Broken Fighter (Paperback)

He’s my brother’s best friend, a Russian killer, and boxer with no ties to the O’Malley crime family—my family.

I’ve loved and studied him forever.

I witnessed him change when I was only thirteen. 

He doesn’t know I’m aware he kills, or how I notice once a year he gets a call and disappears.

For years we fight our attraction, thne one night, we succumb to our desire.

Every touch he gives me is electric. Each moment deepens our addiction.

If it were only us, life would be perfect.

Unfortunately, our union creates targets on our backs from multiple crime families. It puts our loved ones at greater risk. Wars from each of our enemies now plague the O’Malleys and Ivanovs.

Every time the annual call comes to pay off his debt, he crumbles further. 

I’m not sure how much more either of us can take. 

He’s my broken fighter...

”Broken Fighter” is the jaw-dropping second installment of the “Mafia Wars” series. It’s an interconnecting, brother’s best friend, stand-alone Dark Mafia Romance, guaranteed to have an HEA.

Boris Ivanov

The first time I made a deal with the devil, it was to save my mother. In the end, it didn't matter. Satan still won.

The second time, I tried to buy my brothers' and my freedom. All the agreement did was create a mirage about our lives, who we were deep down, and who still owns us.

After that chain of events, you would think my conscience would have disappeared. That all reason not to take whatever or whoever I wanted would no longer exist.

But the voice in my head still told me not to make her mine. From the first time I saw her as anything but my best friend Killian's sister, that voice has screamed at me to stay far away from her.

But how do you stay away from the girl you've always known? The one whose face you can't escape all day, who seems to be the only person on earth who can look into your soul? The one who never denies what you're capable of but still doesn't run?

We had a conversation once. I caught her in a weak moment. She drank too much at her older brother Sean's funeral. Killian and his other brothers were too distraught to notice she went off. I followed her, worried. She told me she could see the killer in my eyes and not from the boxing ring. "You've killed men. I saw the change in you years ago. You were seventeen."

I stood in shock, then tried to cover it up. "You don't know what you're talking about. You're drunk."

She sadly laughed, and through tears, said, "I'm an O'Malley. I see all the males in my family morph from boys to men and what that means. And no matter what you do, Boris Ivanov, I see you. The real you."

To this day, I'm unsure why I did what I did next. Touching her opened Pandora’s box. It was a dip into the well of pleasure I craved but couldn't have. I tucked her silky red hair behind her ear and possessively cupped her porcelain cheeks, as if she were mine, wiping her tears with my thumbs. "Then you should want to stay away from me."

More tears fell as her green eyes pierced mine. "Why?"

"You know why."

"I've tried. You keep coming in to see me." It was an intoxicated admission. She wouldn't have ever said it if she weren't. But there it was, out in the open. I wasn't imagining things. She wanted me as much as I was dying to have her. And she knew I wasn't only coming to see Killian.

If she hadn't been drunk, I wouldn't have stopped myself. The craving I had for her deepened with the unhidden truth. I would have put my mouth over her hot, juicy one and tasted everything I had been obsessing over.

I was still fighting the lust within me when the sound of the metal door shutting, followed by my brother clearing his throat, pulled me out of my dilemma. I released her and spun.

"Killian's looking for you," Dmitri said. I avoided his "what the hell are you doing expression" and went inside. But the damage was done. I had gotten too close to everything I had banned myself from having. I told myself to stay away from her. I couldn’t even last twenty-four hours. The next day, I went straight back to Nora's pub, pretending to look for Killian, knowing he wouldn't be there but she would.

Time did nothing to quench our attraction. Anything with her was taboo in too many ways. Our families shouldn't mix, besides Killian and my friendship. It doesn't matter if she and her brothers try to stay out of the O'Malley crime family business. It's in their blood. No matter how hard they try to escape it, I see what's coming.

And while my brothers may think our legitimate businesses don't make us a crime family, how different is what we do compared to the mob? Zamir Petrov may rule the Russian mafia, but we're the Ivanovs. No one, except Zamir, messes with us, or there are consequences.

But the hands of fate shouldn't mix an Irish angel and a Russian killer. So I told myself over and over to stay away from her.

It did no good.

Almost every night, I went to her pub to meet up with Killian. He might as well have been another brother to me. While I played the charade I was there to hang out with him, both Nora and I knew the truth. Never once did I miss the faint blush when she saw me. Or her quiet, breathy gasps when I touched her when no one else was looking. God help me when I caught her green eyes sneaking a glance my way.

I'm an expert at torturing men, but Nora could have had a black belt in tormenting me. We were in a constant state of purgatory, and I couldn't climb out. Every morning, I'd wake up and tell myself today is the day to forget about her. Then I'd go right back into the Garden of Eden, where she might as well have been holding the apple to my mouth.

I never bit into it. I somehow found the strength not to press my lips on her creamy white skin or lush mouth I'd imagined doing every inappropriate thing possible with.

But Nora watched me. Closer than I ever realized. The one night a year and days after it I always stayed away from her and everyone else was for a reason.

Patience is a gift I've always used to my advantage. If you can't trust yourself to stay in control, you shouldn't step in front of temptation, especially one you've obsessed over for years.

Nora O'Malley found my weak spot, took my restraint, and broke it in two. She's a virus that won't leave my body, no matter how much she or I attempted to distance ourselves.

Sometimes, what you think you're doing for the right reasons, leads to consequences you never imagined. I shouldn't have ever allowed her to try and stay away from me after that night. The moment Cormac Byrne stepped foot in her pub and set his eyes on her, I saw it. I took him outside and warned him she was off-limits. Nora and I might not have been able to be with each other, but nothing about Cormac was good enough to even be near her.

Men like him never listen, though. His eyes revealed everything I needed to know. Why Killian and his brothers never saw it, I don't understand. They should have. Their blood boils with rage the way mine does. Men have taken their last breath under their hands. So why they encouraged Cormac to be with Nora and never saw what I did still baffles me.

The only reason I see is he's Irish. Or I should say he was.

One thing you should never do is look the devil in the eye and try to take what's his. If Satan tells you something, you listen. Any attempt to overthrow him better be ironclad. Cormac was too arrogant to understand this.

I'd always lived by this rule until recently. My brothers and I started a war between the two largest crime families. There were many reasons to do it. But taking down Zamir Petrov, the man who made me into the sinner I am, might not have been the best idea I ever had.

Bad things happen when you lose patience and act with emotions. Nora O'Malley makes my head spin so fast I struggle to breathe most days. Mixing it with the hatred I have for Zamir might be my downfall.

Every man I've ever killed on Zamir's orders, he made me brand while they were still alive. Not their skin, but their bones. A symbol of Satanism, a five-pointed star with a circle around it. I never told my brothers. The less they know about what happens when Zamir calls on me his one time a year, the better.

Now, there's no hiding it. All the proof of my skills is in the city lot my brothers and I bought. I didn't know. A dated newspaper from several months ago is in a plastic bag. It's from my last kill. And it's proof Zamir planted them. He's intentionally sending me a message.

There's only three reasons Zamir would bury those bones for the land cleanup crew to find. First, he wants to change the deal on our debt and pull my brothers and me back into his control.

Or, he could know we killed his son, Wes.

But the last possibility might mean I made the biggest mistake of my life. It could be far worse than living the rest of our lives under his dictatorship.

The only other explanation is he knows we started the war. One thing Zamir doesn't have is a heart. Greed rules his soul. Messing with his empire was a risk we knew going in, but one I don't want to see the consequences of.

No matter which reason it is, everyone my brothers and I love is in more danger than ever before. No one and no form of sadistic punishment is off-limits to Zamir. My gut says the first person he would go after is Nora. She's also carrying my child. The things he would do to her burn in my mind all day long.

I need to kill him before he's able to get to her. But the problem with Zamir is he's a ghost. He appears and vanishes when he chooses.

As much as I've tried to not let the devil consume me, I'm going to have to. The only way to overpower evil is to pour more gasoline on the fire. Zamir taught me that.

But how do you become more sadistic than the devil himself without harming the person you love the most? Can you really keep everything good in your life when you morph into everything you despise?

Chills dig into my bones. I gaze over at Nora, curled up in my arms, sleeping peacefully, and I can't help wonder if part of Zamir's plan is to not only destroy my brothers and me, but torture us in a different way. If I tap into the monster existing within me, the one I've never fully let loose, how will it be possible for Nora to still love me?

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