Bad Apple (Part 1)
Read Bad Apple (Part 1) Online
Authors: Kristina Weaver
BAD APPLE
Part 1
KRISTINA WEAVER
Copyright © 2016
All Rights Reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to events, businesses, companies, institutions, and real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Irina
I hate my stinking life.
It’s raining cats and dogs and I’m late for work.
Which sucks since I’m the boss and everyone knows the boss should never be late. It sets a bad example or something. Now I know my girls won’t be too bothered, but still, they’re likely all huddled beneath the small awning freezing to death because I stayed up late with my beaus Ben and Jerry and watched
Gone with the Wind
. Again.
I stayed awake until midnight and then slept late because, like the dummy I am, I forgot to reset my alarm. Silly Binks. And you know what the worst part is? I would’ve been on time but my darned car wouldn’t start. Again.
So I’m late. Something I haven’t ever been, not even when my ex stole all my shit out of my apartment and pulled a runner on me.
I wore my Halloween costume to work and showed up pretending I wanted to look like a whorish Bo Peep. It got me a lot of unwanted attention, and by the time I’d served the last customer and cleaned up I looked like the goth version with all my mascara running and my face pale and puffy.
Crying while you serve people is not okay, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. So what if a sweet little old lady passed me her shrink’s number? I called him and me and Harry have been friends ever since. At least, I see him as a friend. He keeps calling the cops on me and shoving a restraining order under my nose.
By the time I get to work, it’s pouring and there are a shitload of disgruntled people on my doorstep. Instead of doing what a sane, sensible person should, I dash into the rain and run for the door, almost getting myself trampled as everyone stampedes for the safety of the dry bakery.
To be fair, it’s not like it’s freaking nine or anything. It’s the crack of dawn, five in the morning. Well, fifteen past the hour and the reason people are now glaring at me as the dogs continue to pour.
Thank you Jesus I made a shit ton of stuff last night before I left so all we have to do now is make the coffee and start serving.
“You look like a cat ate you up and shat you out,” Mindsy mumbles as she hands me the first cup out of the pot and flips a complaining customer the bird. “You wait your turn or you can get your pasty ass out of here and I’ll ban you for a month.”
The man’s eyes go wide and he backs off immediately, knowing that my pal isn’t kidding one bit. One time a guy pissed her off so much, she banned him and his whole family for two weeks.
When he finally slunk in here with a black eye and his fuming mom and sisters, he was full of remorse and ready to lick my toes just to get back in so his women wouldn’t go that extra step and flay him alive.
My place is the leading bakery in the city, and I’m not too humble to admit that. I worked my ass off to get it to this point, and the only reason it’s now considered something of a diner too is because I had to consider other people’s health and start offering food to keep them alive for service.
Hence the fact that I now serve one lunch service for exactly one hour a day. You snooze you lose. Nik takes care of that drivel while I continue to serve pure sugary delight to the city.
“Hey! Back up off my heat, cheese breath!”
Ah God, Tat.
I sip my coffee and look over at Tat, who seems intent on drilling a hole into one guy’s forehead while ringing up a large box of cupcakes, donuts, and my famous breakfast cake while he silently pleads with me to get her under control.
I just shake my head and smile while my crew goes on getting people their breakfast and talking smack all the while. At this stage, I don’t have a thing to do but to go on back and start throwing myself into my true love—making others as plump as I am.
That’s my plan. Since I have not one hope in hell of ever looking like a supermodel in a bikini, it’s my dastardly intention to turn the rest of my fine city into plump, happy individuals.
“Yo, Riri, we’ve run out of brownies and this yahoo’s complaining!”
I roll my eyes as Eliza floats in with a wicked grin on her face, her blue eyes twinkling dangerously. I don’t have to ask, I already know it’s another sad first-timer who’s taking the walk of shame as the regulars just shake their heads in pity.
“Let him complain, Liza. I have two hands and one mind, and right now that mind’s running on one lousy cup of coffee.”
Which sucks, because not only did I have a great threesome with my guys last night, but I also put a lot of effort into going over the leads I’ve gotten in the search to find my family.
The real one who tossed me away.
Now I’m not complaining since I got a really good one in the end and my
mamen’ka
loves me enough to be a constant pain in my ass, but I’m one of those assholes who just can’t stop picking at the scab. I need to know why my mother took one look at me and dropped me off at the local church.
I’m not angry. I got the perfect family out of the bargain. My parents are Russian immigrants who did nothing but love me to death my whole life, and I have three brothers—Feliks, Daniil, and Luka—who would do anything to protect me.
But…I need to know.
“Hey! Wake the hell up and get going. The breakfast rush may be ending, but we’ve still got the lunchers who’ll be attacking like a pack of ravenous beasts in about four hours, Ri.”
Ravenous beasts? More like a pack of wild monsters. Seriously, my place is popular. To make matters worse, my three besties are so hot that we have a running stream of sexy men stalking in here and trying to get numbers while buying the place out.
By lunchtime Nik and I have the cases filled, the bread section overflowing, and the racks cooling and waiting in case things turn wild again and people try to attack when they see things running low.
I’ve baked enough cupcakes and brownies to feed a Third World country, and my feet are so sore that I feel like I’ve been walking on ground beef the last hour.
I know I’m covered in flour, from the top of my dark brown hair to my pink polka-dot apron.
It’s as I’m bulldozing my way towards the coffeepot, looking all kinds of feral, that the doorbell chimes and I look up, straight into the clearest blue eyes I have ever seen.
You’ve heard about that moment, the one where you literally stop in your tracks and just stare, where your ovaries start screeching like banshees and you start seeing little blue-eyed replicas of a man, with your own fucked-up hair and….well I see all of that as I stop dead and just stand, staring wide-eyed at one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen.
He’s huge, over six feet tall and so golden blond that I’m disgusted to say he’s not just one shade. His hair is a profusion of blonds, ranging from the deepest gold, almost brown, to strands so light they’re white. He’s so wonderful that I think I wet my panties when he looks over at me and smiles in a knowing way that makes me all the more enthralled.
Till Nik elbows me square on the nipple and yells for us to get a room.
I crash straight back down to earth with a thud and feel myself blush as I rub at my offended boob, trying and failing not to look back at the hottie still staring at me.
“What’ll it be, hotshot? And y’all better hurry before the vultures land,” Nik mutters, taking up her place at the counter as I swallow and finally manage to drag my eyes away.
Holy shit, Ri! Stop it. Do not stare at that stranger.
But even as I pour my coffee and keep telling myself to have some freaking self-respect, I’m turning to peek at him over the rim of my cup. And boy is the man still as hot as my fogged-up eyeballs first told me.
He’s also still staring at me, only now he’s standing at the counter right in front of me, those impossibly blue eyes surveying me with a penetrating stare.
“You are beautiful.”
“I am?”
Oh Jesus, what a stupid thing to say,
I yell silently, giving myself a hard shake when I hear a chortle and look over to see his posse of men grinning at me.
“Certainly you are,
zhenshchina
,” he purrs, his lips tilting in a way that makes my heart flutter for about five seconds before reality sets in.
I’m not one of those sad chicks who sees myself and thinks
ugly
, but I have a mirror. My hair is brown, my eyes are this weird shade of light brown that I just don’t dig, and my ass is curvy in this day when curves are only hot on the Kardashians.
I am not beautiful, and certainly not enough to have this man looking at me this way.
“Er, thanks? Uh, would you like to try my pie?”
Seriously, Ri? What the hell?
The choking comes from him this time, and I can’t do a damn thing but start laughing when I catch his dimple popping as he tries not to laugh.
“Certainly. I would love to taste your pie, angel. It would be my greatest honor, only let me take you to dinner first, hmm? My mama raised a gentleman, after all.”
“Oh uh, I meant…”
“Here, try the cherry. It’s as close to her pie as you’re gonna get, buddy. Next!”
Thank Jesus for the influx of customers that floods in then because I’m able to scuttle away in short order. I feel as if my lungs have no air left in them.
I know what’s finally happened, and God help me, I don’t know if I’m happy or terrified. That man whose name I don’t even know—he’s my one.
Mamen’ka
used to tell me stories about finding my one and I always dreamed about looking up one day and seeing him.
Unfortunately for me, he’s hot, rich from the looks of that suit, and totally out of my league.
Misha
She’s gorgeous, cute, and sweet in a way that makes what I am about to do so wrong that even a man like me knows it. And yet I’m going to do it anyway because I have to.
I want that little piece of land her bakery is sitting on, and I want it yesterday. So what if it’s wrong to swindle a woman out of her dream?
It’s not as if I’m going to run her out of business and leave her penniless. I have a perfectly good location set up for Irina Velnicova and her little operation. Hell, she’ll be thanking me with kisses by the time I move her into that new space.
“We can’t do this, Mish. Did you see how sweet that woman was? I almost fell at her feet and begged forgiveness for what we were thinking of doing to her.” Leo groans, falling into a chair across from my desk as I stand at the window and look down at the little bakery across the street.
No, I shouldn’t be doing this, I know that, and not just because Irina is a sweet woman with a heart of gold, but because I have other choices. The problem lies in the fact that those choices do not involve me getting my way and that rubs me raw.
“We need that building, Leo, so do not sit there and tell me to do any less than what I have been doing. Irina doesn’t need to remain there in that building. She can run her bakery and diner from a block away without hurting her business.”
“She could, but the fact is why would she want to when she doesn’t have to? She worked really hard to get her business up and running without those brothers of hers taking over and throwing money around. And she’s made a good business there, Misha, a fucking terrific business considering she started out alone and worked fifteen-hour days before her goods became a hit.”
Yeah, which makes me feel like more of a heel about this whole thing.
I come from a Russian family that’s been in the States for three generations, though if you heard my parents speak, you’d think they’re newly Americanized.
We’re a solid unit and love one another to death. Hell, I still go home for dinner every Sunday and my mama still asks me about women and grandchildren on the regular. My family and the business we’ve built from nothing is my life.
That’s why this is so important to me. I have no beef with Irina past the fact that she’s the sister of Feliks Velnicova, a man who’s been encroaching on my business long enough that he’s gone from being a thorn in my side to an enemy.
One who seems to have no weaknesses, save for his family. One family member, in particular.
And I need a weakness to exploit, because if I don’t get that vulture off my back soon, my business and everything that my family has worked so hard to build will all come crumbling down around me.
I’m a good businessman. I work hard and make good choices when it comes to filling the family’s coffers, but that’s hard to do when every move I make is countered by that bastard.
My business isn’t suffering, but it will be soon if I don’t make a move now.
“This is the only way. We both know he won’t stop coming for us until the family gives him what he wants, and I’ll be Goddamned if I let some two-bit hoodlum get his hands on my sister and nephew after putting us in the poor house. I say we play this shit an eye for an eye and see how he likes having his family involved.”
Leo sighs heavily and shakes his head once before stalking over to the bar and coming back to me with a much needed drink.
“I wish Lena would get her shit together, man. She’s got little Maks in the middle, as well as all the rest of us, and yet she gets to flit around without a care while we scramble to hold off her baby daddy,” Leo snarls, his face going hard once again.
I happen to agree with him, though God knows my opinion has been ignored for a good two years now since our baby sister first came home pregnant and so changed that it’s hard for me to look at her sometimes.
Gone is the sweet little girl who went off to college, and in her place is a bitter woman who is using an innocent child to hurt a man who has every right to see the baby he created.
“I hear ya, man, but with Papa in the mix, you know for damn sure we aren’t getting any sense into her anytime soon,” I say, sipping on my drink and keeping my eyes trained on the shop below.
“Fucking brat is what she is.”
Amen to that.
It’s me and Leo and our younger brother, Vadim, who run shit while Papa sits back in his retirement and Mama is left to look after Maks while Lena flits around like a princess.
I love my sister, but lately she hasn’t been a very good sister or daughter.
“This is the only way to work things and kill two birds with one stone. We need the Mathis deal to go through, and you heard that old asshole. He wants that building before he’ll do business with us. If I can get it, we’ll be okay even after losing Forbes and Hemsy to Feliks. As for Irina being in the family…that would make the Velnicovas family, and Papa couldn’t object to Maks meeting his father after that.”
As much as I love my father and my sister, what they are doing is wrong. Feliks deserves a chance to be a father to Maks, and Maks deserves to know his father.
As for Irina…
“She’s too good to be used this way, Mish.”
“For God’s sake, Leo, what do you think I intend to do to the woman? I’m going to take her out and get to know her a little.”
“And sample her pie?” he asks cheekily, silently laughing at me when the woman in question appears below.
I
am
going to sample that pie. Hell, after seeing the way she blushed clear to the hint of cleavage I saw, I’m going to gorge on it and make her thankful she offered in the first place.
“Nope.” I grin, letting the word end with a pop. “I’m taking her home to meet Mama.”
Leo’s eyes stretch wide just as Vadim walks in, a cocky grin lining his face as he comes to stand beside us just as Irina is joined by the loudmouthed Nikita Barns before the two skip off to the left, hands tightly clasped.
“Did you see how green that chick’s eyes were? I swear I almost took her eye out when my dick saw her.”
“Shut your filthy mouth and pay attention, idiot. Big brother wants to take Irina to meet Mama.”
Vadi’s eyes widen comically before he starts rubbing his hands together with glee.
“Ohh I can’t wait to see Lena’s face. And damn, man, I can’t wait to see Papa’s when he realizes you outflanked him. I love the old bastard dearly, but he’s pissing me off with his attitude lately. You know he almost took Mama’s head off the other day when she wanted to take Maks to the park? She hasn’t cooked for him in four days.”
Not only has Lena caused a huge rift between my father and his three sons, but she’s making waves in a marriage that has stood the test of thirty years.
Enough is enough.
“So you’re serious about little Irina, huh?” Vadim asks, his eyes going glacial as he looks at me.
My brother may be a womanizer with a new bird on his arm every night, but he loves them all and has a healthy respect for the good ones. Irina, I know, is a good one, and this is Vadi’s way of warning me not to screw with one of the good ones.
Which I have no intention of doing.
I may be lining her up to lose her building, but I’m going to give her so much more than what I take. I have a bigger, better location lined up for her, and with my backing I see Irina doing so much more than running a tiny place that can cater to only so many people.
“As a heartbeat.”
The woman is good and kind and exactly what I’ve always imagined in a wife. Yeah, I’m fucking serious. Mama will love her, and the fact that I wanted her on sight isn’t a bad thing either.
I’ll give her a good life, and with the way I almost ripped my fly when I saw that spectacular ass wagging my way, I won’t have a hard time remaining true to my wife.
“Good. On the upside, I’ve managed to set up a meeting with Mathis next week. All we gotta do now is make sure we play shit right so we can outwit that crazy bastard.”
Oh I’m going to outwit him all right. I’m going to outwit them all and watch while Lena and Feliks scramble to get at each other while I settle this shit once and for all.
I love my nephew, more than I have ever loved another human being, and by the time I am done with those two yahoos they’ll be so worthy of the little guy, he’ll think he woke in a fucking candy store.
If I have to fuck them all up to get there, I will do it. I want my family back in order, and I want my new family happy.
“Let’s do this.”