The King - S.R. Jones Page 0,7

his son would be the one in the wrong, not me. He’s the one getting married.

I wrench my chin out of his grasp and clamber out of the car with as much grace as I can muster. I bend down as I shut the door, for some reason wanting the last word, angry and hurt with the way he’s spoken to me. There’s nothing like finding the man you’ve dreamed about for months is an utter arsehole to put you in a vile mood. I lean into the car, not caring that my top falls forward, probably exposing an acre of cleavage.

“I feel sorry for your son’s wife-to-be,” I say.

“They’ll be fine; he’s not about to admit he fucked up with you, jailbait. She won’t know a thing about this.”

This man lives in the middle ages. I decide there and then that I might find Konstantin insanely hot, but I also hate him in this moment and despite his strange words, I don’t have to see him again.

“No, not because of that,” I answer, then with a smirk of my own, I add, “Because of the fact that your son is really shit in bed. And you know what they say … like father like son.”

With those words I kick the car door and stalk away from him.

Fuck him.

CHAPTER TWO

Konstantin

I watch Cassie wobble away from me on her ridiculous heels and clench my hands around the steering wheel to stop from going after her and throwing her in the trunk of my car.

I can’t do those things now, I remind myself. I’m a respectable businessman, a pillar of the establishment. I’m not someone who runs the seamy underworld of Moscow, or at least, not openly.

Biting down the urge to go get her, throw her over my knee, and turn her ass red for what she’s done, I simply watch her go.

Cassie, the barista I spent months wanting to fuck. Cassie, little, cute, Cassie, the woman I obsessed over while I had movie stars and supermodels in my bed. Cassie, the girl who worked at a coffee shop and now works for a company I’ve only gone and purchased. Cassie, the girl who has skills you would never imagine looking at her.

She’d been off my radar for months, and then my assistant gave me the staff roster for the company we’re buying… And there she was. My honey-drenched, sunshiny, golden girl. When I pored over her file, I found out she wasn’t only a shit-hot IT guru, but that she’d been involved in a hacking project at university. One that the lecturers had to put a stop to.

Cassie. The girl I plan on taking and making work for me … and more, whether she wants it or not. Little miss butter wouldn’t melt barista, who is actually a hacker.

That Cassie…

She slept with my stepson.

The thought has acid bile churning in my stomach. I’m livid at Michael because he’s not supposed to be fucking up this way. Ever since his mother died, I’ve cut that kid so much slack. In my world, the Bratva world, you don’t fuck up repeatedly—it’s a death sentence—and Michael still hasn’t learned this.

I didn’t want Michael in this world, but when he got Lucia Bianchi pregnant, daughter of one of the most feared Don’s in the UK, he sealed his own fate to a degree. Fate must be shitting with me, surely. How did my son end up mixing with her in the first place? The whole reason I moved to the UK, and kept my business here legit, was to protect him from my world, and he goes and meets a Mafia heiress at some stupid nightclub. Fucking fate!

He loves the girl, or so he says, although I’m not sure because for days now he’s been moping.

With this latest act, he’s behaving in a way that could bring about a lot of trouble. He needs to be faithful to the Italian girl, at least for a couple of years. Her family will expect as much. After they’ve popped out a few kids, and she’s grown fat, he can indulge himself discreetly. As do all the men in that family, but for now he must play by the rules.

My mind drifts back to the girl currently standing in line in the coffee shop. I gun the engine and sigh. I’m disappointed in Cassie that she went out clubbing and fucked a random man. My fucking stepson.

The only man she should be fucking is me.

I shouldn’t have told