“What what?” He rolled his eyes.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I saw you staring hard,” he said. “You know who that is?”
“The partial coffee shop owner,” I supplied.
“No.” He leaned forward so that only I could hear. “That’s Shasha Semyonov. He’s the leader of the fuckin’ Bratva.”
“What’s a bratva?” I asked. “Is that like a type of sausage?”
Bratwurst. Bratva.
They seemed similar.
“No, you idiot.” Tibbs rolled his eyes. “Like the Russian Mafia.”
“What?” I gasped. “Are you joking me right now?”
“No,” he said. “We worked on his place. Like, no joke, he’s the leader of the Russian Bratva. He’s a scary motherfucker, and you need to stop making googly eyes at him.”
“Where’s this house at?” I wondered.
“The lake.” He jerked his chin toward the other side of the lake.
I gasped. “That one?”
“That one” being the several-million-dollar-profit job that my brothers had first cut their teeth on in their business. It was the one job that created hundreds of other jobs for them. The one job that kept them with a four-year waiting list.
Holy shit!
I gasped for another reason when I remembered something.
Viveka had been killed just down the road from that man’s house!
Pulled up my sleeve and accidentally punched myself in the face. It’s okay, I had it coming for some time now.
—Shasha to Nastya
SHASHA
“Do you know how to use that?” Artur asked my sister, Nastya.
Nastya shrugged. “Not really, no. How hard could it be?”
Artur said something under his breath and reached for a different pole. “This one is likely more your style. If you try to cast this one, you’re gonna backlash the fuck out of it, then we’ll have to spend the next twenty minutes undoing it for you. And this is supposed to be a competition, not a lesson in patience.”
Nastya rolled her eyes but accepted the exchange of fishing poles.
I helped her tie her lure on for her, then went back to putting mine on.
She examined the white bait. “Why don’t I get a pretty worm like you?”
“Because I said so,” Artur answered for me. “That’s easier to cast, easier to catch stuff on. You’re gonna need all the help you can get.”
Nastya muttered something under her breath that had me laughing, and I snipped off the excess line with a pair of nail clippers and deposited them into my pocket.
I casted the line, and the movement made a wave of homesickness rush through me.
I missed being in the mountains.
I missed even more going out and fly-fishing, spending time in nature, and ultimately being unknown to the world.
Here, everyone knew me. There were no mountains or wildlife. No rivers that were overflowing with fish.
There the rivers were crystal clear and so freakin’ pretty.
Here they were the color of mud, and you couldn’t even see your line in the water, let alone the fish.
“This is gonna be fun, I can tell.” Nastya glared at Artur.
Artur, Lev, Alexi, Daniil, Bogdan, and Ivan had been in my life for years now. But Artur was the newest.
But ever since Artur had showed up, he and Nastya hadn’t gotten along all that well.
But more in a way that siblings would bicker than in a romantic way—at least from what I saw and experienced when I was around them.
Nastya depressed the button on the pole and threw her line out. It went all of six feet in front of her.
“Now what?” Nastya asked.
“Now reel it in.” I shrugged.
“Slowly. You can reel it all the way in, slow. Or you can give it a little jerk, and it’ll look like a dying fish,” Artur suggested. “Whatever you feel like doing. But you’re gonna have to get it farther near the bank. You’re not going to catch shit in deeper water. Bass are gonna be lookin’ for that sun and warmer water.”
I threw my own bait out.
Over and over and over again.
I’d learned the art of patience when I was a youngster learning how to fly fish. But this? You couldn’t even see the damn fish you were trying to catch.
“Why does your eye look black?” Nastya asked after a while.
I shot a grin at her, knowing that I’d never hear the end of it if I told her exactly how it happened.