Branded by the Brigadier

Eva Mironova tattoos the people other tattooists won't. One of them pays cash, never speaks, and has been sitting for the same back piece for three years. She has never asked his name. Then a pakhan's son is shot in a parked car and every witness turns up dead. Eva is the only person who can say where Viktor Rybakov was that night. Saying so will kill her. Not saying so will kill him. So Viktor does the one thing no one in the family planned for. He marries her. Not for love. Not for a green card. For an alibi a court can check. What neither of them plans for is everything after — the cousins watching, the Chechens circling, and a tattoo artist who starts drawing a future she wasn't supposed to want.