Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) (8 page)

“The gun is the last resort. Any noise will fuck up our escape.”

“I got it!” she says again, impatient this time.

I text Aleksio with instructions. He knows not to argue in the middle of the mission. I adjust my fat suit and put it right. I listen at the door for footsteps. Eventually the Santa-bearded guard comes. He knocks. “Ten minutes.”

“I’m ready now.” I jiggle the doorknob as though I can’t get it open. I flatten to the wall, and when he opens it I yank him in and disarm him easily. I hold his piece to his temple while Nikki searches him. She pulls out car keys. “Score,” she whispers.

“You want to live? You cooperate,” I growl.

The guard gives up the location, make, and model of his car. I tie his hands; Nikki stuffs part of the pillowcase in his mouth and gags him in a dead fucking serious way. I let her keep his revolver.

I take the guard’s cap and shirt and another ring of keys. These would be the keys to the women’s rooms. I close the door behind me. I don’t have his beard, but this will be enough. I know how to move in front of the cameras.

I beeline down the hall to the boiler room. Every feeling in the world swirls inside of me as I near Tanechka. I unscrew a vent in the ceiling duct, hands trembling. This is the duct Nikki told me about. She’d been saving it for herself, thinking to hide in it if she ever got free. I pull up to the upper floor, just under the hall. I wait out the footsteps, aware that my ten-minute window has gone to five.

When the hall is vacant I push up. I go to Tanechka’s room, hesitating at her door, frightened it might be her. Frightened it might not.

I unlock it and pull it open.

There she is, kneeling, just as she does on the camera.

Tanechka.

She doesn’t look at me, but I know it’s her as sure as I know the sun in the sky. Tears come so hard, they blind me.

“Tanechka,” I whisper, pressed back against the door. If she recognizes my voice, she doesn’t show it. I’m shaking, resisting the impulse to fall to her, cover her body with mine.

I want to rip out my bloody heart and lay it at her feet, destroy it in front of her as she watches.

She focuses on the small icon, a replica of the many you find in Orthodox churches back home. I address her in Russian. “Eto ya,” I say. “It’s me.”

She remains mesmerized by the small portrait. She hears all. She waits. She assesses. So Tanechka.

But Tanechka wouldn’t want me to be stupid, sloppy. I slide behind her, allowing the camera to catch just my cap before I press a piece of tape over it. Framing this bearded guard.

Still she prays. I would expect nothing less. I kneel beside her and gaze upon the side of her face, trembling with joy and grief. It’s her.

“
Moya
Tanechka.”

She turns to me finally. I was prepared for rage, fear, hatred. But the feeling of her regarding me as a stranger, this is a kind of hell I could never prepare for.

Like being shut out from the sun.

“You’re alive.”

She makes no expression.

I stare, falling into her pale freckles, the royal blue of her eyes. Just the line of her lashes makes me feel indescribable joy—
korotkiye resnitzy
—“stubby lashes” she used to call them. She would coat her stubby lashes in black makeup. I study the way her smooth, creamy skin sweeps boldly out to her broad cheekbones.

She turns away. My heart pounds as she moves her slim fingers across the knots of the prayer rope, lips moving, whispering the prayer. The blunt white scar on her jaw, like an old friend. I remember the fight. One inch lower and it would have been her jugular.

I lay a hand on her arm, address her in Russian. “I’m here to get you out.”

“You know me?”

“Yes. I’m getting you out. We’ll talk later.”

“Are you getting the others out?”

“Soon.”

“Not now?”

“Later.”

“No thank you, then. I’ll stay until they’re all safe. I’ll be last.” She jerks out of my grip and resumes praying.

My heart pounds. We’re running out of time. “We’ll rescue the others—soon.”

“I’ll go with you after that.”

Tanechka. So stubborn.

I stand over her. “Forgive me.” I kneel and take her neck, choking her out. She doesn’t fight me—instead she reaches up to the icon on the small stand; she slumps before she can grab it. I hoist her over my shoulder and then pause. I sweep up the little icon along with her rope and get out. I don’t prefer to take these stupid things, but it’s what the Santa beard guard would do.

She truly doesn’t have her memory—the old Tanechka would’ve had me flat on my back if I’d tried something like that. I hold her tightly, the weight of her in my arms like coming home. I rush her down the hall and toward the exit. It’s not too easy with the fat suit on, but my Tanechka will never be heavy to me. Never too much to carry.

Nikki is already there with her guard. The girl is good. She holds up a finger when she sees me—one minute until we get company.

The Santa guard’s eyes widen when he sees that I have his nun.

“You’re coming with us. Shut up and obey or I kill you,” I say.

If Nikki doesn’t kill him first.

We head out the back, down a stoop littered with cigarette butts to a patch of scrubby grass. Valhalla is nondescript from the outside, like a small apartment building. Tiny windows set into dirty, pale brick. We run up the alley past more such apartment complexes. We are definitely still in the city.

I clutch Tanechka to me like she’s my own life. Our van screams up, and the back doors open. Aleksio hops out. “What the fuck, Viktor!”

I throw him the Santa guard’s keys. “Somebody needs to drive the black 2013 Volvo out of here now.” I tell where it is.

Yuri comes around, eyes wide. “What did you do to Tanechka?” he asks in Russian.

“Nothing.” Gently as I can, I settle the unconscious Tanechka into the back. I don’t want to leave her, but we’re running out of time. “You ride in back with her, Nikki. She knows you. Be nice or we’ll throw you right back.” I shut the door.

Mischa comes around. He has control of the guard.

“She’s alive!” Yuri says.

I can barely contain my heart. “Hit me, Aleksio.”

“The fuck?” Aleksio’s pissed.

“I had to do it,
brat
. I’ll go back and sell it. The mission is fine. I’ll go back, manage the perceptions; you’ll see.”

Yuri comes up and hits me in the jaw. I clip my lips into my teeth so that it will be good and bloody—we’ve done this many times.

I grin. “Now get them safe.” I rush around through the alley, making it back to Valhalla’s backyard just as two guards are running out.

I act the part of the dazed, angry customer, demanding my money back. “Look what she did!” I say, gesturing at my jaw. “She hit me!”

I give them the tall tale. I tell them Nikki hit me. I say I called out to the Santa guard, but Nikki took Santa guard’s gun and ran off. I tell them how the Santa guard seemed upset and angry and how he left me alone in the room. I called out and nobody came, so I went out in search of somebody. The outside door was open, so I went out, looking for the van, for a ride home. I play my part forcefully, with commitment. That’s the key. I’m the angry customer.

The guards start putting it together, telling each other in their own words. “He let Nikki go and he knew Charles would fuck him up, so he left,” one of them explains to another.

Then they find the nun gone. The story changes—Santa guard fucked up and let Nikki escape, and he had nothing more to lose, so he ran away and took the nun with him. They all talk about how pissed Charles will be.

I demand my money back, as though that’s my main concern.

The story of the bearded guard taking the nun continues, gains more detail.

It’s working. I’m relieved.

When I ask a third time for my money back, I get a Glock shoved into my neck. “How about we drive you back instead of killing you—would you settle for that?”

I put up my hands as they threaten my fictional family. If I reveal anything, they say, people that I love will die. I play the frightened john, promising never to speak of it. I show them total collapse. I show them the kind of man who would visit such a place. They no longer think of customer service with me.

They blame me a little bit, I think. After all, the chain of events began with me. I allowed a girl they tied and bound to hit me. I whined enough to distract the guard and allow her to steal his gun and escape.

They blindfold me and put me back in the rear of the van to take me back. I put my ear to the metal partition, straining to hear. They’re upset with the Santa guard. They’re hunting for him and Tanechka already.

Aleksio will put him somewhere. This guard will have good information.

Tanechka will stay with me.

The ride back to the bus station takes much less time. They don’t bother driving in circles to fool me now that they’ve threatened my family. They strip my blindfold off and nearly throw me to the curb. They have worse problems than me.

I walk through the crowded station. I don’t think they’re tailing me, but I’m always careful. I come out the other side and see Aleksio leaning against his Jaguar.

He grabs my suit jacket and slams me back against the door, eyes wild. “Were you always going to grab her? Just tell me that one thing. I need to know. Were you planning it?”

“No. I wasn’t.”

He twists my shirt, pushes me harder. “I need to trust you!”

“Where is she? Is she okay?”

Aleksio glares, nostrils flaring. “What the fuck? You shouldn’t even get to see her now!”

“She’s awake?”

“Yeah,” he bites out. “She’s back at the house with Tito and that girl. Mischa’s on his way.”

I nod. She and Mischa were close friends. “She was in danger we didn’t understand.” I tell Aleksio about the amnesia. “I couldn’t leave her.”

“Was she in danger that minute?”

“That minute?” I look into his eyes. “No.”

“So what the fuck?”

“She has no memory! She can’t defend herself!”

Aleksio lets me go with a huff of disgust and swings into the driver’s seat.

“You’d do the same for Mira,” I say.

Yuri’s in the front barely suppressing his smile.
Tanechka’s back!
I get in the back seat.

Aleksio peels out, barely giving me time to close my door. “We need to be able to trust each other,” he says.

“You can always trust Viktor,” Yuri says. “But he will always put Tanechka above everything. That’s the only thing.”

“The mission isn’t compromised,” I say. “They still think I’m Peter the German technologist. They won’t think I was there to set up surveillance. We’re
good
.”

Aleksio grumbles.

“I know how to set a man up,” I tell him.

“If Viktor says he set the man up, he set the man up,” Yuri says.

“They wouldn’t have driven me back if they suspected anything,” I say.

Yuri points out that we now have a guard to question in addition to the intrusive surveillance.

“Fine, a live guard and surveillance is better than just surveillance,” Aleksio says. “But Viktor…” He’s angry. Upset. I chose Tanechka above everything.

Shivers slide over me. “It’s
her
,” I say.

Yuri turns and meets my eyes. “But if she really thinks she’s a nun…”

“I don’t care. It’s Tanechka. In time she’ll remember. She has to.”

Yuri frowns. “She may not like what she remembers.”

“She’s alive,” I say. “Everything is possible.”

Tanechka

N
ikki and I
are taken to a very nice home, a row house it’s called, in the city of Chicago. There’s an American, Tito, in charge. He’s big and burly; his short dark hair is nearly white on the tips.

The halo of a killer.

I don’t have my memories, but I know a killer when I see one. Like the man who took me out of that place—the man who seemed to know me. Another killer.

These people are in a criminal gang, I think.

I always worried that somebody would appear from my old life and endanger my sister nuns at the convent. I never imagined such a person would find me in an American brothel.

I didn’t want him there. I didn’t need to be rescued. I promised my captive sisters I’d try to help them, that I wouldn’t abandon them. This man didn’t care. He took me away.

“I have to go back,” I tell Tito yet again.

“Wait for Viktor,” he says. “You can ask Viktor.”

Cold comes over me. Viktor. The name on my chest. “Viktor?”

“The man who took you out of there.”

“I will not wait. I will not stay.” I make for the door.

He blocks it. “Not likely, sister.” He points at a chair near the fireplace. “Sit.”

I pull the ends of my head scarf tight under my chin and cross my arms, surveying the exits. I want nothing to do with these men who come to me from the life that gave me a body full of ugly scars.

“Fine, stand,” he says.

Nikki sits instead, swinging an arm over the back of the chair. “Anyone got a smoke?”

“Act right and we’ll see,” Tito says.

I turn away from the strange familiarity of this scene. People like this, a place like this.

I don’t care to know them. I don’t want to know what I was.

Mother Olga always said that God can forgive even the worst of sinners if they come to him with the right feeling in their heart, but what if I was a criminal, too? What if I’ve killed people? Even God has limits.

Ever since I saw that precious light coming from that icon in the thicket, my life has been a journey back to the overflowing sweetness of that moment. I feel sure that remembering my old life will only move me further away from that sweetness. What if I’m not strong enough to resist it?

Sometimes I feel that old life on the edges of my awareness, like a dangerous fog that might swallow up the brightness if I let it.

I reach into my pocket, close my fingers around a corner of the icon.

Tito has several other American men under his command—two inside here, more outside. This habit of counting men and assessing force, this too comes from that dark life. I do not want it.