
Cruel Paradise - A Mafia Romance
I thought my life was over when my sister died, leaving me to raise her two babies in a world that wanted to swallow us whole. Then I made the mistake of a lifetime: I left a bold, humiliating voicemail for the one man I should have feared most.
Anton Oryolov.
The ruthless king of the Oryolov Bratva. A billionaire monster who rules the city with ice in his veins and blood on his hands.
I expected him to fire me. I expected him to destroy me. Instead, he gave me a choice that felt like a death sentence: sign a contract and become his.
The rules were simple. I belong to him. I live in his shadows. In exchange, he protects the children. But as the doors of his mansion locked behind me, I realized the "forced proximity" wasn't just a business arrangement. It was a cage.
He thinks he can use me as a pawn in his dark mafia games. He thinks the children are just leverage to keep me in line. But he's starting to look at me with a hunger that isn't in the contract, and I'm seeing a man beneath the monster that I never expected to find.
In the Cruel Paradise of the Bratva, loyalty is a lie and love is a weakness. Our deal is signed in ink, but it's going to end in blood.
He owns my signature. He owns my safety. Now, he wants my soul.
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Chapter 6
RUSLAN
"Are you going to punish me, Ruslan?"
Never have I wanted something so bad. My knuckles are white with tension as I grip the phone to my ear, hungry for every last moan and sigh and gasp that pops out of that dirty little mouth of hers.
My cock strains against the fabric of my pants, desperate to be freed. But I have a dozen men spread out across the upper floors of the chem facility and Kirill is walking towards the car, curiosity etched across his brow.
"Yes, sir. You're right, sir. What did you have in mind?"
Jolts of electricity race through my core hearing her play out this little fantasy. I can only imagine what watching her would do to me.
In the eighteen months Ms. Carson has been working for me, I haven't gotten so much as a hint of impropriety. Maybe this is my fault. Maybe that dig about her half-assed attempt at seducing me this morning unleashed the siren.
Or maybe this was a mistake. There's a chance she's unaware that she even sent me the voicemail. It is an unforgivable seven-and-a-half minutes long. And maybe thoughts of what I could do to her are just that distracting.
She groans deeply. Sounds of skin meeting skin. I can actually hear how wet she is.
"What's going on?"
I rearrange my expression and pause the voicemail. "Nothing. I'll have Boris drop you off first."
Kirill arches a brow but he doesn't push me as he clambers into the backseat. The surging possessiveness racing through me is not unfamiliar. I'm a possessive man and I don't like sharing my things. But that rule has never really applied to women.
Placing ownership on any woman just gives her a claim over me. That's been an inconvenience I've managed to avoid so far in my life. I'm not in any hurry to change things.
The whole way to Kirill's place, my knee keeps bouncing impatiently.
"You sure you're okay, brother?" he asks.
"Just preoccupied with the launch," I lie easily.
The moment we drop Kirill off at the entrance to his apartment building, I have my phone back in my hand and I'm reopening Emma's voice mail. I press play.
"Fuck me," I mutter.
The woman puts on a show tailor-made for me. Every time she refers to me as "sir" in that soft whimper, my cock jumps needily. The little hitches in her breathing mirror my own.
By the time we get to my downtown penthouse, I'm wondering if my dick will ever go down. Not that I've made much of an attempt to help.
"Thanks, Boris. See you tomorrow at six."
"Got it, boss."
I take the elevator up to the thirty-fifth floor after punching in my private access code. The doors open directly into my penthouse.
I'm a busy man, so it helps me to compartmentalize my life. That goes for my properties, too. Some are for business, others for pleasure-and this one on Madison Avenue, the grandest of my skyrise real estate, is just for me.
I come here when I'm craving peace and quiet, when I want to be completely alone with my thoughts.
Or with my assistant's filthy fucking fantasies.
There's no peace and quiet to be found here tonight. The only thing swimming around in my head is Ms. Carson. Her pert little mouth. Those innocent almond eyes. The way her ass moves when it's sheathed in a silk dress.
I'm not blind-I noticed her the moment she stepped into my office for the final interview. Her attractiveness wasn't the reason I hired her, though. In fact, I'd hired her despite her looks. No man needs to have constant temptation walking around in high heels and a red lip.
But her credentials and experience were all above board and I was sick of the revolving door of morons that darkened my doorstep with their ineptitude and emotional baggage. The assistant who preceded Emma quit, right before she burst into tears and called me a "psychopath in Hermes." I had Kirill get that printed on my business cards.
So when Emma stepped into the role, despite a few freshman kinks, it was like a breath of fresh air. She was smart, competent, and she didn't complain.
Not that I didn't know exactly when she was pissed off or frustrated with me. Her blue eyes have this way of darkening and there is a vein in her forehead that twitches anytime I order her around or give her a task she considers beneath her.
It's been my way of keeping her busy and far away-so that she didn't end up beneath me.
Of course, now, I don't have to imagine what she'd sound like if I were to pin her to the wall and run my fingers between her thighs.
I've listened to that damn voicemail twice already. Any more replays and I'm in danger of doing something stupid.
Like masturbating while I think about all the different ways I'd ravage her body.
Undressing, I walk to the leather recliner set up in front of the floor-to-ceiling window.. I manage to resist my phone for a full three minutes before picking it back up once again.
This time, when I start playing the voicemail, I put it on speaker.
Her moans fill what was supposed to be a blissful Zen silence. My cock braces against my pants, but I refuse to touch myself. I'm happy with the idea that I'm the star of her spank bank material, but I certainly don't want her in mine.
But the way she cries out my name as she touches herself... Fucking hell, it's the most erotic thing I've heard in my entire goddamn life. That and the sound of her fingers making contact with her pussy. The slippery wetness thrums just underneath her moans, getting faster and faster as she delves deeper into the fantasy.
"It sounds so fucking good, sir. Please do that. Please, please."
"Blyat'!" I pause the voicemail mid-moan.
I need to fucking delete it. That's the right move; I know that. But even as my finger hovers over the delete button, I can't bring myself to pull the trigger.
I should fucking punish her for this. Impaling her on my cock seems like a pretty fitting punishment right about now.
I fast forward almost to the end of the message and press play again. She's well past moaning now. She's practically screaming. I can easily imagine her tight little body shuddering as the orgasm rips through her. It gives me a perverse sense of satisfaction to know that I'm responsible for that orgasm, no matter how indirectly.
Her breathing flutters a little and then it hitches up again just at the very end. A thump. A shocked gasp. Muffled static-then, two seconds later, the message ends.
I'm willing to bet that my prim and proper little secretary had no intention of sending me that voice message. Hell, she probably had no idea she even called me in the first place.
What an irreversible mistake.
I wonder what else that mouth is capable of.
Leaving my phone on the recliner, I head to the en suite bathroom in the master. I strip off my boxers and get into the shower, cranking the water as cold as possible. I force myself to freeze beneath the hailstorm for ten long minutes, until my erection finally gives up the fight and eases.
There's no way I can avoid addressing this little slip-up tomorrow morning. Which leaves me with only two options: fire her or fuck her.
My cock likes the second option a little too much. "Down, boy," I growl, unwilling to endure another fifteen-minute ice bath.
Ignoring my bed, I sit down at the sleek black desk. The light from my personal laptop illuminates the room with an eerie silver glow. A quick search is all it takes to find Emma's file in my employee database. Her photo gleams at the top of the page. Innocent-looking. White blouse, red lipstick, a selfconscious smile.
But it's impossible to look at her and see her the same way anymore.
Not when I know how it sounds when she comes undone.
Each file includes a full background check on all my employees. Everyone has skeletons in their closet; I just prefer to know how many before I put them on the payroll.
As it turns out, Emma Carson was practically a Girl Scout up until about three and a half years ago, when she abruptly inherited a ton of debt. I give the file a quick scan. The debt is innocent enough, just run-of-the-mill life bullshit. Mortgage. Student loans. Inflation. Funeral home. The kind of shit normal people have to deal with if they don't have rich spouses or rich daddies.
But it gives me an idea.
After all, there's nothing sexier than the air-tight boundaries of a mutually beneficial arrangement. It's like Sergey's lab-nothing can go wrong if you keep it contained. Bottle dangerous shit up in a test tube and it becomes a tool, a weapon, a product.
It's when you let the chemistry explode on its own that shit goes wrong.
I pick up my phone once again and scroll through the contacts. My lawyer Isay's voice is cracked with sleep when he picks up. "Boss?"
I don't bother apologizing for waking him up. I pay my people enough to be able to demand twentyfour-hour attention whenever I need it.
"I need you to draw up a contract for me. Immediately."
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9.6
In the two years after I married Daniel Carter, my private photos had gone viral nine times, and Daniel had been taken into custody ten times.
Because every time his mistress, Emily Morgan, was unhappy, she would leak my private photos all over the internet.
I, Claire Parker, never let it slide. I reported every shady business Daniel was involved in and personally sent him behind bars.
That lasted until an unexpected kidnapping. I took a bullet for him, one aimed straight at his heart, and he shielded me beneath his body, taking the brunt of the explosion for me.
After we survived, the man who had always been so cold-blooded knelt before me, his voice hoarse beyond recognition.
"Honey, let's leave the drama behind. I just want a peaceful life with you."
Right in front of me, he ordered his men to send his mistress out of Northhaven and never let her appear before him again.
In the third year after we reconciled, I carried my eight-month pregnant belly and brought him lunch.
But on the way there, I was hit by a car. The hospital issued three critical condition notices, yet they still could not save the baby.
Daniel rushed over, but he did not even spare me a glance. Instead, he pulled the woman who had hit me and her child into his arms, soothing her in a low voice.
"Don't be scared. I'll protect you and the child."
Only then did I realize that the woman who had hit me was the very mistress he had sent away three years ago.
When I demanded an explanation, Daniel brushed it off as if it were nothing. "She didn't do it on purpose. Don't take it out on her and her son. You can have a baby another time."
At that moment, I finally understood. They had gotten back together long ago.
I looked at him and nodded. "Don't worry, this will never happen again."

7.8
Helen was finally brought back to the luxurious Gallagher estate as their long-lost blood relative.
But her new family didn't welcome her; they looked at her with undisguised disgust.
The matriarch mocked her stench of poverty, while her step-sister Candice treated her like a feral animal. The patriarch, Fredy—who had built his empire by betraying Helen's mother—tried to break her spirit. He blackmailed Helen into attending a high-society gala by threatening to cut off her grandmother's medical funds.
At the gala, Candice squeezed into a diamond-encrusted gown, desperate to seduce the guest of honor, Damian Montgomery. Damian was the most powerful man in New York, and he was currently tearing the city apart looking for a mysterious woman named Jane.
Overhearing this, a sick, greedy smile spread across Candice's face. She planned to impersonate Jane to claim Damian's wealth and completely crush Helen under her heel.
"Hide in the corner tonight. Don't you dare try to speak to anyone important!"
They all thought Helen was just a helpless, uncultured country girl they could easily manipulate and step on to secure their stolen legacy.
What they didn't know was that Helen was the real Jane. She was the lethal shadow who had saved Damian in the woods, shattered his grip, and robbed his highly guarded vault just the night before.
Helen calmly adjusted her simple black dress and stepped into the ballroom, ready to tear their stolen world apart.

8.8
I am the best esports jungler in the league, but I've been hiding a severe wrist injury just to keep my team alive in the semifinals.
Right in the middle of the crucial tie-breaker game, our mid-laner deliberately walked into the enemy team and died without casting a single defensive spell.
He was match-fixing for offshore betting sites, throwing away our entire season for a massive payout.
Because of his betrayal, we had to sub in two terrified rookies, and we were absolutely slaughtered. The stadium crowd booed us out of the arena. The internet exploded with pure vitriol, trending hashtags calling me a washed-up fraud who hid on the bench to save my own stats. The media demanded I retire immediately. My physical therapist gave me a grim ultimatum: my shredded nerves only allow me four hours of playtime a day before my right hand completely locks up.
I destroyed my own body for this team, only to be sold out by a coward and crucified by the very fans I bled for. Why should my legacy end in total disgrace because of someone else's greed?
I refuse to step down. I forced the traitor out, ignored management's safe roster choices, and locked my eyes on the most toxic, universally hated streamer on the platform.
"He's a walking PR nightmare," my coach warned.
I don't care. He is an arrogant, unhinged killer in the game, and I am going to make him mine.

8.5
"And that is the reason why I said those words. I like your fear, not because it is a normal thing. I love it because deep down you are a monster like me, schiava. You fear me on a primal level, you can feel my power and dominance, and you know you aren't the strongest here. So you don't fear Renzo Valentino the human, you fear the monster that lurks inside."
My life changed the night of my birthday. What started as a funny dare ended with blood and having a price on my head.
I thought Renzo was the hero who saved me that night, but he was the devil who owned me forever.
I, Misha Yakov, princess of the Russian mafia became Renzo Valentino's slave.
He broke me, tortured me, and molded me into something new, something I hated and craved at the same time.
I, Misha Yakov became my master's pet.

7.9
Hannah came home under a false identity, ready to keep her head down and avoid trouble. Then a near-drowning opened her eyes, and the family she had wanted gave her nothing but disappointment.
She severed every tie, shed the disguise, and rose in revenge as a miracle doctor, brilliant hacker, and feared underworld ruler. Shock followed her family at every turn.
Her parents regretted everything. Her eldest brother clung desperately to the bond of their shared blood, while her second brother gave up his entire fortune just to earn her forgiveness. Her third brother offered up his own body for a surgery-all to save her.
But Hannah stayed cold and built her empire alone. Only one deadly rival refused to be ignored.
"I was hired to kill you, mister."
"Then take my heart, too."

8.0
After fifteen years of marriage and a brutal battle with infertility, I finally saw two pink lines on a pregnancy test. This baby was my victory, the heir that would finally secure my place as the wife of mob capo Marco Vitiello. I planned to announce it at his mother's party, a triumph over the matriarch who saw me as nothing but a barren field.
But before I could celebrate, my friend sent me a video. The headline read: "MOB CAPO MARCO VITIELLO'S PASSIONATE NIGHTCLUB KISS!" It was him, my husband, devouring a woman who looked like a younger, fresher version of me.
Hours later, Marco stumbled home, drunk and reeking of another woman's perfume. He complained about his mother begging him for an heir, completely unaware of the secret I held. Then my phone lit up with a text from an unknown number.
"Your husband slept with my girl. We need to talk."
It was signed by Dante Moretti, the ruthless Don of our rival family.
The meeting with Dante was a nightmare. He showed me another video. This time, I heard my husband's voice, telling the other woman, "I love you. Elara... that's just business." My fifteen years of loyalty, of building his empire, of taking a bullet for him-all dismissed as "just business."
Dante didn't just reveal the affair; he showed me proof that Marco was already stealing our shared assets to build a new life with his mistress. Then, he made me an offer.
"Divorce him," he said, his eyes cold and calculating. "Join me. We'll build an empire together and destroy him."