Captive Princess (Romance on the Go Book 0) Read online

  EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2017 Winter Sloane

  ISBN: 978-1-77339-482-4

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Karyn White

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  CAPTIVE PRINCESS

  Romance on the Go ®

  Winter Sloane

  Copyright © 2017

  Prologue

  Five Years Ago

  Eve Valentin fidgeted in her new dress. She smoothed the creases with her fingers because what else did she have to do? No one asked her to dance. None of the boys at school ever did, and even amongst her underworld kin, she knew no one would ask her at her sister’s wedding.

  Oh, she heard a few boys sniggering behind her back, making bets. Who would ask the fat pig disguised as a mafia princess to dance? Eve pretended not to hear them, throwing a glass of water at the first boy who so much approached the table. He shuffled off after she threatened to tell her father.

  “This chair taken, princess?” asked a deep voice. A man’s voice.

  Suddenly wary, she lifted her head and sucked in a breath. A broad-shouldered man dressed in a charcoal gray suit took the empty seat next to her without waiting for her response. Eve wasn’t surprised. Her mother and aunts warned her and her sister often enough about men like Vadim Solonik all their lives. Her sister mostly, because no one noticed invisible chubby girls like Eve. All that mattered was the family name she came with.

  Unnerved by Vadim’s stare, she met his gaze, feeling a mixture of foolish and brave. She could have excused herself, found the nearest exit route. Rumors said everyone who tangled with the contract killer, always ended up dead.

  Her heart beat so hard, it ached, like the wings of a clipped bird struggling to get free. With shaky hands, she took a sip of the wine glass in front of her. The plain taste of water didn’t help her nerves.

  “More wine?”

  Why did Eve feel like Vadim had started taking silent stock of her, leaving her feeling bared, stripped down, despite her new modest dress? Unlike her sister or her sister’s friends, Eve didn’t like showing much skin or anything that constricted movement. Her mother always commented she looked like stuffed sausage in anything she wore anyway. Why bother?

  “I don’t drink.”

  Vadim’s chuckle annoyed her.

  Vadim was a guest, and as the daughter of Charles Valentin, Eve had been expected to be polite and charming, just like her sister, except everyone knew the truth, including Eve. All she’d ever amount to was a poor copy of Clarissa.

  “What’s so funny?” she demanded, sitting up to her full height, which amounted to five-foot-one. “That I don’t drink?”

  “What are you now, fourteen, thirteen?”

  “Fifteen actually.” She lifted her chin, dared him to say otherwise.

  “Shouldn’t you be getting drunk and finding some nice boy to fuck?”

  His language didn’t shock her. She grew up among rough men after all, mafiosi who spoke their mind and preferred violence instead of words.

  “What’s it to you?” She crossed her arms over her ample breasts that seemed to stretch the fabric of her dress.

  Why couldn’t she have small breasts like Clarissa or her mother? No. If Eve started thinking along those lines, then she’d want to scrap everything that made up Eve Valentin and be left with nothing. Eve liked nothing about herself, never fit in with her family anyway.

  Wait, why was she suddenly feeling so self-conscious in the presence of a killer who would likely soon forget her?

  Vadim motioned for a waiter and let the man fill her glass with wine. Before she could argue her point again, he lifted it and took a sip. She blushed, unable to help it. An indirect kiss. Not that it mattered to a man like Vadim. Even now, she noticed the looks the other women, both single and attached, lingering on Vadim.

  “You sure you don’t want a sip? You look like you need it,” Vadim drawled.

  Eve firmly shook her head.

  “Aren’t you a good little girl?”

  “Does it get your rocks off, to tease poor little fat girls?”

  Vadim set the glass down, saying nothing. The silence unnerved her.

  Eve should have found a way to stay home instead of enduring this awful wedding. The boys made bets who’d dance with her. She ignored them and they eventually lost interest, but as for Vadim? Eve couldn’t get rid of him easily. Vadim did occasional wet work for her father. She knew that, had seen him exit her father’s private office many times.

  Eve focused her attention on the star of the wedding instead.

  True, she and Clarissa had never gotten along. Clarissa had bullied and berated Eve her entire life, not anything new since Clarissa learnt it from the woman who’d borne them. Eve spotted her sister and her husband on the dance floor, the perfect golden-haired couple.

  As she watched them sway against each other, blind to the rest of the world, as if only the two of them existed, hope flickered inside of Eve. Raul Santos didn’t have any connections to any of the families, wasn’t one of them, and yet the accountant made Clarissa happy. Eve knew, because she’d never seen her sister smile like that, not for any of the hopeful boys in the Valentin family or their allies.

  Charles accepting Clarissa’s choice of husband created bad blood between the Valentins and the Petrovichs, a family they’d had turf wars with in the past. Gustav Petrovich, the family head, had made a deal with her father to become allies, if his son and Clarissa married when Clarissa turned eighteen. That deal had gone south when Clarissa met Raul.

  Given Eve spotted a few of the Petrovichs milling around, drinking and joking with a few Valentin men, maybe her father had settled the matter with them.

  “It wasn’t wise of your father, allowing your sister to marry a nobody.”

  Vadim’s comment made her glare at him.

  “What do you know?”

  “Me? I’ve worked for Gustav, know him a lot better than a little girl.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m fifteen now, and in three years I’ll be an adult,” she declared. Few men had the balls to call the head of the Petrovich family by his first name, but Vadim referred to Gustav as if they were close.

  “Is that so?”

  Amusement flickered across Vadim’s face. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, wipe that smug look off his face or kiss him. The latter option stumped her. Eve had been kissed by clumsy boys before, guys from school who only wanted her big breasts and nothing else. She imagined a man like Vadim knew what he was doing. It would be a wet press of lips or teeth banging against each other. A real man like Vadim—

  Eve killed the thought before it could take root. What was she thinking? Oh, she knew once Clarissa married, her father cast his eyes on her, but who would look at Eve and think she was the most desirable woman in the world?

  She wanted what her sister had, but didn’t think it possible, not for a chubby little girl no one wanted.

  “Gustav doesn’t forgive slights easily, and your father made the worst mistake of his life.”

  She scoffed. “Don’t sound so dramatic.”

  “I’m not. If Gustav’s son married your sister, it would cement
a bond between two families that have been at each other’s throats for decades. Your father once had a reputation for being ruthless. Today, he’s proven he’s nothing but soft.”

  “My father’s not soft,” Eve snapped.

  She didn’t know why she came to her father’s defense. Charles never paid her much attention, never doted on her the way he did Clarissa. Her mother didn’t notice her either. For a time, she thought she possessed the power of invisibility, because at events and gatherings, she would have faded in the background, a ghost. Even now, no one truly saw her, save Vadim. Maybe he liked to make fun of girls like her.

  “I’d give anything to have a man look at me the way Raul does my sister. Too bad that’s never going to happen for me.” Eve hadn’t been aware of whispering the words.

  Vadim cupped her chin. Heart in her throat, she couldn’t help but notice how his big, callused fingers contrasted with her smooth skin.

  “Do you think so little of yourself, princess?” Vadim leaned in close, until his warm breath caressed her ear. A shiver went down her spine. She sat so still, her muscles felt locked in place. Eve didn’t know what to say or do. Vadim continued, “Want to know what I see when I look at you?”

  “A chubby, ugly girl?” she dared reply.

  “No. You’re perfect in my eyes.”

  He released her abruptly, and she noticed one of her father’s men hovering close by, a silent question in his eyes. She shook her head. She could handle Vadim. A lie, surely, because this man said all the wrong things. Vadim rattled her, made her skin fever hot, feel things she shouldn’t, not especially for a man the rest of her family considered a monster.

  Was Eve so flawed, that she’d want a man so out of league, a man some called a beast in human skin? All men are monsters underneath, eager to shed blood, to be reduced to their primal urges. Her mother had said that once, both to Clarissa and her, but she’d looked at Clarissa the entire time.

  “Let me go.” Her voice came out shaky.

  Vadim released her, letting out a breath. Those green eyes seemed capable of burning holes through her.

  “My apologies. I shouldn’t have done that.” His voice, she couldn’t help but notice, turned deeper, a little rough.

  She swallowed, unable to formulate a witty remark. Vadim felt guilty. She saw the emotion often enough on the new recruits. A word would send Vadim away, but hadn’t that been what she wanted? He excused himself, but she tugged on the sleeve of his shirt. He paused.

  “Ask me to dance.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but offered her a hand up, his palm big, lined with calluses. Ink peered from his sleeves, his collarbones. Eve was no innocent. True, Eve lived a sheltered existence, but she’d seen and lived with killers, men who conveniently forgot they had a conscience. At least Vadim didn’t hide what he was. An honest killer.

  She giggled.

  “Did I say something funny?”

  Eve clasped his fingers and let him tug her to her feet. She became aware of eyes watching them, conversations coming to stop as he guided her from the cluster of tables to the dance floor. Eve didn’t care. All she saw was him.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Eve answered.

  Vadim responded by tipping her chin. Her breath caught in her throat as he slanted his lips over hers and took her. He kissed the way Eve imagined a man would, all demand and heat, holding nothing back. Eve responded, clutching at one broad shoulder, unable to understand the feelings churning inside her. When Vadim pulled away, the silence seemed damning and it felt like all eyes were on them. For once in her life, Eve didn’t care about what her family thought about her.

  Chapter One

  Present

  “Please, mercy!” The suit fell to his knees, but Vadim pressed the gun at the side of his head and pulled the trigger.

  “What’d do you that for?” growled out McDaniel to the left of him, one meaty arm over the throat of a frightened young man, cheap suit stained with blood.

  Vadim’s recent kill didn’t know it when he died, but death by Vadim’s hands was preferable to someone else’s. McDaniel’s men liked to enjoy the spoils of war, didn’t like clean kills, and would rather use up a victim, until they begged to die. Vadim might be one skilled motherfucker, may be able to take on McDaniel and six of his men, but he wasn’t excessively cruel.

  It didn’t matter. Today marked the end of the Valentin family, and whatever friends they’d made, had fled or formed new alliances with whomever held the most power. One man couldn’t make a difference. Vadim didn’t consider Charles Valentin a friend, although he’d worked for the bastard before. No, Vadim’s interest lay elsewhere, on one person.

  One man in a suit scuttled behind the sofa on all fours. A Valentin man. Vadim aimed his gun, interrupted by a woman’s scream. He knew that voice, remembered the sound of her laughter, how soft her curls felt when he twirled one finger to a loose strand to give it a tug. Even five years after he’d danced with Eve Valentin on her sister’s wedding, he could still recall how sweet she tasted on his lips.

  Eve might be too good for a monster like him, but better him than men like McDaniel. Vadim only agreed to be on the Petrovichs’ payroll for one reason. The Valentins never stood a chance. Gustav had meticulously planned his vengeance for years, found men willing to slaughter an entire mafia family.

  Vadim knew he wouldn’t have made a difference. He owed the Valentin family nothing. Charles Valentin used his services but was always wary of him, as was right. Charles was a decent boss, not the best, but decent. He didn’t dabble in human trafficking at the very least, unlike the Petrovichs.

  Vadim shot the coward before the poor bastard could make it out the door. No chance for escape anyway. One of McDaniel’s men would have found the grunt and would have made him scream plenty first, before wasting him. Vadim knew men like McDaniel, but for now, their interests were aligned, or so McDaniel thought anyway.

  Vadim walked past more bodies, ignoring the screams mingling with the sound of gunfire and up the flight the stairs. Family portraits decorated the wall, the smiles preserved. His gaze lingered on the last one, on his woman, although she didn’t know it then.

  Vadim couldn’t stop the slaughter of her family, and he was no angel of mercy. Another ear-splitting scream made him hasten his footsteps. Rage thickened in his vision as he arrived at the hallway. Two fuckers held Eve down while a third stood over her, dick in his hand.

  Hints of flesh peeked from her torn nightgown. Tears streaked down her bruised face, but the fire he remembered still lingered in her remarkable blue eyes. That fire could soon be extinguished if sweet, innocent Eve fell to the wrong hands. Gustav Petrovich had been known to make slaves of his enemies, to reduce what was once a proud human being to blank-eyed merchandise.

  Not right. Only Vadim possessed the right to own every inch of Eve Valentin. Any other man who dared lay their hands on her, automatically appeared on his fast-growing kill list.

  He didn’t remember moving. Vadim shoved the closest bastard off her, slamming his skull at the nearest so hard that bone creaked. The other man groaned, but Vadim pried the fucker’s lips open and shoved the barrel down his throat until he stopped moving. Given a choice, Vadim would snuff the life out of these ignorant fools who thought to claim what rightfully belonged to him. Patience, he told himself.

  Vadim would never forget the faces of these cowards, these walking dead men. Once the smoke cleared, he’d hunt each of them down, saving McDaniel and Gustav for last.

  “Remember, the bitch’s mine,” he hissed in the guy’s ear. The man choked on the metal.

  “Vadim, Mitchell didn’t mean anything. Sorry. We forgot,” Mitchell’s partner in crime said, raising his hands in mock defeat, dick swinging from his open zipper.

  This one, Vadim decided, he’d make an exception for. When Vadim pulled out the barrel from Mitchell’s throat, his companion relaxed, and he still wore that stupid expression on his face even when a crimson stain appeared between his l
egs. He screamed. The second man backed off, fear on his face. Ignoring him, although he made certain not to turn his back on any of these scum, Vadim yanked Eve’s arm.

  She widened her eyes, screaming when he yanked her to her feet. Vadim needed her silent, at least for the moment. He grabbed his handkerchief from his jeans pocket, gagging her. She glared at him, tears in her blue eyes. Good. Without warning, he tossed her over his shoulder, ignoring her fists beating at her back.

  “If any of you touched what was promised to me,” he warned. Mitchell shook his head, face pale. The other man still stared at the ruin that had been his friend’s dick.

  “No, the bitch’s yours.”

  “McDaniel will hear of this,” hissed the third on the floor, clutching his privates.

  “Not if you’re dead. Get him to a doctor,” he told the friend, before making his way down the stairs.

  “Anything happen I ought to know about?” asked McDaniel at the foot of the stairs. The leader of their cutthroat crew already had a young man on his knees, sucking his dick, a gun pointed to his skull.

  Vadim didn’t have time to play who was the bigger badass bastard. Instead, he patted the sweet curve of Eve’s ass, gripping her leg when she tried to kick at him.

  “I got what I wanted. One of your boys tried to poach my prey, so I shot him in the dick.”

  McDaniel considered him for a few good moments. Vadim held the other killer’s gaze. If eyes were truly the windows to the soul, then all he saw in McDaniel’s was murky darkness, a mirror reflection to his own. McDaniel started to laugh.

  “I’m guessing you ain’t going to share your bitch. None of my men ever fucked a mafia princess.”

  His turn to laugh. “This bitch’s no princess, merely my property.”

  Eve started to shake on his shoulder, but he showed no sign of weakness, keeping his face emotionless.