Her Russian Brute: 50 Loving States, Idaho
Read Her Russian Brute: 50 Loving States, Idaho Online
Authors: Theodora Taylor
50 Loving States, Idaho
C
opyright
© 2016 by Theodora Taylor
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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H
OT CONTEMPORARIES
WITH HEART
H
OT RUSSIANS
WITH HEART
H
OT HARLEQUINS WITH HEART
H
OT PARANORMALS
WITH HEART
(The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1)
(The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2)
(The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3)
H
OT SUPERNATURAL WITH HEART
I
van Rustanov was
the current heavyweight extreme fighting championship (EFC) champion of the world. Nearly everyone who followed mixed martial arts fighting loved him. However, that evening, it was safe to say his family hated him.
Maybe it was because he’d completely forgotten the opera opening he was supposed to attend with them. Maybe it was because he didn’t make it to their box until a full thirty minutes after the start of the performance (and that was only because he’d used his family name and his bodyguards to bend the opera house rules about latecomers not being allowed into the main theater). Or maybe it was because his “date” chose to wear a tight red dress that barely covered her ass.
Personally, Ivan appreciated the effort it must have taken Svetlana to not only walk without stumbling in her mile-high stillettoes, but to also take her seat in the box without revealing her very naked crotch to the world. He’d told her not to wear panties when he texted her less than an hour ago. And to her credit—and considering her time constraints—the Ukrainian lingerie model reported for duty with admirable attention to detail.
However his mother and sister weren’t remotely impressed.
“You
cannot
be serious,” his mother, Yelena, hissed at him from her seat when Svetlana excused herself to “freshen up.”
“You know all too well he is, Mother,” his little sister, Marina, answered before her older brother could respond.
“Why can you not find nice girl to spend time with?” his mother demanded in a lowered voice. “You should date one of your sister’s university friends. Nice girls from good families. Not harlots.”
“My friends are far too smart to get involved with Ivan,” his sister insisted.
She wishes
, Ivan thought with an inner smirk. If only his sister knew how many of her friends he’d already slept with. He’d made it into a sort of game, checking at least two of them off of his inner list whenever he visited Marina at school.
His sister might consider herself above dating a fighter like him, but the rest of her friends were like moths to a flame with the boy who burned the baddest in their small circle of Russian elites. Her friends might have thought twice about openly admitting to his sister how much they liked the Rustanov with the chiseled face and 12-0 record, but did they melt underneath him as soon as he got them alone in a dark corner? Oh,
da
, they did.
As he watched Marina eye the seat Svetlana had vacated with frank distaste, he almost felt sorry for her. She would probably do exactly as his parents expected. Settle down with her boyfriend, the son of a fellow Russian elite. Make perfect little Russian elite babies. Do everything it took to further gloss over the fact that until a decade or so ago, the Rustanovs had been a century-old crime family before switching gears to become a highly successful legitimate operation.
And this was why his parents clearly preferred their dutiful daughter to their incorrigible son. Ivan might have a perfect knockout record, but his sister was the perfect soldier. Primed and ready to marry her boyfriend of two years as soon as they finished university. Whereas Ivan had dropped out of business school a mere two years in to pursue a career on the international fighting circuit.
He’d interned with his cousin, Boris, the summer before his third year of university, and Boris—who was a former underground fighter turned businessman—ended up training him. Now just a few years later, Ivan held a perfect record, and thanks to his good looks and bad boy reputation, he’d landed several endorsement contracts. Adding millions to the billions he already stood to inherit as a scion of one of the richest families in Russia.
Ivan was now arguably the most famous Rustanov in the world, even more so than his cousin Alexei, the man who currently ran the family empire from his compound in Texas. But that didn’t stop his immediate family from regarding Ivan with disdain that night, as if he’d invited a leper—as opposed to an up-and-coming lingerie model—to the opera his family helped finance.
“This is not the kind of woman you bring out with you in public,” his father told him during the intermission as they stood side-by-side in the men’s restroom.
Normally a public restroom wouldn’t be considered a private enough spot for a father and son to have this sort of exchange, especially during intermission in a crowded theater. But in this case, two of the family bodyguards stood outside the restroom’s front doors, giving all the other men who were desperate to pee “fuck-off” faces, while Ivan and his father took their sweet time at the urinals.
“You should find a nice girl, someone your mother likes, for public and take a pet for private.”
“Just like you,” Ivan said, knowing exactly where this conversation was headed.
“Just like a
Rustanov
,” his father answered. “
Rustanovs
do not bring girls like that to the opera.”
“Why not? I heard rumors Cousin Boris actually married his pet for a short time.”
“Boris is only half, and maybe not right in the head. I think Alexei tolerates him because others are afraid of him, and that quality is good for conference room negotiations. But you have same qualities as Boris, and you are a full-blood. Plus, Boris has been off in the States for almost whole spring and summer this year. Soon, I feel, the time will come for him to step down and for you to step up in the Moscow office. Soon our
full
line could once again take over the Russian side of our empire.”
His father zipped up his pants. “But not if you continue participating in these silly fights of yours.”
Ivan hated the way his father spoke of the cousin who’d trained him, and he barely kept himself from openly rolling his eyes at his father’s dismissal of Ivan’s career choices. MMA fighting was a billion dollar industry, yet his father referred to the sport as if it were simply a bunch of hot-headed children tussling inside a ring.
“You must return to university,” his father insisted as they washed their hands. “Finish your business studies like your cousins, Boris and Alexei, so they will respect you.”
He sneered at his son in the typical Rustanov way. “You are becoming too old for those fights. And your mother does not like these girls you bring around.”
Like Ivan gave one fuck what his mother liked. If it were up to Yelena Rustanov, he’d only date girls who sat around drinking tea all day and telling her how pretty she still looked in her tennis outfits.
Yet, family was family…
He stayed for the rest of the performance, and even managed not to doze off thanks to a very subtle over-the-pants hand job from Svetlana. But as soon as they headed toward the limo line, he started making the necessary moves to depart.
“Svetlana has promised to make an appearance at a club opening tonight, and I will escort her there,” he told his family while they waited for their limo outside the theater. They were, as always, placed at the front of the opera’s busy pick-up line, even though they hadn’t been the first to arrive for the performance. Just one of the many perks of being among the theater’s most generous donors.
“But what about the opening night party?” his mother demanded as he kissed her on her rouged cheeks. “We are hosting it at the house. You must come!”
“Perhaps I will stop by later,” he replied. Meaning, “perhaps I will stop by never.”
Marina barely tolerated his kiss when he bent down to touch his lips to her cool cheek.
“Why must you always be such a bastard?” she hissed in his ear. “Is her life not hard enough?”
He merely gave his sister a cool look. Their mother had grown up rich and pampered and had only become more so over the years, thanks to Alexei’s solid investment strategy and his knack for collecting ailing corporations during the last few economic downturns. With this money, their father had given Yelena everything she had ever wanted, save his fidelity.
Ivan doubted 99.9% of the world—which was also the number of people who possessed less money than his family did—would feel
sorry
for his mother.
“I will text you the address of the club we are heading to,” he answered his sister. “Stop by later if you become sick of being a bore.”
Before she could respond, one of the guards informed them the family car had arrived.
Forever the dutiful child, Marina glared at Ivan as she followed their parents into the back of the sleek stretch limo.
The glare was wasted on him, however. He only spared his sister the minutest of glances before heading back towards the lobby. To rejoin Svetlana, who’d promised two of her friends would meet them at the club…and would be more than willing to do whatever it took to keep their favorite fighter thoroughly entertained.
No, he wasn’t thinking about his family at all. In fact, he was already lazily turning toward what would surely be a coke-filled night of debauchery. Which was why the blast, when it came, only caught half of his face. Which was why the bomb, planted by his father’s enemy, didn’t kill his victim’s entire family as intended. Only Ivan’s father, Ivan’s mother, and Ivan’s sister.
Ivan, the media claimed afterwards, had been lucky—suffering terrible but not fatal injuries.
Little did they know that despite his continued existence, Ivan hadn’t survived the blast. That night, the devil-may-care fighter was killed. And in his place rose a vicious slaughterer. A brutal assassin. One so bloodthirsty, that the man who ordered the bombing, his soldiers, and his sons, would all die cursing his name and wishing, as he himself often did afterwards, he’d been in that limo.