Page 3 of Bratva's Secret Girl

“It just doesn’t sit right with me,” I say after a second. “We work for our money.”

“I’ve no idea why you think spending time with Ivan isn’t work,” she deadpans, and I can’t help it, I laugh.

“Besides,” she adds, “He says his dad is really rich. He doesn’t miss it. So you don’t have to take the job over on the other side of the city.”

“Oh, I do.” Because I need to see Maxim.

2

MAXIM

Two weeks later

“Please don’t cut my neck,” the voice of the man in the background on the other end of the phone is faint, but has an unmistakable note of terror.

I’m in my armoured car, having just pulled up close enough to a Lazy Bean café to be convenient, but not noticeable, and finishing up a grizzly part of my trade. What to do with a thief?

“Pakhan,” the Greenwich man who is holding a knife to his carotid artery says, using my Russian honorific, “Should I kill him now?”

I don’t give a shit, but I have to get to see my girl before it’s too late and she’s finished work and left. The last two days there was business with the London Mafia Syndicate that I really couldn’t avoid, and I’m feeling the emptiness of not having seen her.

It’s as though I can feel her slipping away. What if she forgets about me?

I look over towards the window of Hayley’s café. There’s nothing very special about this Lazy Bean, after all, there arealmost two hundred in London. But the presence of the small woman in a neat apron, with her dark-brown hair beginning to come loose from its bun, elevates it to the centre of my world.

Hayley Love.

The girl who is far too sweet and innocent for me. Who I’m pretending to be a cuddly bear of a man for. A good boss who checks in on the new manager of a small and quiet café in a commercial area of Greenwich, my mafia territory. I’m even saying that I’m a boss who ensures his young, and relatively inexperienced café manager has personal training and support.

I’m masquerading as a decent man, if tattooed and enormous.

I should… Try.

“Give him a scare, and some scars to remember us by, and let him live,” I mutter.

“Pakhan?” My man is shocked. He wasn’t asking about the end result, only the timing. Now, or later.

“You heard me,” I snap, and hang up.

Attempting to be a man who deserves a sweet, good girl like my malishka is difficult. It’s going to take time, and compromises. But I’m determined. I’m not going to kidnap my girl, even though I seriously considered it when we first met, and not just because there are rules about that for the London Mafia Syndicate. Rules I never imagined would be an issue when I joined, because I’d given up on the hope of companionship and love.

I’m going to woo her. Slowly but surely, I will make her life better, until she eventually falls in love with me.

Admittedly, I’m not sure how the stages between providing her with a charmed life and her loving me and being my wife work exactly, but I have time to figure these things out.

I feel lighter when I see her through the window of the coffee shop.

“Hi Mr Zaitsev,” she chirps as I walk in and close the door behind me. There are a couple of stragglers and when they look up, I give each of them a glare of “Now is the moment to leave”.

They empty their cups and gather their belongings.

“How was your day?” I ask as I turn to Hayley. She’s at the counter, and looking at her is like gazing straight into the sun. It’s almost too much, but I feel a rusty smile emerging from my face. She smiles back and my heart glows, as though I’m a very specific solar panel that can only be charged withher.

Despair is part of the Russian condition, but Hayley changes everything. It’s ludicrously unlikely that she, a beautiful and innocent woman almost half my age, will fall for a growly immoral bratva boss with a heavy accent. But apparently, I believe miracles are possible now.

“Good! We took more than last week, from fewer customers.”

Excellent. So the people I’ve paid to come to this café and buy the most expensive coffees are working to reduce her workload and increase her job satisfaction, worked.