DIAMOND DEVIL

  ZAKHAROV BRATVA

  BOOK 1

  NAOMI WEST

  Copyright © 2023 by Naomi West

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  BOOKS BY NAOMI WEST

  Zaitsev Bratva

  Ruby Malice

  Ruby Mercy

  Aminoff Bratva

  Caged Rose

  Caged Thorn

  Tasarov Bratva

  Midnight Oath

  Midnight Lies

  Nikolaev Bratva

  Dmitry Nikolaev

  Gavriil Nikolaev

  Bastien Nikolaev

  Sorokin Bratva

  Ruined Prince

  Ruined Bride

  Box Sets

  Devil’s Outlaws: An MC Romance Box Set

  Bad Boy Bikers Club: An MC Romance Box Set

  The Dirty Dons Club: A Dark Mafia Romance Box Set

  Dark Mafia Kingpins

  *Read in any order!

  Andrei

  Leon

  Damian

  Ciaran

  Dirty Dons Club

  *Read in any order!

  Sergei

  Luca

  Vito

  Nikolai

  Adrik

  Bad Boy Biker’s Club

  *Read in any order!

  Dakota

  Stryker

  Kaeden

  Ranger

  Blade

  Colt

  Tank

  Outlaw Biker Brotherhood

  *Read in any order!

  Devil's Revenge

  Devil’s Ink

  Devil’s Heart

  Devil’s Vow

  Devil’s Sins

  Devil’s Scar

  Other MC Standalones

  *Read in any order!

  Maddox

  Stripped

  Jace

  Grinder

  CONTENTS

  Diamond Devil

  1. Taylor

  2. Taylor

  3. Ilarion

  4. Taylor

  5. Ilarion

  6. Taylor

  7. Ilarion

  8. Taylor

  9. Taylor

  10. Taylor

  11. Taylor

  12. Taylor

  13. Taylor

  14. Taylor

  15. Taylor

  16. Taylor

  17. Ilarion

  18. Ilarion

  19. Taylor

  20. Taylor

  21. Taylor

  22. Ilarion

  23. Ilarion

  24. Taylor

  25. Taylor

  26. Taylor

  27. Taylor

  28. Ilarion

  29. Ilarion

  30. Taylor

  31. Ilarion

  32. Taylor

  33. Taylor

  34. Ilarion

  35. Ilarion

  36. Ilarion

  37. Taylor

  38. Taylor

  39. Ilarion

  40. Taylor

  41. Taylor

  42. Ilarion

  43. Ilarion

  44. Taylor

  45. Taylor

  46. Ilarion

  47. Ilarion

  48. Ilarion

  49. Ilarion

  50. Taylor

  51. Ilarion

  52. Taylor

  53. Ilarion

  54. Taylor

  55. Taylor

  56. Taylor

  57. Ilarion

  58. Ilarion

  59. Taylor

  60. Ilarion

  61. Ilarion

  62. Taylor

  63. Taylor

  64. Ilarion

  65. Taylor

  66. Ilarion

  67. Taylor

  68. Taylor

  69. Taylor

  70. Taylor

  71. Taylor

  72. Ilarion

  73. Ilarion

  74. Ilarion

  75. Taylor

  76. Ilarion

  77. Ilarion

  78. Taylor

  79. Taylor

  80. Ilarion

  81. Ilarion

  DIAMOND DEVIL

  ZAKHAROV BRATVA BOOK ONE

  It’s my first time meeting my sister’s fiancé.

  I knock on the door, and who do I see with his arm around her?

  The man who got me pregnant.

  Three months ago, I almost got hit by a car.

  The guy behind the wheel was gorgeous as they come.

  We got to talking and… well, things got a little carried away, if you know what I mean.

  But when it was over, we went our separate ways.

  Except, not quite.

  The little plus sign on this pregnancy test that tells me our story isn’t over.

  But that’s a problem for another day.

  First, I have to go to my sister’s engagement party.

  When I see who she’s marrying, my jaw hits the floor.

  This… This cannot possibly be real.

  But it is real.

  So is the attraction I felt when I first met Ilarion Zakharov.

  So is the hatred.

  And so are the bullets that start flying when Ilarion’s enemies attack the party.

  Turns out Mr. Not So Nice Guy is a big, bad Bratva don.

  And now that he knows I’m pregnant with his heir…

  He’s not letting me out of his sight.

  DIAMOND DEVIL is Book 1 of the Zakharov Bratva duet. The story continues in Book 2, DIAMOND ANGEL.

  NOTE: This is a light mafia contemporary romance. No cheating.

  1

  TAYLOR

  I’m crying and running and running and crying. At this point, I’m mostly just curious to see which one will give out first: my tears or my legs.

  Sixty minutes into my run, though, both are going strong. Turns out it’s easy to run when you’re putting your whole sordid, nasty, terrifying past behind you. When you’re turning your back on your family and your sins, running actually comes kinda naturally.

  As for the tears?

  Well, those come naturally, too.

  My dad’s handprint on my cheek burns like he branded me there. He’s never hit me before, but he sure didn’t hold anything back from this one. And for a first timer, he did a damn good job. He slapped me right across the face as if he’s been waiting my whole life to do exactly that.

  He regretted it as soon as it happened, of course. I could see that much in his eyes: fear, hot shame, the instant surge of self-hatred.

  But no matter how much he regretted it, the damage was already done.

  It’s kind of ironic that it’s a beautiful evening in Chicago. Shouldn’t terrible things happen on terrible days? It ought to be pouring buckets down from the gray heavens so that fat raindrops mix with my tears. Locusts should be descending on the suburbs like Moses and the Pharaoh just got into their little tiff. Someone I love should cut their own bangs.

  None of that is happening, though. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the park I’m circling on my broad running loop is full of children and mothers laughing.

  It’s not just Dad’s slap that’s seared on my skin—it’s also the things I said to him right before that. Things that crossed the line, that broke the thin ice we’ve been living on for the two long years since Mom’s diagnosis.

  I wish I could take those words back, just like Dad wishes he could undo the slap. But like I said: the damage is done.

  No turning back now.

  So I parrot the words I said out loud to myself between painful gasps of breath. Why? Maybe because I’m a masochist and I like it. Or maybe because I just think I deserve to be punished. But not even punished in a cool, cosmic, God-strike-me-with-a-bolt-of-righteous-lightning kind of way. Just a petty, cruel kind of way.

  “‘If only Mom’s cancer were contagious. Then all of us could be trapped at home, too. Miserable just like you are.’”

  That’s what I said to him.

  Even now, I can’t help but cringe. I’ve repeated my own words back to myself a thousand times since I ran out of the front door of the home I grew up in, and they aren’t getting any easier to hear.

  My sister Celine didn’t know what to do when she heard me say that. She came downstairs in the middle of the fight, trying to play the peacekeeper as always.

  “Stop!” she screamed. “Both of you, please, stop!”

  But there wasn’t any stopping after that. I said what I said, Dad slapped me, and from that point forward, we were all stuck on the same nightmarish rollercoaster with no way off.

  I wonder what Celine is doing right now, as I begin my third lap of the track encircling the neighborhood park. She’s probably still slack-jawed and staring at the door I ran through like I’ll come back any moment bearing flowers and cake and apologies.

  Old Taylor might’ve done exactly that.


/>   New Taylor just can’t.

  Two years of watching your mother wither to a husk of herself will do that to a woman. She’s the one dying, but I feel like I’m losing parts of myself, too, with every pound that evaporates from her too-thin frame.

  We almost avoided this fate. One year in, we were told that the treatments were taking. The chemo was working. The tumors were shrinking from golf balls to pinheads to nothing at all.

  Then—Whoops, the doctors said. Scans were wrong. We made a mistake. Looks like you’re dying after all.

  Those tears were some I’ll never forget.

  It got worse after that. Mom shrank faster; her skin grew pale and thin like tissue paper. Her eyes were the most haunting bit of all: gray and almost unseeing, like one of those cave fish at the Shedd Aquarium she used to take us to on rainy days when Celine and I were little.

  She’s still here. For how much longer, none of us really know. I wonder how much of tonight’s fight she heard from her bed upstairs.

  You know what I can’t get over most of all, though? That the shame in my dad’s eyes preceded him actually hitting me.

  It started as a silly little bickering over my curfew. Yes, I still live at home—but I’m twenty years old now, and a midnight curfew for a grown-ass woman is almost a slap in the face in its own right.

  If only Mom's cancer were contagious. Then all of us could be trapped at home, too, miserable just like you are.

  It felt disturbingly good to say that to Dad when he tried to tell me where I could and couldn’t go. Those words have been bubbling up in my gut for almost two years of his overprotectiveness and paranoia.

  But it’s more than that, too.

  Dad is afraid.

  And he’s been afraid since before Mom got sick.

  I first noticed it when I caught sight of him making dinner in the kitchen one night and realized with a jolt just how skinny he’d gotten. He was never a big man, but the beer-gut dad bod I’d always known was gone. In its place was a skittish man, badly shaven, paler than he had any right to be.

  His eyes never stopped moving, either.

  Like he was waiting for a shadow to lunge out and strangle him.

  Why would that be? I have no earthly idea. Archie Theron is a travel agent, for crying out loud. Not exactly a high-stakes profession. He’s a father of two, married to his high school sweetheart, living in the quiet, tree-lined suburbs of Chicago. There are no shadows out here who like to strangle people. The obscene property taxes pay for some very nice streetlights, actually, so there aren’t many shadows at all.

  But you wouldn’t know that by looking at Archie Theron. He was the kind of scared that makes you scared, too, just by happening to glance in his direction.

  I should’ve asked then what was frightening him. But the next day, we found out about Mom, and everything else dimmed in importance.

  I wonder what he would’ve said if I did.

  I snap myself out of my reverie and look up to realize the sun has sunk behind the trees. The park has emptied, too, and my legs are starting to quiver from exhaustion. My tears dried up at some point while I was thinking, though I’m not quite sure when.

  With a sigh, I turn toward home.

  Home. What a concept. It’s supposed to feel safe, isn’t it? You should never be scared to go home. You should never be afraid of what monsters are waiting for you in the corners of your room. You should never hate the people who also call it home.

  But all those things are true right now.

  Still, where else would I go? I’ve got nowhere else. No one else. I know better than anyone what happens when you dare to believe in a future or in other people, and as foolish as I may be sometimes, I’m not about to make that same mistake twice. I did that once, and it almost cost me my sister. I won’t do it again.

  I take an easy pace around the final bend. Home is a few blocks away now. My thoughts have quieted, though I wouldn’t say they’ve exactly sorted themselves out. More like they’ve just agreed to take a breather. They’re as exhausted as I am.

  I can see the Theron household way down at the end of the road. The rose bushes under the windowsills have gotten a little raggedy without Mom tending to them every day, and the yard has begun to outgrow its boundaries. But it’s still cute. Still peaceful.

  For now.

  I’m crossing the street when several things happen at once.

  First, a blinding light appears in the corner of my vision.

  Second, I look up to realize that a car is barreling towards me, and it isn’t stopping anytime soon.

  Third, I do the only thing I can do: close my eyes and pray that death doesn’t hurt as bad as life has lately.

  2

  TAYLOR

  I only open my eyes again when I realize I’m not dead.

  The car I thought was being driven by the Grim Reaper comes to a screeching halt about two inches away from my bare legs. I can feel its exhaust on my skin like it’s a wild animal breathing on me.

  But the windshield is tinted dark, so I can’t see who’s actually behind the wheel. I just stand there, frozen with fear, and try to remember how to breathe.

  The sun has extinguished itself over the horizon. Night is reclaiming Evanston. All the sidewalks are empty and, except for the purring engine and my racing heart, everything is quiet.

  Then the driver’s door swings open.

  A foot hits the ground.

  A giant’s foot. Booted, huge.

  A leg follows, just as massive. I watch, transfixed, as a man unfurls himself from the vehicle.

  When he’s out, my mouth flops open. To call him “gorgeous” is a disservice to the word. Honestly, calling him a “man” is kinda rude as well. He’s the kind of man who makes you want to reserve that label exclusively for him. He’s that big, that stunning, that chiseled from marble.

  But my god, he is terrifying.

  His jaw is clenched so tight it’s a wonder that his teeth don’t shatter like sugar glass. Those eyes are roiling storms, black whirlpools that function like an express lane to Hell.

  And when he speaks, his voice comes out like The Devil himself.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  I know what you’re thinking: this is the part of the story where I quip something witty and go about my way. Back to my miserable house and the miserable family that lives there. This is the part where you admire the heroine’s tenacity and you kinda sorta maybe start to girl-crush a little bit, maybe put yourself in her shoes, maybe start to wonder how she’ll mend her relationship with her daddy and nurse her mommy back to health and finally go about solving the mysteries of all those past sins she vaguely alluded to before.

  This is also the part of the story where none of that happens.