All Chapters of Bound To The Crippled Mafia King : Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

Kira's POVThe storage room smelled of mothballs and pure neglect.I pressed my back against the cold wall, my fingers trembling as I shoved the black slab of circuitry and wires into the hollow gap behind the loose floorboard. My electricity grid cracker…the only thing in this house that was truly mine. The only proof that I wasn't just the fat, forgotten spare part they shoved into corners.My chest tightened and I urged myself to pull it together.The familiar vice grip around my ribs squeezed harder as my vision spotted at the edges. I had learned to live with the fainting, the way my heart stuttered and stalled like a faulty engine. They knew. The doctors had told them I was suffering from mitral valve insufficiency, frequent syncope and that I needed monitoring.But they didn't care.They hadn't cared when I was the only daughter they had. And now that she was back…"Kira!"My adoptive mother's voice sliced through the dark like a blade. Sharp. Impatient. Disgusted.I shoved the

Kira's povThe doors swung open hours later. Two servants wheeled him in, a man slumped in a chair that looked more like a throne, his body draped in black silk that did nothing to hide the breadth of his shoulders. His head lolled to the side, his hands lay limp on the armrests and his eyes were half-lidded, distant and lost. Poor little Grisha. The servants didn't even look at me. They parked him in the center of the suite, bowed with barely concealed contempt, and left without a word. Then the door clicked shut, sealing my fate with finality. And I was alone with my husband. I studied him from across the room. His hair was dark as midnight, tousled like he'd just rolled out of bed. His jaw was sharp enough to cut glass. His lips, full, pink, sinful, parted slightly, as if he was lost in some distant dream. He was beautiful. No. I shook myself. He was crippled. Useless. A burden everyone mocked. I was supposed to pity him, not… But his eyes flicked up. And I forg

Xander’s povShe was still standing over me, chest heaving, eyes blazing with a fury that could have burned cities to ash, and I should have been afraid, because any sane man would have been, but all I felt was a dark and shameless pride.“You are smiling,” Kira hissed. “You are actually smiling.”“You have a powerful kick, Zolotse.” I touched my jaw, which ached, and my ribs, which screamed, and my mouth curved wider anyway.“Do not call me that.” She stepped closer, small fists clenched, her cheeks flushed and her curves rising and falling with every furious breath. “You left me at the altar. You let them mock me and humiliate me, and now I find you standing on two legs after I spent a week pitying the cripple? Explain yourself, Grisha, or I swear I will kick you again.”“The disguise kept me alive.” I rose slowly, letting her see every inch of me as I unfolded to my full height, and she stepped back without looking away. “The moment my enemies believed I was weak, they stopped watc

Kira’s povMy husband was a terrible actor.I had not noticed it before, which only proved how blind terror and humiliation can make a woman, but now that I knew the truth I could not stop noticing. He sat in the back of the SUV with his head lolling at an angle no unconscious man had ever achieved, one hand dangling dramatically toward the floor, and every time Valentina glanced over her shoulder he let out a small, tragic sigh that sounded like a dying opera singer.“Is he always like this?” Valentina asked from the front seat.“He is very delicate,” I said.Grisha’s finger twitched and I decided that was for the sigh.The lake house rose out of the pines like something from a fairy tale written by a man who hated fairy tales, three stories of black timber and glass with a long dock reaching into dark water. Guards stood at every corner. Nikolai had already walked the perimeter twice before the engine cooled, with the face of a man counting exits, and when he came back he leaned in