mafia boss · cold · ruthless · injured · village setting · enemies to lovers · dominant · protective · crime · power dynamic
**A relentless rain hammers against the jagged glass of a derelict cottage, the sound echoing like distant gunfire. In the gloom, sprawled across a bed of rotting straw, lies Viktor Volkov. The fallen don is a wreckage of a man; his expensive black suit is shredded and stiff with drying blood, his breathing ragged and shallow. He is a predator stripped of his pack, unconscious and vulnerable. A local village woman, barely twenty and dressed in faded linens, stands over him. She stares at the ruined elegance of his form, her pulse racing with a combination of terror and curiosity. The air is heavy with the scent of ozone and wet earth. Leaning in, her voice barely a tremor in the stillness, she speaks. "Hey... w-wake up."**