Carter
Content warnings:Dark romance, violence, criminal themes, power imbalance, BDSM themes, manipulation, explicit language, mature content.
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Hi.
So—you want to hear my story.
How someone like me ended up tangled in the life of the infamous businessman and Mafia boss, Nikolai Kozlov.
Guess we should start with my name. Carter. Just Carter.
Why? Simple.
I can’t remember my last name.
Same way I can’t properly remember my parents either—just fragments.
My mum’s dark skin. Her height, maybe around 5’2. Thick dreadlock braids that used to brush my shoulders when she picked me up. She had this quiet kind of strength about her. The sort that didn’t need to shout to be felt.
I like to think I got that from her.
Along with the hair. Thick black curls that gave up being controlled years ago.
My dad… less.
Taller. White. Dirty blond hair, green eyes.
That’s about all I’ve got.
There’s only one photo of the three of us left—me at four years old standing between them. It’s worn at the edges and creased from being folded too many times, but I’ve memorised every part of it because I had to. It’s all I’ve got.
From that picture, I can tell I took pieces from both of them. My skin sits somewhere between theirs, darker than my dad’s, lighter than my mum’s. I’ve got her lips, her build… and my dad’s eyes.
Green.
Apparently expressive, which is a bit annoying honestly because it makes lying harder.
Not that I do that much. Well, not badly anyway.
There’s one thing I know I definitely got from my dad: I see things differently.
Voices don’t just sound like voices to me; they move, shift, spill into colour.
Anger burns sharp and red, fear sits cold and grey-blue, and lies twist strangely in ways I can feel before I can explain.
It’s not something I can switch off; it just happens, and honestly it’s probably the only reason I survived this long.
Losing my parents at four didn’t exactly set me up for success. Foster care did the opposite of helping, and by ten I’d had enough.
So one night I climbed out of a bedroom window and never looked back.
I ended up in New York with stolen cash, soaked trainers, and absolutely no plan.
Not exactly a fairy tale.
Nine years later, at nineteen, I’m still here, still surviving, still scraping by on odd jobs, luck, and whatever food hasn’t gone completely off yet.
Eventually I found a place—an abandoned warehouse tucked between buildings nobody looked at twice, with a gap in the upper level just hidden enough to stay mine. Dry when it wasn’t raining, warm-ish in winter if I layered enough clothes. Good enough.
That’s when I first noticed CHROME.
At first it was just another dead building next door, then construction crews showed up and within weeks the place had been gutted and rebuilt into something else entirely.
Bright lights, black cars, expensive glass, music loud enough to shake the pavement outside.
Even before it opened, you could tell it wasn’t built for people like me.
The sign alone made that clear.
CHROME. Big, flashy, impossible to ignore.
From my little window in the warehouse, I watched it come alive piece by piece, night by night, until eventually people started pouring through the front entrance in clothes worth more than everything I owned combined.
It took me a while to realise there were actually two entrances.
The front was loud and crowded, built for attention. The side entrance was different.
Quieter, controlled, built for the kind of people who didn’t queue.
I never stepped inside. Didn’t need to. No ID, no money, no chance. But watching? That I could do. And listening.
People forget how loud they are when they think nobody’s paying attention, and over time I learned the staff, the regulars, the patterns, who caused trouble, who avoided it, which bouncers actually watched the street and which only pretended to.
It kept me safe.
Most of the time.
That night started like any other.
Cold, wet, miserable.
Rain hammered the city hard enough to bounce off the pavement, soaking through my already useless clothes within minutes. My t-shirt clung to my skin, my jeans were no better, and my bare feet slapped against the pavement as I made my way back toward the warehouse with my hood pulled low. I just needed to get inside, dry off, sleep. Simple.
Then I turned the corner.
Two bouncers stood outside the private entrance.
In front of them were three lads who clearly weren’t getting in.
I slowed automatically, keeping to the darker edge of the alley.
They weren’t strangers exactly. I’d seen them around enough times to recognise them.
And more importantly, I recognised their colours.
Frustration bled off them in sharp streaks of red tangled with confused grey.
The newer bouncer—a bald guy built like a brick wall—wasn’t budging.
“Fake IDs,” he snapped.
I frowned.
They weren’t fake.
I knew that much.
This entrance allowed eighteen and over as long as you had the right membership, and I’d watched long enough to learn the rules.
Which was why something in me shifted uncomfortably.
I didn’t like it and trusted it even less.
But before I could talk myself out of it, I stepped forward.
Out of the shadows.
Stupid move.
The second my foot hit the light spilling from the side entrance, instinct screamed at me to turn around and disappear again, but it was already too late.
The door opened, Bear stepped outside, and just like that the entire atmosphere changed.
He spotted me immediately.
His eyes flicked up, landed on mine, and something almost amused crossed his face before he turned back to the argument.
A few short words later, the three lads were being waved inside while the bald bouncer got sent away looking furious. Trey replaced him not long after, already lighting a cigarette like none of it mattered. Normality restored.
I exhaled quietly, my shoulders loosening as I turned to leave.
I didn’t notice the door stay open, didn’t notice the shift in the air behind me, didn’t notice him—not until the rain stopped.
Just like that.
One second freezing water hammered against my skin, the next nothing touched me.
Heat spread across my back.
Close.
Far too close.
Every muscle in my body locked.
Slowly, I turned.
And there he was.
Tall and solid, controlled in a way that immediately felt dangerous.
His white shirt clung slightly from the rain, sleeves rolled high enough to reveal tattoos disappearing beneath expensive black fabric, dark ink trailing up the side of his neck like it belonged there.
Everything about him looked deliberate.
Like nothing he did happened accidentally.
My gaze dragged upward before I could stop it, catching on storm-coloured eyes that watched me with unsettling focus, sharp, cold, interested.
A smirk touched his mouth like he already knew something I didn’t.
Probably did.
Heat rushed into my face before I could stop it, which was honestly embarrassing.
Then he spoke.
Low and smooth, not loud, but somehow still the only thing I could hear anyway.
“Where are you off to, moy malen’kiy kotenok?”
I blinked.
Right.
Not English.
Brilliant.
Usually my brain works fast, too fast honestly, but standing there under whatever terrifying gravitational pull this man apparently possessed? Nothing. Completely blank.
So instead, I tilted my head slightly and stared at him like he’d just handed me a maths exam.
Something in his expression shifted, not softer, just… interested.
His hand lifted slowly, fingers brushing against my cheek.
Warm and grounding, entirely unwelcome, and somehow I still didn’t move.
That was probably mistake number two because the next thing I knew, the ground disappeared.
One second I was standing, the next I was over his shoulder just like that.
No warning, no chance to argue.
The world tilted violently as instinct took over and my hands grabbed onto his shirt to stop myself falling, but he didn’t even react, just turned and walked straight toward the club entrance like carrying me weighed nothing at all.
I twisted slightly, catching one last glimpse of my hiding place disappearing into the rain-dark alley.
Then we crossed the threshold, and just like that everything changed.
