The Enforcer He Married

Lela Dzhugashvili's father is barely in the ground when she finds the loan clause in the vineyard's files: a Greek flour creditor's paper, held by the Volkov Bratva, due in six weeks, on her family's land for thirty years. The man who comes to collect is Grisha Volkov, the quietest man in any room he enters, sent to foreclose. Instead he offers her a marriage. His name on the deed freezes the clause. One year in Chicago, handling the family's legitimate wine imports. She says yes because it saves the vineyard. She stays because she wants to know who has been drinking her family's wine. What she finds in the Chicago warehouse is a cousin's signature, a ledger that matches her father's handwriting, and a husband who is as tired of the family as she is.