Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) (17 page)

Surely it’s no less true now.

Footsteps. I’m being followed. I slip around the corner of a brownstone and hide.

Somebody coming. Three men.

I set off running in the other direction, though unfamiliar streets. I can feel danger growing. It’s a feeling on my skin. In the air.

I cut through a gloomy alley. I don’t know this place. I don’t like it. I move through the shadows and peek out. Empty sidewalk.

I turn out, begin to walk.

Hands grab me from behind and pull me back. I’m shoved face-first into the rough, cool side of a building.

My cheek grazes the brick. My heart pounds.

A whisper. “You used to like it like this.”

Viktor.

“I’d shove you up to a wall just like this. I’d take you from behind. Use you hard like a stranger.”

He presses harder. I feel strange inside.

“I’d make you turn your head and open your eyes so I could see what I did to you. I would fuck the alertness right out of your eyes so all your world was only my cock. You loved when I drugged you with the harsh pole of my cock.”

Roughly he turns me to face him.

My pulse races. “Leave me. Let me be with my people.”

“I am your people.”

“I’ll keep trying until I get away.”

The vein in his neck is there. “To your pathetic church? Your god up in the sky? Your imaginary family like Mickey Mouse?”

“God does not need your approval.”

“And will he protect you from the danger all around? Bloody Lazarus and his men?”

“He will, yes.”

“He isn’t even there! And if he was, he wouldn’t care about killers like us. When you remember, you’ll see.”

Ten minutes later we’re back in the apartment.

Once again I’m upstairs in the large bedroom. I’m on a thick bearskin rug in front of the roaring fire, in fact.

That sounds nice, I suppose. It would be nice if my ankle weren’t shackled to a chain that goes to a fat metal heating pipe that runs up and down the wall. Just enough room to go and lie in front of the fire, or to use the small, windowless bathroom.

Viktor gives it a tug and steps back. The part that connects to my ankle is an iron cuff with a padlock. The fire crackles.

“How is this different from the brothel?” I ask. “Kept for a man’s whim?”

“Utterly different.” He lifts a corner of the rug and peers underneath, then he stands and swishes through the coin dish on the dresser. He’s looking for things I can use to pick the lock—hard, bendable things. As if I can remember how to pick a lock. Then again, I know exactly what he’s looking for, so perhaps I do know.

I certainly knew how to traverse rooftops.

He says, “You’re lucky I grabbed you first. Because you know who else is out there looking for you? Bloody Lazarus. Remember? The man who owns Valhalla? His men are on the hunt for you. What do you think he’ll do when he finds you? Your experience with him will be very different from your experience with me. He’ll probably bring you back to that Charles who was so into you.”

Shivers roll over my skin. “I was grateful it was me and not one of the other girls.”

Viktor unscrews the door stopper and tosses it out of the range of my chain. “You’re lucky they didn’t find you before we did.” He yanks up a piece of molding, and I get the feeling it’s just to get the nail out of my range. He thinks I could use a nail?

“Nothing will stop me from going back where I belong, Viktor. Not you, not Lazarus.”

“You think Lazarus can’t stop you? Even Tanechka at the height of her powers wasn’t magical.” His look is dark. It scares me a little. “We always knew he was bloodthirsty. We never knew he was smart.”

I lie back. “Still. I will leave again.”

“The old Tanechka wouldn’t run through the streets to a predictable destination. So predictable. Running to a church.” He practically spits out the word.

“Maybe Tanechka
should’ve
run to a church.”

“Tanechka was perfect. She didn’t need a church.”

He kneels at my feet and tucks a sock around the inside of my leg iron, on the outside of my jeans. Cushioning the metal. Roughness and softness. Harshness and care.

A familiar thrill of excitement rushes over me. He looks up, catches it in my gaze. “I like this. You chained up for me.”

“You need to let me go,” I say. “I need to confess what I’ve done.”

He sniffs.

“I killed a person.”

“Perhaps. Or is it all lies? It’s too bad you can’t remember. Tanechka would.”

“Viktor, please.”

“Please
what
?”

What?
I don’t know. “I can’t be what you want.”

“Then you’ll die of old age in this room.”

“You killed, too,” I say. “Don’t you want to find some peace?”

This seems to stop him. I see heat in his face. Rage. Or maybe shame. “It’s too late for me.”

“How do you live with it?”

He seems to consider this. “It hurts sometimes. But you go forward.” He kneels in front of me. “We’ve always been fighters, Tanechka. We’ve always been dark and wrong. When you don’t expect sunshine and happiness, nothing can truly hurt you.” He tucks in another sock, cushioning my ankle all around. “Hell is only disappointing to those who were expecting heaven.”

I look over at the icon of Jesus. Too far to reach.

“Don’t even think of asking. You don’t get to kiss him anymore.”

“It doesn’t matter. Take it away—you won’t change my heart. I saw light shine from his eyes. You can’t take that away from me. The sweetest, brightest light you can ever imagine.”

“I grow weary of your fairy tales.” He gets up and walks out.

“Viktor!” I call.

Nothing.

I inspect the chain. I yank on it. I test the strength of the pipe. Nothing. I run my hand across the thick, rich fur of the rug. So decadent. We didn’t have such things at the convent. Yet the familiarity of it goes deep into my bones. Fur in front of a fire—is this like the honey cake? The American rock and roll?

I shove the rug away and sit on the hardwood floor.

I shove it away as I shove away a life where there is no hope, no brightness. I turn to the bookshelf across the room where I set the small icon. I can’t reach it, but I can gaze upon it.

He returns with a tray loaded with pears and cherries. My heart lifts. And then falls. I know this trick.

“You keep feeding me Tanechka food. It won’t work.”

He says nothing about the rug bunched up by the wall He simply sets down the tray, stokes up the fire, and sits cross-legged beside me.

“You remembered how to escape along a roof.” He takes the pear. Something silver flashes in his other hand. There’s a tickle in my palm.

He watches me with glittering eyes. He flicks the catch, and the blade snaps out.

Something wicked inside me comes to attention. I can feel the shiver of that snap, the weight of it. The sharp power of it. My mouth goes dry.

“You feel it, don’t you? It’s just like yours.”

I look away.

“You could do a lot of damage with one of these things.” He cuts into the pear. I watch it drip, so juicy, this pear. He passes me a slice.

I shake my head.

“Eat it or I’ll sit on top of you and shove it into your mouth.”

I sigh and take it, not wanting to give him any more opportunities for contact. It’s powerful enough to have him near me, to have this electricity dancing between us. I take the pear slice. It’s delicious, like all of the food he feeds me.

He slices another, then looks up at me and smiles his charming smile.

Viktor

S
he recognized it
instantly. Her favorite weapon, the R-37 with the silver barrel handle. It wasn’t so easy to acquire. She loved this blade, my Tanechka. So dangerous with the
pika
.

She has her hair pulled back in a ponytail, one strand curling around her face. She takes my breath away. She pushed away the rug, refusing comfort. So like her. I love her with everything.

I cut another slice—slowly—letting her feel it, then I pass it over. “You think you’re being unlike the old Tanechka by holding fast to the nun identity. What you don’t understand, Tanechka, is that you were just as fierce in your old beliefs. You had such a strong code of honor. We all did, but you were different. The most fierce. The most loyal.”

“You won’t change my mind,” she says.

I hand her another slice. She loved a sweet pear.

“I wanted to kill your father for the trouble he caused you growing up. So many times I wanted to kill him. But you wouldn’t condemn him for what he was. ‘He is my father,’ you’d say. ‘He does the best he can.’” I snort. “I wanted to gut him like the junk fish he was.”

She regards her pear slice thoughtfully. Does she remember anything at all from then?

I take a slice for myself. “We had the opposite childhoods in many ways. You had a bad father who hung onto you as if his life depended on it. You’d have been better off in an orphanage. I was in the orphanage, and I wanted a family. I’d be sent to these beautiful homes for a test, but they’d always send me back. Defective.”

I say it casually, hating that it hurts still. I slice off another, hand it to her. She takes it without a word, seeming to listen intently. It feels like old times, sitting side by side in front of a fire. She chews thoughtfully. Does she remember at all?

“I was desperate to be wanted by a family. You were desperate to get out. Opposites.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s nothing. When you’re an orphan, a family is a blank screen where you project your dreams. It wouldn’t have worked out with me and a family.” I study her pale freckles in the firelight. She can’t choose to remember, I know this, and the internet says so. But she seems so much like the woman she once was. Like a hand, reaching across to me.

“It must’ve hurt, to be sent back.”

I shrug. “I’d get a few nice meals out of it, at least. Sleep in a nice bed. But the family puts their dreams on the child, too, and I could never measure up. They’d see that I wasn’t the kind of boy they hoped for.” Why am I telling her this? The conversation makes me remember the shame of it. Going to the family so full of hope, only to be thrown away.

That rejection was the worst kind of ache.

I find her watching me. I wipe the blade and retract it. Then I flick it out. Does she remember the sound? The
pika
was second nature to us. The best thing about a nice sharp blade is that you don’t have to cut with it; you merely have to touch the person with it. The blade does the cutting for you.

“Yuri was adopted out for almost three years. I couldn’t fault him for leaving. I was sad to see him go, though. Wild to lose him. He got nearly three years with a family.”

“And you stayed.”

“Yuri has more impulse control.” I smile as though it’s amusing. “I’d get things into my head, and I’d burn with them. I’d forget everything, and I’d burn to correct this slight or prove something. Like a matchstick, with my head on fire, burning with anger. With injustice.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “If I thought somebody betrayed me, I would feel as if my head was on fire.”

“Do you think it’s because you were in the room when your parents were killed?”

My heart pounds. “That has nothing to do with anything.”

She contemplates the fire with sad, faraway eyes. Then, “You shouldn’t be ashamed to feel deeply. You call it impulse control, but maybe you simply feel things more.”

“You shouldn’t make excuses for me.”

“Many people let you down, abandoned you,” she says. “You were a boy desperate to be loved.”

I concentrate on cutting the next slice, but my heart is cracking. So Tanechka. “Savior of puppies. Children. The unloved. That was you.”

“And then I came along, and I loved you. But then I left you, didn’t I?”

I look at her, heart thundering.

“You thought I was dead. That’s like leaving you.”

Is she remembering?

“So many people let you down and abandoned you,” she says. “You, who feel so deeply. Love so deeply. It must have hurt.”

I concentrate on cutting the next slice, but she’s the one who’s doing the slicing here—she’s slicing me right open. It’s true—everything in my world changed when I met Tanechka. She showed somebody could love me.

And then she betrayed me, betrayed the gang. Or seemed to.

I felt so wild when I thought she’d turned traitor. Like a bull with arrows stuck into it. Yet deep down I suppose it felt inevitable, too.

I didn’t know she was innocent.

And I killed her.

My pulse races, thinking about what Aleksio said. Part of me wants to confess—confess to the nun. Yet a sickly sweet nausea blooms inside me at the very thought.

“I have killed so many people. Some slowly and painfully. Some I tortured. I don’t concern myself with love the way you imagine.”

“I think you love your brothers. I think having a family means the world to you. Somebody who will always be there. Somebody who can never leave. The gang, too—you’re seeking a family.”

“Don’t make excuses for me. You won’t like the result.”

“You should’ve seen your eyes when Aleksio called you brother.”

I pocket the blade and stand, feeling dizzy.

“You’re not a terrible person,” she says. “You’re just a man who feels deeply. You want to be loved. To be forgiven.”

My blood races. “Is there nothing you won’t spin fairy tales about?” I grab her hair and yank her up to me. I feel insane. “Look at me. Look!”

She looks into my eyes.

“I’m not a man who feels deeply, much as you wish I was. I’m not a good man.”

“I won’t accept that.”

“No?” I twist her hair harder. I bring her face close to mine. “No?”

“No,” she gasps.

So I kiss her—roughly. I kiss her, not caring that she doesn’t kiss back.

When she struggles, I clasp my arm around her and force her up against me, up against my cock. I nestle in my cock where I know she can feel it.

I twist her hair as I take her lips. I suck. I bite. I slide her against me, moving her ever so slightly. I often did this when she felt angry—I kissed and manhandled her, cock notched between her legs, until she softened.