Brawler's Baby: An MMA Mob Romance (Mob City Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

I wanted to meet your boss, I'd introduce myself, so I would. Now why don't you sit yourself back down, drink your girly drink and stop bothering me."
    I vaguely registered Sergei's shocked expression, but by this point in my life I'd insulted enough thuggish brutes to know I'd get away with it – and besides, I had more important things on my mind.
    I felt the atmosphere in the room shift – as though a bolt of electricity had surged through the bar, heating the air and sizzling everything it came into contact with. Suddenly, Sergei was at the bottom of my list of priorities.
    For a second it seemed that even the pianist had noticed, and his dancing fingers faltered for the finest fraction of a second before resuming their frenetic dance. All conversation in the room seemed hush.
    I turned away from Sergei, ignoring him as he grunted something about, "the boss…" I didn't care about his boss, and I didn't care to meet him – especially as the only reason some Russian mobster would want to shake hands with a man like me would be to sign me up to fight for him.
    The only person I fight for is myself. I've been doing it for years, and I'm pretty damn good at it.
    A brown-haired beauty dressed in black had just walked into the bar, her black leather boots helping her tower over half of the short, stocky gangsters and their tall, glitzy hookers alike. It was her – the woman I'd been searching for all these years. And as she stood there, her eyes nervously searching the room for someone or something, she looked every inch as stunning as the day she'd disappeared from my life.
    No, more so.
    Every man in the place was staring at her, and she didn't even know it. Every woman, paid to be there or not, had a look of irritated jealousy on their face – but I knew they needn't bother. A girl like her wouldn't go out with the types of human scum they'd draped themselves over. I still had no idea, all these years on, why she'd ever so much as looked at me.
    Let alone nearly married me…
    A cowering voice sidled its way into my entranced daydream. "Your beer, sir?"
    I grabbed it dismissively, deciding that the sniveling bartender wasn't worth another moment of my time. I only had attention for one person in this room, and if it wasn't Sergei, it sure as hell wasn't him.
    I glided through the crowd on autopilot as my brain directed me toward the lover I thought I'd lost forever, drunk with the delight of rediscovering every light freckle and strand of hair on her golden-hued face that I barely registered the expressions on the faces of the men around me – or the size of their shoulders.
    Big mistake .
    I wasn't five feet from my estranged lover when a rotten smell invaded my nostrils, so at odds with the beautiful floral scent of her perfume that it seemed aggressive, almost alien.
    "Mr. Regan," a Russian voice scoffed from behind me. "You've got big balls coming here, you know that?"
    I batted an encroaching arm away dismissively. "Sergei, I told you –."
    "Not Sergei," the man grunted, forcefully and deliberately placing a fat, powerful hand on my shoulder and spinning me around to face him. "My men call me The Bull," he said, pausing to appraise me. I must have passed his silent test, because his tone of voice softened and he continued. "But a man like you? No – you can call me Mikhail."
    The Bull pushed his face up against mine, grinning at his own joke, with his jaw locked open in an awful rictus grin. My nose wrinkled – he didn't need the gun he had so prominently ‘concealed’ between his shiny black shirt and the tailored suit jacket that was struggling vainly to contain his enormous bulk – his breath was bad enough.
    I didn't have time to deal with this two bit mobster – not when my girl was so close. But as I glanced around, it was clear that I didn't have a choice. Mikhail was flanked on either side by men every bit as thick, pig ugly and of course, heavily armed as Sergei.
    I sighed and shook his proffered