Secret Oath

CESARE

My father gave me to his enemy to buy a year of peace.

One son, handed across a table to the most dangerous man in the Alps, to live under his roof until the war is over. A living guarantee. If my family breaks the peace, my life is his.

My father called it an honour. Then he leaned close and gave me a secret order: find the night the Russian is alone, and bring it home to me.

They say the Pakhan doesn't want anybody. They say he likes women, and never the same one twice, and that nobody has ever made him lose his head.

I've spent my whole life being the pretty one. The son you can spare. I know how to make a man look at me, and I know how to make him lose.

I was sent to find his weakness. So I decided to become it.

ZAKHAR

I asked for him by name.

Not the heir. The youngest. The one with the beautiful mouth and the lies he tells with a smile.

His family thinks he's a guarantee. I know exactly what he is. A spy, sent into my house by a man who wants me dead.

Let him watch me. Let him try.

I've never wanted a man in my life. I don't bend, I don't break, and I don't let anyone close enough to find out where to put the knife.

But he looks at me like he already knows how this ends. And every night, the door between our rooms stays unlocked.

Any man who touches him answers to me.

He can smile at me across my own table all winter. If I ever break, he's the one who'll be begging.

This is the first book in The Winter Oath Series. Reading order:

Secret Oath.

Broken Oath.

Sacred Oath.

338 pages. Kindle edition.