Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) (21 page)

Cold shivers go over me. She means to shoot me execution style.

It’s only right.

Except I want to die looking at her. I want to look at her as I breathe my last breath, as the pain melts away.

“Down! Do it!”

I swallow. I will obey. This is what I’ve earned, then. To die alone at her hands, face shoved into the bearskin rug.

I suck in a breath and lay myself in front of her, fingers knit behind my neck. I weep into the rough fur, thinking about our quest to find Kiro, this brother I’ll never know. My love for Aleksio. Most of all, Tanechka. She makes the world beautiful. She’s back.

And now this pain I’ve carried for so long will be washed clean by the only person who can wash it.

“I’m not afraid,” I say.

She’s silent, standing over me. What’s she thinking? What’s she waiting for?

I cast her into the gorge even as she begged me not to. She clung to me to the last. We were lost together. We were soul mates. We were each other’s island. She clung to me as I cast her off.

“Make me suffer as I made you suffer. End this.”

She kicks at my hands. “Hands down. Lie on your side.”

I press my hands to my sides and lie on one of them, holding my breath. Whatever way she wants it.

She stands over me. I look at her stocking feet. The ragged ends of the jeans. “Eyes shut,” she commands.

I shut my eyes. I hear a soft rustling sound above me. I hear her behind me. What is she doing? I feel a tickle on the back of my head. A hand over my arm. She stretches her body out behind mine. She presses a kiss to the back of my neck, arm draped over me, gun still in her hand.

And holds me.

Something in me breaks.

I begin to weep.

“You’re worthy of God’s forgiveness,” she says. “You’re worthy of God’s love.”

Like a baby I weep. I don’t want her fake god’s love or forgiveness.

But this strong fierce female feels so like Tanechka, shining with goodness. It fucks me up.

Still she holds the gun—her hand isn’t on the trigger, but on the grip. She allows it to hang lazily from her hand in front of me as she holds me.

This, too, is so like Tanechka, her Glock an accessory as much as the hoop earrings she so loved to wear. As much as the snake chain necklaces that would lie across her skin, sliding slyly along the curves of her collarbone.

“I’m not worthy. Not of you.”

“Shh,” she says, pulling me tighter.

I’m so tired, so, so tired.

I close my eyes, imagining my fierce, glorious female has come back to me. Except Tanechka wouldn’t be holding me like this.

Tanechka was never one to forgive her enemies.

“Shh,” she says again.

Lazarus

I
’m sitting in
my Mercedes on a street near Ping Tom Park. It’s a place I like to go and think, but right now I’m on a phone consultation with Valerie. She’s encouraging me to personally visit Dmitri, leader of the American Russians.

“Visit my enemy…” I say. “Maybe I should bring him a little gift, too. But what do you bring the man who wants your head on a platter? Fruitcake doesn’t seem quite right.”

She laughs. She thinks I’m using it as a figure of speech.

I told her that I’m in a rivalry with a Russian accounting firm. I told her how competition for some business got out of hand, right when I don’t need the extra headache.

“Your people stepped over a line,” she says.

“That’s one way of putting it.” I say. Another—more accurate—way of putting it would be that two of my guys got wasted on meth and shot some Russian mob soldiers. Managing criminals isn’t as easy as it might appear. A lot of them are hotheads and addicts. “Maybe I could bring him their heads on platters.”

“Is that what he really wants, though?” She thinks I don’t mean that literally, either. “What are Dmitri’s business objectives?”

“Operational expansion,” I say. “Conservation of human resources.” This is how Valerie and I talk. My guys would fall off their chairs if they heard us.

“What I’m getting at is, if you want to prevent more sniping between your firms, look at it from his point of view. Imagine you weren’t rivals. What becomes possible then? Who are you without this rivalry? What’s on both of your business bucket lists? What makes you both look good in the eyes of the rank and file? Is there any sort of joint venture you could undertake? Or a pooling of resources to catch a large account that you both want? Think out of the box here, Lazarus. Maybe you collaborate to put on a charity event for a cause you both believe in and the Russian firm name is at the top. You’ll make him look good.” Making people look good is one of Valerie’s go-to strategies.

“He’s gonna have some significant trust issues,” I say.

“Then overcome them, Lazarus. When was the last time you and Dmitri met face to face?”

Never
, I tell her. No, not even at an
industry function
.

She’s surprised. “The first step is a meeting. Humanize yourself to him. Invite him to dinner.”

“Just the two of us?”

“Two guys. Who probably have very much in common.”

It’s an interesting idea. Insane, but interesting.

I imagine sitting down with Dmitri in an out-of-the-way restaurant. Something neutral—not Agronika, the Black Lion club. Not one of the Russki places, either. There would need to be guarantees of safety. “I don’t know. I don’t want him to think I’m fearful of his retaliation. Going to him on my knees. Kissing his ass.”

“In judo, a fighter uses his opponent’s energy against him. When the opponent pushes, you pull. Your Russian rival is in pushing mode. Instead of pushing back, why not surprise him? Why not find a way to pull him close? You let him know you didn’t sanction that action that your employees took. You’re disciplining them, right?”

“They won’t misbehave again.”

“Good. Let him know the steps you’ve taken toward bringing your team back under control. Then move forward—find some point of agreement and build.”

“It’s…out of the ordinary.”

“Guess what, Lazarus. You’re in control now. You get to decide what’s ordinary now.”

Viktor

W
hen I open
my eyes again, it’s dawn.

Tanechka’s arm is still around me. I can barely move the fingers of my right hand, and my phone’s ringing from somewhere. And then it stops. I’m just stunned that it’s dawn. I can’t believe I slept through the night. I never do—not ever.

Tanechka mumbles from behind me.

I remove her arm from where it drapes over me and settle her on her back, gazing down at her sleeping form. Nobody ever held me like that. Nobody ever told me I was worthy—not even the old Tanechka. I knew she thought it, but she would’ve been too cool to say it.

It did something to me to hear this nun say it.

I got her drunk and seduced her and acted like a savage, and she held me. I want to lie back down with her.

I straighten. No, I don’t. This is the nun, not Tanechka. The very thought makes me feel as though I’ve betrayed Tanechka.

I scrub my face and grab my Glock from the floor. Then I rip the covers from the bed and tuck them around her. She always liked warmth, a heat-seeking creature.

I set a fresh pair of socks by the fire. She loved her socks to be warmed by the fire most of all. I sit on the end of the bed and check my phone to see who called, trying not to think of the night.

The call was from Yuri. I call back. It is not good news. Some of Bloody Lazarus’s guys ambushed some of our American Russian friends. We have to help them avenge it.

It will be dangerous and bloody, but they’re important allies, and to have an ally, you must be an ally. And Aleksio is gone investigating a Kiro lead.

It’s up to me.

“I’ll be outside my door,
brat
.”

I button up my shirt, wincing at the pain in my hand, which is caked with dried blood. Nothing broken, I think. I move it, and it begins to bleed again.

Tanechka sleeps.

She never did anything in the regular way, never like a regular woman. My Tanechka, like a warrior nun. I buckle my holster and put on my suit jacket. I kneel over her and smooth a stray lock of hair from her forehead.

She rouses sleepily and smiles up at me. My heart leaps to think she’s back, but then the smile fades, and she pulls the blanket to her breast.

I stand up and fasten my cufflinks, looking down, affecting a cold demeanor. “I’m going out. To kill some men. You will pray for me?” I say it mockingly.

“Viktor,” she says sadly.

“You’ll pray for me, Tanechka?”

“I’ll always pray for you.”

Downstairs I bandage my hand and swallow pain relievers with a swig of vodka. Two minutes later I’m outside with my case. Yuri roars up in his black Mustang. I swing in.

He greets me with, “What the fuck?” The car screams around a corner.

“What?”

“You hand. What did you do?”

I flex it. “Nothing broken.” The pain relievers should kick in soon. I would’ve taken something stronger if I didn’t need my aim.

“Tell me.”

“I punched a wall.”

“You can shoot still, right?”

I work my trigger finger. Steady enough. I change the subject, ask about the ambush. Yuri and some of the American Russians have identified the man as one of Lazarus’s. “They want a full-scale war on Lazarus—now,” Yuri says.

“A full-scale war is a poor use of our resources.”

“You sound like old Konstantin.”

“Konstantin is smart.”

“They don’t want to wait,” Yuri says. “They’re scared.”

“So impatient. A full war puts Bloody Lazarus’s organization into the shell of battle mode. It makes them hard to hurt in the deep way we need to hurt them. We’ll take out the hitters. That should satisfy them until we attack Lazarus’s money-laundering op. When they see the cash they get from that, they’ll be very happy we waited.”

Yuri doesn’t like it. “That would go over better if Aleksio hadn’t missed that meeting.”

“They’re our brothers. They’ll understand.”

“They’re more American than Russian,” he says. “They make tacos out of shuba, Viktor.
Shuba
.”

I wrinkle my nose, trying to imagine salted herring and vegetables in a taco shell.

“Your hand. Tell me.”

I look down at my bandaged hand. “I thought it was her,” I say. “I thought for a moment that I had Tanechka back.” My heart pounds, remembering how it felt when I thought she was back. Until she told me that God would forgive me.

“Still thinks she’s a nun, huh.”

“Nun trainee. But yes. And I seduced her. I got her off with my hand. Then she had my gun, and I thought she was going to shoot me—”

“You gave her a piece? You angered Tanechka and then gave her a gun to shoot you with?”

“I didn’t
give
it to her.”

“Who did it then?” Yuri demands. “Did the
nocnitsa
float through the wall and give it to her?”

He has a certain point. How could I not think Tanechka could find a way to get at that gun, even across the room? I think about what Aleksio said. The death wish. “Just drive.”

Pityr’s in the
kitchen when I return. “You do them?” Did we kill Lazarus’s men who killed the two Russians, he means.

“They were already done,” I say. “Last night, apparently. Their bodies were found in Bobolink Meadow. Hands and feet gone.”

He narrows his eyes, confused. A Bloody Lazarus trademark. “Why would Bloody Lazarus kill his own men like that?”

“I don’t know. We went to see ourselves, and it’s true. Then, going back to the car, we fucking ran into a guy from Valhalla,” I tell him. “It looked like he recognized me from my Peter the German visit. We had to kill him. We’re making such fucking progress and now all this.”

I loosen my tie. An unscheduled kill. I always hate to do it. “I had to. We’re almost up on four pipelines. We’re going to take down every player. Once we’re done, nobody rebuilds that fucking place.”

“You had to, then. He would’ve blown all that careful work.”

“Tanechka up?”

“Yes, and she asked for vodka.”

I suck in a breath. Only the old Tanechka would ask for vodka. “You gave her some?”

He looks worried. “I hope it’s okay.”

I clap a hand on his cheek. “Of course, Pityr. She can have all the vodka she wants. Anything she wants.”

“Except a Bible.”

“Right. Did she say anything else?”

“No. Just to bring her the bottle of vodka.”

“Not even a glass?”

Pityr shakes his head.

Tanechka
. I take the stairs three by three.

I hear the weeping in the hall. I burst into the bedroom. “Tanechka?”

She’s curled up in front of the fire, cheeks streaked with tears, bottle in one hand, volume of poems in the other. “Is this how I would overcome the killing?”

I go to her and kneel. I try to take the book from her, but she won’t let me have it.

“It’s in the darkness and squalor of his cell that he most feels free,” she says. “The prisoner feels such beautiful freedom and goodness because it’s what he can never have again. So beautiful to him because it’s so far away. It’s how I feel now, drifting so far from the convent.”