Xander (Billionaire Racers Book 1) Read online

  He wants us to be married for real.

  I don’t like the Bratva. I don’t live under their control. I don’t play by their rules. I do my own thing, and I have a life. Or at least, I had and I did. Xander’s asking me to change all that. I climb the steps to our house, mentally reciting all the reasons I can’t afford Xander. He’s arrogant. He likes giving orders far too much. And he’s the head of one of the most powerful Russian mobster families in Miami. If I kept him, I’d never have another moment’s peace. I can’t fix everything that’s wrong with my life, but I shouldn’t make it worse.

  Our house isn’t too over the top. It’s maybe three thousand square feet and worth a few million thanks to an effervescent real estate market. Years ago, a Florida design magazine came and took pictures. My mother saved that issue. She’d take it out and flip through the pages. I asked her why once, and she said because right then, in that moment when the shutter clicked, everything was perfect and no one could ever take that moment away from her. She gave up things when she married my dad, including her career and the ability to walk around Miami by herself. So many of the wives spend their lives tanning, polishing, painting, and primping. In and out of the spas, the shops, Harry Winston. They’re the pretty pictures in the frames their husbands’ money bought. My mother had a PhD in biochemistry. She was smart, and she gave up her career because Ivan Petrov asked her to do it.

  The Mercedes disappears behind the house, and Xander’s men fan out, disappearing into the shadows. Our house is newer construction. My dad bought it after my mom died. He couldn’t beat breast cancer for her, couldn’t make her live, but he thought he could erase the painful memories of her last days by moving us to a new house. The realtor called it a stunning contemporary. It’s two sprawling stories of white, glass, and smoky wood surrounded by palm trees. Lit up so the neighbors can see what my dad owns, the lights reflect off the pool and the manicured lawn—and make certain we see anyone coming for us. Still, I feel better knowing Xander’s men are out there.

  The sky is a velvety black overhead, the stars blinking down at us. That light has been traveling four years or more to get here. Light moves fast, but the distance it’s got to cover can be measured in the trillions of miles. The North Star’s light takes almost seven hundred years to get here. The Ottoman empire was just getting started, and the bubonic plague was ravaging Europe. I used to lie out on our lawn and imagine all the things that had happened while that light was moving, moving, moving through space. My dad would come too, and he’d tell me stories until we were both almost asleep or the sky lightened too much to see the stars.

  He still remembers those nights. He may not remember what he had for lunch today or the names of his bodyguards or where his bank is, but he remembers telling me stories as we lay on our backs on the grass, staring up at the sky. At least he’s kept the good stuff, the happy parts. Is it really so important that he can’t balance a checkbook, let alone manage a business empire?

  Still, I can’t help tensing as I climb our front steps and let myself in. Dad waits for me in his lounge chair. He’s so much smaller and frailer than he was even two months ago. It’s as if he’s folding in on himself, all the life and vitality draining away like water circling the drain. He used to be a big man with broad shoulders and dark hair. Good-looking if I go by my parents’ wedding pictures. He still wears the same neatly pressed khaki pants and polo shirt that he has for as long as I can remember. I’m not sure he’s ever owned a pair of jeans or sweatpants.

  “I found Xander,” I tell him, dropping into the chair beside him. So much light pours through the front windows that I can see his face clearly. He frowns, then relaxes.

  “Didn’t realize he was lost,” he drawls, his accent a mixture of the South and Georgia. “That boy’s been busy.”

  Yes. Xander has. While the Petrovs have lost ground, Xander has built himself an empire. He’s strong, he’s ruthless, and he might be my best bet. Literally.

  “He’s not happy with us.”

  It must be point-out-the-obvious night at our house because my dad snorts. “That boy never did like being told what to do.”

  That boy is my husband.

  “Did you ask him for his protection?” My dad thinks we should bring Xander into the Petrov fold. He’s got this idea that Xander should be his successor. It’s funny. Xander believed I could do it. He said so, and he’s the first person who hasn’t just assumed I need a surrogate, a stand-in, someone with a penis. He believes in me even though we haven’t seen each other in years.

  “I did.” And I kissed him. I rocked my pussy against him and he made my panties wet. These aren’t things I want to confess to my dad. “I also suggested we seek an annulment so I can potentially marry someone else, a guy who wants to run the Petrov businesses. Or else I needed to leave town and start over somewhere else.”

  My father sighs. “Do you want to go away?”

  No. No, I don’t. I rub my dad’s bony forearm. He feels so fragile beneath my fingertips, as if I’m big enough and old enough now to break him when he’s always seemed so larger than life.

  “I’m gonna die soon,” he confides. “I’m an old man. My memory’s not so good.”

  I’m not ready to lose any part of him. “I don’t want to leave.”

  You. I don’t want to leave you.

  He reaches around with his other arm to pat my hand. “But I need you safe, and I’m not the man to do it anymore. Wish I was, but shit’s broken in me, and I won’t make promises I can’t keep. The sharks are circling, baby girl.”

  That’s how our world works. There’s always some bigger, harder, nastier shark bumping the bottom of your boat and hoping you come flying out so he can eat you up.

  “So let me have a turn. Let me take care of you.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s not how this is supposed to work. You know I can’t let you do my job for me. I gotta be strong for you.”

  “I know.” And I do. He’s always done the best he could for me, including let me run as far as I could from the Russian mob and our world. But now he can’t do it anymore, and there’s a chance I can help him. I get on that yacht tomorrow, and Xander will protect us.

  “I married you to Volkov for good reasons,” he says quietly. “I know you weren’t happy about it, but it served its purpose.”

  “What purpose?” I ask softly. Because yeah, I’ve wondered. What kind of man tells his sixteen-year-old daughter she’s getting married? Eight hundred years ago that stuff happened, but we’ve come a long way since then.

  “I knew I couldn’t be here forever.” His arm twitches beneath mine, and I know he’s fought for as many years as he could get. He won’t go easily into that good night. That’s not how my dad rolls. He’s a fighter, a protector—and a Petrov. “I figured Volkov was kinda like an insurance policy. If shit happened, he’d be there for you.”

  “And yet he went to jail for rescuing me” I point out dryly. “He wasn’t around at all.”

  “Yeah.” He snorts. “But you were sixteen and my baby girl. No father likes to think about his daughter getting in bed with some guy, and Volkov was way too old for you. It all worked out.”

  I never, ever want to think about my dad and sex in the same sentence again.

  “The age difference is still the same,” I point out.

  The corner of his mouth pulls up. “Technically. But you’ve done some living and some growing, and that boy’s gotta be ready to settle down. You’d make a good pair.”

  “Maybe I want what you and Mom had.”

  He lifts a shoulder. “We had it good, but we had to work at it. Life doesn’t pass out happily-ever-afters like they were candy. You keep the boy and be married for real, maybe you find that together.”

  “And maybe we don’t.” I believe in honesty.

  My dad sighs. “I don’t know what day of the week it is anymore. I have to write shit down because otherwise I don’t remember it. I need to know you’re safe, baby girl.”


  If I believe even half of what I’ve read online and in magazines, Xander’s screwed most of Florida as if it’s his God-given right. His dick spends more time out of his pants than in. And it hurts. I’ve told myself to let it go, because a handful of words before a justice of peace who’d been bought and paid for couldn’t make us really married, and I’d been both grateful and disappointed that Xander hadn’t slept with me. But it would be devastating to watch it as his wife in fact.

  The sun will be up in hours, and that’s when I have to be on the dock if I’m accepting Xander’s offer. Originally, yacht racing was province of billionaire playboys and Hollywood stars—men rolling in money whether it was old money or new. Xander may be a billionaire who can’t keep it in his pants, but he represents a different breed of man. The question is: can he be different enough?

  My dad sighs and looks at me. “You gonna keep him?”

  I suck in a breath. “I think so.”

  XANDER

  Heading back to the slip after I drop Lily off is a relief. I’m aware that I was more jackass than loving husband, but she had to see it coming. And it is part of my plan. I set her up, I rescued her, and then I waited for her to grow up. Now she is old enough—and she is mine. Lily tastes good—and she feels even better. I kick off my Pradas and shuck my socks, balling the silk up inside the loafers.

  Still sun-warmed, the boards of the dock feel almost alive beneath my bare feet. Being in the water would be better, but the marina’s oil-streaked chop is a deterrent. Fuck. Maybe I am getting old. I have swum through worse. The music spearing out of the building jackhammers into my head, making a strong case for an immediate exit. I head for my yacht. A staccato burst of laughter from the party follows me, the sound too sharp, a knife digging into my skull.

  I need to get my head back in the game by the time we start tomorrow morning. Lose your focus, and the ocean eats you alive. There is a razor-thin edge in professional racing, and I ride it, hug it so close and so hard I can smell the fall coming.

  And yet I cannot bring myself to stop.

  There is no point in stopping. I make money, I build my power base, and I keep going. I do the left, right thing with my feet. Take another left. The music pursues me through the maze of docks where Miami’s sailing set tie up their finest, the slip sizes growing larger the farther away I get from the party scene happening inside the clubhouse. My baby, the Koa, is now all the way out at the end tie, as close to open water as she can get. Nothing but the best for me, and that is the truth. This late at night, the Koa is an elegant, dark shadow, her sleek curves and lines barely lit by the floodlights picking out the path along the dock. When I race her, I need a crew of seven, but to get underway and out into open water, I do not need company.

  I drop over the side and discover I have the company anyhow. Jack watches me come, metal flashing as he slides a gun back into its holster. We have played our share of deep games together. Caution keeps a man alive, and Jack has no plans to die anytime soon. He is always watching.

  “Moved the Koa for you,” he announces. As if I have not noticed that she is not where I left her. He has a yacht of his own that he will be racing tomorrow, but he enjoys bothering me. It is a game we play, and I will come up with some other way to get even and then he will repay me.

  “What are we betting on?” Liam’s voice slides out of the shadows. He is the third racer in our private club. He takes no shit, not in a fight and definitely not in business. This makes him a hard, mean fighter who never takes the middle ground, not in the jungle, not at sea, and definitely not in the boardroom. The victor gets the spoils in Liam’s world, and losing is not in the man’s vocabulary. In addition to heading up the Banda, Liam built D-11, a global empire of defense technologies. Just in case, he told me once, he got tired someday of life in the mob and because money means power in our world. He likes to cover all of the eventualities.

  “Make a suggestion.” I roll my shoulders, trying to work out the fucking knot that has taken up residence in my shoulder blade. We always bet on our races.

  “Party’s not over yet.” Liam stretches, light on the balls of his feet despite the slow dip and sway of the boat.

  “I put in an appearance,” I growl. “You can give me my gold star later.”

  “Someone didn’t enjoy his party despite his uninvited guest.” Jack pads barefoot across the deck, and I can read the question on his face clearly.

  I do not have so many friends in my life as I do business acquaintances and family members. These two are the exception. We are not close, but we understand each other. They are as dangerous as I am, although we have tried to keep our business interests divergent. I do not need to kill or compete with them—but I also do not need to take their shit.

  “You are on my yacht uninvited and flashing handguns. Was it your intention to commit two felonies tonight?”

  Jack looks like he does not care. That is his usual expression, of course—and there is no reason he should care. “Did you a favor, man. You want to go for a ride, and here we are. Built-in fucking crew. You should say thank you.”

  “Then if you are my crew, you are taking my orders tonight?”

  Liam snorts. “Not a fucking chance. Came here to place my bet.”

  We always have at least one side bet on each Billionaire Race. I know what I want from Liam, but I must phrase it correctly. I have always bet property before. This time, however, I want a personal favor.

  Liam leads off. He likes to talk, while Jack and I prefer the silence. Liam is the glue that holds us together. He is the one who teases, proposes, and fills the air with words. If it was just Jack and I, we would sit in the shadows, knock back a beer or two. We understand each other because we were born in the same Moscow neighborhood. We fought many of the same fights, both there and here. Liam… is a maverick. No one knows where he came from, but he is the head of the Banda. He is therefore the man pressuring the Petrovs, and I will give him this one chance to stop.

  When Liam finally shuts up, I nod. “If you beat me tomorrow, you may have my patent portfolio, my two shopping malls in Miami, and my Vegas penthouse. You cannot, however, have my presence at your charity bachelor auction.”

  I have no intention of losing tomorrow, but racing is not a science. It is an art, and sometimes there is nothing a man can do to win. This is why I will hedge my bets tonight.

  Liam snorts. “You’ll hand over a patent portfolio worth five hundred million, but you won’t let yourself be auctioned off for charity?”

  “I cannot participate in your bachelor auction,” I correct him. “I am not a bachelor.”

  There is a moment of silence. I am relieved that they are both surprised. It means my secret is still mine. It is why Lily has been safe all these years.

  Naturally, Liam is the first to break. “You got married?”

  “Da, some years ago.” He does not need all of the details. Those are between Lily and me.

  Jack leans in. “And the name of the lucky lady?”

  “If you lose to me,” I tell him, “You will protect her and her family. You will be her insurance, her shield. You will make sure nothing happens to her if I am not there to protect her. You will do this no matter who comes after her. And if I lose to you, you will have what Liam wants, and then he will have to negotiate with you.”

  Jack nods slowly. “I can do that.”

  “And?” Liam prompts. Not only does he hate silence, but he loathes waiting. It is what will cost him the race tomorrow—he will start the fastest, but then he will make a mistake because he is moving so quickly and I will be waiting.

  “And you will promise me the same thing.”

  “You care about your wife.” Liam’s astonishment surprises me. I am not incapable of emotions.

  “She is my wife,” I feel compelled to point this truth out. “Thus she is under my protection.”

  “Fair enough. Deal.” Liam sticks his hand out palm up and Jack and I add ours to the stack. We are
men of honor. None of us will renege.

  Liam strolls away to release the mooring line. He is apparently serious about his offer to play deckhand tonight and I will take him up on it. “Do we get the name of Mrs. Volkov now?”

  “You have been hunting her for several weeks now, which makes me unhappy.”

  He shrugs, untying the rope. “I make lots of people unhappy. You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “Lily Petrov,” I tell him.

  He curses, but then he laughs. “I should have asked for more.”

  Liam is a formidable opponent, both in the business world and on the water. If he wins tomorrow, I have just served noticed that the Volkov family will be coming after him. If I win, he will be honor-bound to leave Lily alone. It is the best possible outcome.

  “We are out of here,” I announce because I am not ready to answer more questions. Dropping my shoes, I head for the cockpit. “The Koa and I want a run.”

  “Sure.” Jack shrugs, shoulders flexing beneath the black cable-knit. “Sleep’s fucking overrated and who cares that we’re racing against each other in six hours?”

  I do not.

  The slip is crowded tonight, the yachts almost shoulder to shoulder. Twelve inches the wrong way, and I will kiss the neighbors. Getting my hand on the starboard throttle, I feed her a little juice as I watch the dock. The Koa has room enough now, turning smoothly out to face the open water.

  The motor hits her sweet spot with a low growl as I power up. I get the yacht’s nose out and then let her ride the water. Tonight there is not too much wind, and the current is gentle. The hull cuts nice and easy through the water as we ease away from the dock and head for open water past the yachts tied up like a line of expensive toys waiting for the rich men to come on back. Chop from a passing motor yacht slaps the Koa’s prow, the cool spray a welcome wake-up call. The boat’s motor purrs, a sleek vibration against my bare feet.