Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) (4 page)

“Hold on. He thinks he sees Tanechka in the virgin brothel? Is that what you’re telling me here?”

“He sees a ghost in there.”

“Are you shitting me? All this time?”

Yuri nods. “Did you notice on the feeds that there is a nun who prays?”

I frown, recalling the Russian Orthodox nun on the feed. Viktor had gone quiet when we first saw her. I’d thought it was about the impropriety of it. “Yeah…”

“He thinks it is Tanechka. You saw this nun, right? She prays, kneeling, her face always away from the camera. It’s true, she looks like Tanechka from the back. She has her bright blonde hair. You can see this…” He traces the edge of his cheekbone. “Her face on the side, the shape of it. Yes, she is very much like Tanechka from the back and the side, a little bit. He has not seen her face, though—”

“Wait—he thinks she’s Tanechka, and he hasn’t even seen her face?”

“Yes.”

“He thinks the nun is Tanechka based on her back.”

“He says it is her body. Her movement.”

“But it couldn’t be—”

Yuri hesitates just a moment. “I cannot see how. If you would see this gorge, the part where he threw her in…nobody would survive such a fall.”

I scrub my face. All this time I thought he was just obsessive about doing the job. “How could I not have seen this?”

Yuri shrugs. “I only just realized myself. We’ve all been working on Lazarus’s people. Making friends with the Russians over here. Taking the empire.”

“And he’s been hiding it.” I start downstairs, cowboy shirt in hand. I’m angry he would’ve kept this from me. But mostly I’m worried.

Yuri comes after me and tries to stop me. I whirl on him. “You want him killed? We can’t send him into Valhalla delusional. Chasing a ghost.”

“What are you going to do?”

I continue on down. Viktor is still asleep on the couch. Mischa’s there, and he and Tito have dug into a bag of pork rinds with the help of Derek, another of my guys. I study the nun on the screen. “She just stays like that?”

Yuri comes to join me. “Most of the time.”

“Doesn’t she fucking sleep?”

“Sleeps on her knees.”

I send Tito and Mischa into the kitchen to make coffee, and I go right for Viktor, hauling him up. He’s groggy. “Wake up! When the fuck were you going to tell me about this?”

“What?”

I shake him, and he comes to, pushing me aside so he can focus on the nun.

“You getting a good look at her?” I demand. “Because it’s not Tanechka.”

He glares at Yuri.

“Hey!” I shake him. “Look in the mirror if you want to find the asshole in this room! Seriously, Viktor. You would keep something this big from me and Yuri? The two people who love you most in this world?”

He focuses in on me for the first time, and I can see the pain. How could I have missed it?

“We are your family. We’re with you in everything. We’re here for you.”

His eyes look a little glassy.

“Brother,” I say, letting him sink down into the couch. “Let us be with you in this. You’re feeling a little crazy, I get it—”

“You do not get it,” he growls. “It’s her.”

“You threw her off a sheer rock face. That gorge—”

“It’s her.”

“You haven’t even seen this woman’s face. How can you know?”

“It’s her.”

I look helplessly at Yuri, who shakes his head.

Viktor pulls away and sits. “The fact that she’s able to sit there perfectly still—that’s a Tanechka thing to do. The few times a day she leaves the room, she’s careful not to ever face that camera. When she returns to her spot—the same thing. Tanechka was a master of stillness, and she was always aware of camera placement and angle. Always. Why would a nun avoid the camera? This is what an assassin does.”

“You’re registered for the auction. You can write things to the girls. Why not write to her?”

“No,” Viktor says. “Making contact could endanger her. Yuri understands.”

“Is true, but you could write one of your codes,” Yuri says. “Or say something about Gorky Park. ‘I want to take you for lemon ice in Gorky Park.’”

Viktor glares.

Yuri ignores him and turns to me. “Tanechka loved anything lemon-flavored.”

“No contact,” Viktor whispers. “I won’t endanger her.”

We all turn to watch the nun. She kneels at the bed, praying, in the small cell that’s a parody of a nun’s simple room, I suppose. “What’s she holding?”

“Prayer rope. Russian nuns, they do this. Her hair was bright like that,” Viktor whispers. “Blonde like inside a lemon peel. I wish she would take off her head scarf so you could see all of her beautiful hair.” He rubs his eyes. “But I’m glad that she doesn’t. These other men, they don’t deserve to see all of her.”

“Coffee with ten sugars,” Yuri says. “That was their code. Viktor, just message her that and see what she does.”

“No!” Viktor says.

Tito and Mischa come back in with the pot of coffee for all of us. Viktor pours loads of honey into his and stirs.

“She sees the console,” Yuri says. “Guys always write stupid things, senseless things—nobody will mark it.”

I click to read through the exchange archives. It’s true—men are always writing in asking her to turn, asking her what’s in her prayers, asking her to masturbate, asking what she has on under the dark robe. When guys ask the lewd questions, the others jump to her defense. Some ask more G-rated stuff—where she’s from, what her hobbies are when she’s not praying, what she likes to eat. She has quite the fan base. Everybody is curious about the nun.

“You could just be like, ‘I’d love to treat you to a ten-course meal,’” I say. “‘And after, a coffee with ten sugars.’ What do you say? Just type that.”

“No!” Viktor says. “No.”

“Why the fuck not do it?” I try. “That’s the whole fucking point of a secret code!”

“You do not contact a person in deep cover,” he says.

“Are you afraid it’s not her?” I ask.

“No—it’s her.”

I nod at Tito. Viktor sees the nod and guesses my intention. He springs up, but he’s slow. Tito and Derek grab him and wrestle him to the couch. Even so, Viktor fights like a madman—so hard that I have to get involved—I won’t ask Yuri to subdue him. Tito gets him in a headlock, Derek has him in an arm lock, and I grab his face and look him right in the eye. “You see what madness this is?”

“It’s her,” he grates out.

“Then why don’t you even want to confirm it? Isn’t that a little suspicious? So I’m going to do it for you, and then we’re going to get the fuck out of here, because this is fucked beyond belief!”

I go to the keyboard over his protests and type in the message. The ten-course meal in Gorky Park. The coffee with ten sugars.

When I’m done, Tito and Derek let him go. He angrily pushes them away and draws near the screen, swearing in Russian, vowing terrible things, I’m sure. The message I typed flashes onto the screen below, and onto her monitor mounted on the wall to her side, well within her field of vision. She doesn’t move at all.

“She saw it,” Viktor says after a while.

“How do you know?”

“She is aware of all things in her environment at all times. Perfectly aware, but she will never show it.”

“If it was her, don’t you think she’d at least shake her head no or something?”

“She doesn’t want to,” Viktor says.

I sigh.

“It’s her.”

After a while I say, “We can’t send you in.”

He spins around with a wild gaze. “You have to.”

“Look at you! I won’t put you in danger like this.”

“It has to be me.”

“No. We’ll set somebody else up to go in,” I say. “A new person, a new identity.”

“That will take weeks extra!”

“We wouldn’t have lost this kind of time if you’d come clean about this.”

“We can’t wait that long!”

I pull him up from the couch. “That is not Tanechka!”

“You have to let me go in.”

“It’s dangerous for you and dangerous for the whole crew on standby,” I say. “How do we know you won’t try to go to her?”

“Because I wouldn’t endanger her like that.” He shakes out of my hold. “That’s why you must trust me. Look—I won’t go to her unless I think she’s in immediate danger. I promise you. Once we set up surveillance and start turning their people, I’ll be able to understand what she’s doing and support her, protect her. I promise, I won’t run to her. I will not be a cowboy,
brat
.”

I gaze into his eyes, wanting so bad to trust him.

“I love her. I would never endanger her. I seek only understanding. It’s our mission.”

I look over at Yuri. He tips his head, inclined to trust his old friend. I study the screen. The bid on her is in the high six figures. God, is it going to go to a million? There really are a lot of scumbags out there. “You promise me when you go in for Nikki, you won’t suddenly be searching for the nun?”

“Unless she’s in danger,” Viktor says.

“Immediate danger, like a fire.”

“Immediate danger. I promise. Don’t worry. I won’t be fucked up,” Viktor says.

“She’s so high-profile, she’ll be guarded. You get that, right?”

“Of course,” Viktor says. “And you need to understand, if Tanechka wanted to leave this place, she would be gone. Tanechka can care for herself. She’s up to something. Our success in bugging them and spying on their computers will only help her.”

“Fine.” It makes sense, and more than that, Viktor doesn’t lie to me. Except by omission, apparently. “You missed my money-laundering operation meeting. I could’ve used you for strategy.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I close my eyes. “I need you back.”

“I’m fine.”

“Make me believe it, brother.” I wave my hand around his place. “This is not making me believe it.”

“I missed a meeting,” he says. “Yes, I am guilty of that.”

I give him a look.

“
Brat
.” He gestures at the screen where the nun prays. “It’s all good.”

I sniff. “You know why I came over here? Kiro. We have a lead.”

He straightens, eyes wide. “A lead on Kiro?”

“A possible ID on the guy who probably took him. Guy named Pinder. Remember how he posed as a professor? This guy actually
was
a professor at some no-name school.”

“You think it’s him?”

“Two aliases, two death certificates, and three warrants for arrest on fraud and impersonation? I’m thinking yeah. He’s got hunting land in northern Minnesota that’s in some kind of legal limbo. I’m having our pilot fuel up.”

“Kiro.”

“Look at you. Drunk, exhausted, and like a fanatic. You should sleep.”

“Fuck you,” he says, and that makes me feel a world better. “A lead on Kiro. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What did I just do? Get your boots and jeans. We’re taking two parties of five. Carlo and a few of the guys are grabbing supplies. It’s a huge swath of hunting land.”

Viktor glances at the monitors.

“We can shut these off, right?” I say. “If anybody outbids you for Nikki today, you can just put in another bid when we get back.”

He goes to the monitors. I can see him struggling. He wants somebody to stay and watch Tanechka at least, but he knows he needs to get control of himself. He needs to show me that. He closes all of the lids, then heads up to change.

They’re probably still recording. He’ll review the stuff when we get back, and it’ll get worse once we have audio and computer surveillance on the place, but he’s torn himself away for now. That’s a good thing.

Tanechka

I
pray, kneeling,
sometimes crying—not in self-pity, but in gratitude. This hardship is a gift for which I am grateful. Every day this hardship makes me stronger.

I pray until my knees scream.

Then I pray more.

Sometimes I feel rage, but I don’t act on it. I simply allow it to rise and fall, just as the sisters at the convent taught. They taught me that rage doesn’t make me a bad person, but that I cannot act on it.

I’m stronger than rage, and vengeance too. Vengeance is small and weak and ugly. Love is mighty and beautiful.

Instead, I keep my attention on the love and compassion that Jesus with his shining face would feel for these women who are locked here. I even pray for these men who would treat us like cattle, shoving us, tormenting us, making the weak ones cry, frightening my sisters here with tales of what will happen to us the day we’re sold to the ones who message us.

I’ll rescue these women without violence. I’ll resist my mysterious impulses to hurt our captors. I ignore the flashes of myself doing all manner of harm to them. I don’t know why I imagine these things—it’s not for me to judge or punish them.

I slide my fingers along my prayer rope, whispering. The repetition settles my mind and calms my soul. The repetition helps me focus my attention fiercely on the small icon affixed to the wall before me. It shows Jesus in his red robe covered in a green cloak. To my captors it’s just a bit of wood that perhaps raises my value in the eyes of those who would buy me. To me, it’s a window to heaven.

The sisters said my impulses to fight with people make me special. They say that God never gives you more than you can handle.

This is truly the ugliest place I have ever been, but this fight is the greatest fight I have ever waged.

Viktor

W
e land in
a small airport in a small city named Duluth. The last time we were through here, the hunt for Kiro seemed doomed. The investigator was not hopeful. I wanted to hurt him.

Now this lead!

We rent cars and drive west from there with enough hardware to vanquish a small army. I’m in the lead car. Yuri rides up front with Tito driving. I sit in the back with Aleksio, reviewing satellite images of the imposter professor’s hunting cabin. This man, this Pinder, has hundreds of acres of wild hunting land. He’s supposedly dead, but it’s all very mysterious.

Our P.I. did good work. I am happy I did not kill him.

“If Pinder has done anything to our brother, I will make him eat his own eyeballs.”

Aleksio frowns. Love has made him lose his taste for violence a little bit. “Maybe if Kiro is as wild as they say, maybe this is the kind of place he likes. Maybe this isn’t sinister.” Aleksio. Trying to stay positive.