My father borrowed four hundred thousand dollars from the wrong man. Then he disappeared and left me holding it.

I'm twenty-one. I work a diner shift and a print-shop shift and I've been paying down a debt I didn't take on since the February I stopped asking questions. It was never going to be enough. I knew that before the man knocked on my door.

Nikolai Volkov doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't threaten me. He sits in my living room with his hands flat on the arms of the chair and he tells me the number, and then he tells me the only door out of it: come to his estate north of the city and stay there until the debt is resolved. He gives me twenty-four hours and a choice that isn't one.

He is fifty-two years old. He buried his wife eleven years ago and he has not looked at anyone since. He has a house full of quiet rooms and a garden I'm allowed to walk and a gate I'm not allowed to walk through, and he watches me the way a man watches a thing he has already decided about and is waiting to be given.

I came here as a line in somebody's ledger. I am not going to be the girl who falls for the man who owns her.

I have never been good at the things I decide.

Claimed by the Pakhan is the first book in The Volkov Bratva, a slow-burn dark mafia romance with a significant age gap, a possessive and morally grey hero, a captivity premise, organized-crime violence, and a pregnancy and baby in the epilogue. It can be read as a standalone. No cheating, no cliffhanger, and a guaranteed happily ever after. Contains explicit sexual content and is intended for readers eighteen and older.