Vasily the Nail by C. B. Alice

Fifteen days. That’s how long he said he’d keep me.

I thought my life as a Mafia princess was suffocating, but nothing prepared me for being handed over to Vasily Baranov to pay my brother’s debt. Cold, brutal, and haunted by demons I don’t understand, Vasily is everything I should fear. Instead, he’s the first man to treat me like something more than a bargaining chip.

But I know better than to believe in saviors.

My only way out is to ruin myself. Destroy my perfect reputation, make myself unfit for marriage, and force my family to let me go. Vasily might help me, or he might break me first.

The longer I stay, the more I see the cracks in him. The voices that haunt him. The curse he’s convinced will kill him here in Flagstaff, just like the men before him, even as he refuses to leave. Vasily thinks he’s doomed—but I’m starting to believe we both are.