Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Read online

  Over the next few days, I work on being the invisible observer.

  Randall earns his three hours in the general room. Zara and I set a new goal for him: behave well enough in there to earn a drop in meds.

  The rewards for the guys here are always either a reduction in the level of restraint and medication or an increase in freedom. It is up to me to suggest rewards for my men to work toward.

  But when the patient behaves poorly, Donny and Zara decide on what happens—increase in restraint, increase in meds, reduction of free time out in the coveted general room. And then it’s a climb back up.

  I’m like these guys in a way. I fucked up and now I’m digging myself out, trying to regain a few privileges. Win back some professional respect.

  I monitor Pharma Two like a hawk. I take my own personal inventory and find out shipment days before the week is up.

  On the downside, the smell doesn’t get better. Some days I feel like I’m drenched in antiseptic.

  The antiseptic smell brings me back to being trapped in that rubble with those kids. Singing. Maybe a vat of it spilled during the bombing, I don’t know. The smell clings to me at night. More and more, I wake up in the middle of the night gasping for breath, reliving the kitten incident, my sleep broken into useless bits.

  Patient 34 is a complete zombie when I visit him the first time on my own—or as much on my own as you can be with three stun-gun-wielding orderlies in the hall. They’re supposed to be watching through the window, but as usual, they’re all on their phones—mostly Facebook and YouTube, from what I’ve noticed.

  I carry around two phones—one dummy one, and one in a knee sock holder under my pants. It’s an old habit from the field. You always have a little bit of money and the phone you’re willing to let them steal out and visible, and you hide the stuff you need to protect—the important phone, the real money.

  I’m struck again by his beauty. There’s something utterly powerful yet totally vulnerable about him. Somehow, this man hits me right in the gut.

  It’s not just about his moment of seeming consciousness; it’s because of how he calls to me. How something in me answers. Just lying there, he calls to me.

  I find myself reaching for my important phone—my secret cell—to get the shot.

  Taking photos like this is second nature. A shot like this isn’t just about recording a subject, it’s about seeing from a new perspective, seeing more deeply. Honoring something amazing.

  I photograph him close up and full body, then I slip the phone away.

  I pull out the blood pressure and blood draw stuff. Not even the crinkling paper seems to attract 34’s attention. His face is a perfect blank.

  I should be relieved that I’m seeing the blankness everyone else is seeing. Ask most people who fucked up in a big way and they’ll tell you their first goal is simple normalcy.

  In truth, I’m disappointed 34 is so blank.

  I made that joke, and he smiled yesterday. It was a nice moment. I want that consciousness back, if only just for a moment.

  It’s probably a bad sign that the warmest human connection I’ve felt all week is with a guy strapped to a bed in an institute for the mentally ill and dangerous. Because he’s in an institute for the mentally ill and dangerous.

  I fit the cuff around his arm and press the Velcro pieces together. “You should at least have a name. A fucking name.”

  He doesn’t answer. Not that I expected it.

  It offends my sense of fair play that he only gets a number. Fancher’s stonewalling offends me even more. “But the family is not always there, Ms. Saybrook,” I repeat under my breath. “Ms. Saybrook. What an asshole. You wanna patronize me? Really?”

  Patient 34’s blood pressure is way up yet again. The last thing I want to do is call Zara in again and have her get a normal reading, as though I’m fucking it up.

  But I can’t ignore it.

  I step away and lean against the door to give him space, just in case my talking did it. He could be picking up on my anger at Fancher and this whole situation. Unbalanced people can be extraordinarily sensitive.

  I go back for a redo, trying to use Zara’s super low-touch style. His BP is down a little on the second try. At least in normal range. I jot down that reading and do his blood and the rest of my check.

  The rest of the week is uneventful, aside from my not being able to sleep, thanks to the antiseptic scent clinging to my skin and nose. It feels like it’s inside me sometimes, which I know is crazy.

  On the upside, with every visit, 34’s blood pressure drops a bit more. At the end of the week, it’s right where it was for Zara.

  He always exhibits that flat affect, but there are times, as I go about my business, that I could swear he’s almost glowering at me, or at least staring at me intensely, but then when I look directly at him, his face is blank…though sometimes it’s more like furiously blank.

  Which sounds a little odd, I know. It’s just that, even when he’s staring blankly at the ceiling, he feels aware. Sometimes I have this weird sense that he doesn’t want me there.

  But I’m not sleeping, so I’m a mess. I could be imagining things. Projecting.

  I keep talking to him. It’s not like anybody else there wants to talk to me. I say little things at first, like, “It’s me again. What do you think about that? Not much, huh?” Or I report on the ever-evolving cake and treat activity in the staff room. I tell him I’m thinking about bringing cookies. “Maybe the way to their hearts is through their stomachs,” I say. “Wow, that kind of makes me sound like a termite, doesn’t it?”

  A muscle in his cheek twitches at that. I tell myself it was a shadow.

  I come to look forward to seeing him. Strange that the most engaging person in this place would be a John Doe on so many drugs that he probably has the consciousness of a cantaloupe, but there you have it.

  Still, there are these moments when I’m sure he’s fucking with me.

  It’s exactly ten days into my brilliant career as a Fancher Institute team member and secret tracker of ephedrine supplies that I catch him.

  I’m sitting at 34’s bedside updating patient charts on the Fancher-issued tablet. He’s his usual blank self, and as usual, I’m talking to him like he’s there.

  “I know what you’re doing. You want to lull us into complacency and make your big break. I’ve heard the tales of your last attempts. They sound brilliant, for what it’s worth.” I flick through screens while I talk. “And I hear you smashed Donny’s head into a wall. I don’t know why they have you strapped up here. Between you and me, you’d have to be insane not to want to smash Donny’s head into a wall.”

  I look up and our gazes meet, or, more accurately, his eyes are momentarily riveted to mine. He quickly looks away, all blank, but it’s too late—I caught him.

  I stand, shocked.

  I know what I saw. He’s only pretending to be out of it. Fooling everybody.

  I don’t know what to do. I’m inclined to keep his secret, because I feel this strange connection with him, but he could be really dangerous.

  Who am I kidding? Of course he’s dangerous. Everybody in here killed at least one person. And he’s also an escape artist.

  I think of the innocent children beyond these walls. I think about the nice girl at my coffee shop. The cops. My fellow nurses.

  I have a responsibility here.

  I walk out and tell the orderlies to stay put. I go down the hall to find Zara at her computer. I tell her that I suspect Patient 34 has found a way to skip his meds. “He is highly aware, and his thoughts are as fast as yours or mine.” I say. That’s one of the main effects of the drugs they give the patients—slow thoughts.

  “They do move and twitch,” she replies, like I’m stupid.

  “It wasn’t that, Zara. This man is acting. He tracks speech and responds.”

  She heaves out of her chair, annoyed. “He’s ingesting every bit of his medication.”

  We head down the hall.
“I know it sounds improbable,” I say.

  “He’s on B-52 with zyzitol. It’s not improbable, it’s impossible. What exactly happened?”

  “I was…kind of talking as I went about my protocol. I, um…think the sound of a voice can soothe, you know, and I made this joke, and—”

  “What was the joke?”

  “Just some dumb joke.”

  “What?” she asks.

  “Oh, I was talking about his escape attempts, and I said…a joke about how he knocked Donny’s head into a wall…”

  She stops and turns to me. “Do you think it’s appropriate to joke about violence toward the staff?”

  I suppose I could say that he’s supposedly on so many drugs that it shouldn’t matter what I say to him, but seeing as how I’ve been saying all along that I think he’s alert, I decide to go for a simple answer—“No.”

  She leads the way into his room. Patient 34 has his perfect flat affect. She checks his pupils, his pulse, his blood pressure. She runs through a few low-tech tests, poking his foot and so forth. Patient 34 passes with flying colors…if your goal is to appear barely conscious.

  “Do you need me to have one of the other staff members take him over?” she asks.

  Fuck.

  “Of course not.” I’m on probation here. Why couldn’t I keep my big mouth shut? And it’s not like he’s going to ever get out of his huge amounts of restraints. “It must have been a twitch,” I say obediently.

  She turns on her heel and heads out. Angrily. The guys in the hall return to their social media empires. I go back in and sit down on the side of 34’s bed with my back to the hall window so they can’t see my face—not that they’re watching. Still. I fight back the tears.

  Maybe I really am losing it. What if the whole world is right about me and I’m wrong? That I really am messed up?

  “Happy now?” I ask him.

  He stares vacantly at the ceiling.

  “Oh, fuck you, you fucking faker.” I take a deep breath, trying to center myself. I have to collect myself. I can’t go back out into the hall like this.

  It’s my lack of sleep, that’s all.

  Patient 34 just stares on and on, eyes fixed on a point on the ceiling, godlike features perfectly fucking arranged. I decide it’s the contrast that makes his golden eyes pop, because his lashes are so dark and inky.

  “Fuck you for that, too,” I say. “For those lashes. Oh my God, I’ve officially sunk to a new low. A guy in a loony bin has gotten the best of me without saying a word. Oh, I’m sorry, mentally ill and dangerous ward. Is that better? Do you prefer that?”

  I’m feeling all emotional, like I did with the kitten.

  “Fucking kitten, I should’ve left it trapped.” I rub my eyes. “What was I doing?”

  Still he stares vacantly. His lips are lush and full for a man’s. They don’t shave a lot of these guys; they just clip their beards and hair, and not really well, but somehow the slightly choppy look is awesome on 34. Like a hot post-apocalyptic warrior youth. On goes the stare. The somewhat mechanical blinking.

  “Don’t even,” I say. “I know you’re there. You don’t have to playact anymore. Just don’t even.”

  Nothing.

  I need to get myself under control.

  “If I wasn’t sleeping so shittily, maybe I wouldn’t be obsessing about the kitten,” I whisper. “Or do you think it’s the other way around? If I wasn’t obsessing about the kitten, maybe I wouldn’t be sleeping so poorly. What do you think? Or is this just like that movie. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, right? Will I end up in here? Damn.”

  I focus down on the tablet.

  “It was so tiny.” I bite back the tears. I will not cry. “I never talk about the kitten, and now I’m telling you. That’s not messed up.” I take a deep breath here. “Except you don’t talk back. That would really make me look crazy! Wouldn’t Nurse Zara love me then? You should try to squeeze out a few words. That would really be some badass gaslighting.”

  I feel that awareness from him, and when I look, I think I catch a flick of his eyes. Or do I? B-52 with zyzitol. It’s not improbable, it’s impossible.

  I suck in a breath. “I remember once in driver’s ed, they showed this movie where it simulated if you tried to drive while on drugs. They showed this windshield, and everything was blurry except a bug that splattered there. They said, ‘If you are on drugs, you might focus on something like a bug instead of the road.’ Maybe that’s what I did back in Kabul. But it’s not like I endangered anybody.” I look at the time. I need to get to my rounds. “I couldn’t pass it by. Its little screams. I couldn’t not hear them.”

  He says nothing, of course.

  Myself, I laugh-cry a little. “It cost me everything. So yeah, I guess there’s that. No, that’s a good point. But I had to save it, you know? It was like I hit a wall, and I couldn’t let my fixer drive on by any more than I could’ve swallowed my own tongue. It was a physical impossibility.”

  I grab a tissue just to rip it up.

  “That little paw sticking out of that gap in the rubble.” My voice is hoarse. “I felt like I wouldn’t be able to breathe if I didn’t get that kitten out of there. Literally couldn’t breathe, you know what I mean?”

  His chest rises more abruptly than usual. Just twitches. I won’t let him fuck me up again.

  “I know what you’re thinking—the kitten was Freudian projection.”

  I pause, surprised. I actually never thought of that before. How did I not think of that before?

  “Yeah, you’re right. It seems so obvious—no, you’re right. I walk out of that hospital collapse like it’s nothing. All that time like it’s nothing. But then a few weeks later, we pass a tiny kitten trapped in rubble, and I lose my shit. Pretty suspicious, right?”

  I focus on his strong hand, mind racing. Could it be projection?

  “Yeah, you think the kitten is me. Crying. And I rescue myself, and then I just sit there holding it, crying. But why would I sit in the road and cry if I rescued myself? That’s a flaw in your theory, 34, clever as it is.”

  My blood races. Strangely, I feel better.

  I straighten up. Do I honestly feel better, having talked about it? I pack up the cart. “Should we meet here tomorrow? Yes? Tomorrow’s good for you? Awesome.”

  Chapter Four

  Aleksio

  The back door of the storage warehouse is secured with a chain and padlock.

  I smash the fuck out of it with a sledgehammer. This is the seedy part of Chicago. Nobody’s around—nobody that will care, anyway.

  I slip in with Tito at my side. We’ve worked together, bled together, killed together for years, me and Tito. We don’t even have to signal, we just slip in, weapons out, and start clearing rooms. Five guys slip in behind us, quiet as night.

  The choreography of crime has sunk deep into our bones.

  Gunfire sounds from the front. Tito raises his brows. The point was for us to handle the fighting part, being that my brother Viktor is still injured.

  We head up to find Viktor standing over ten men. They’re all on their bellies, arms outstretched. Viktor’s girlfriend, Tanechka, walks up and down the row of them. Tanechka and Viktor came out of the Russian mafiya. They know how to hold a room.

  “So much for the intel about them being in back of the warehouse,” Tito mumbles, holstering his Luger.

  I catch Tanechka’s eye and put my hand out, palm down. It’s our sign for Kiro, our lost baby brother, like patting a little boy’s head. Of course Kiro would be a grown man by now—twenty-one years old. My heart twists at the thought.

  Kiro was just a baby in a crib, fat little arms waving, when they ripped him away. Sold him into a shady adoption ring, we later learned.

  Tanechka nods and places a boot on one of the men’s heads. I never met him, but apparently she has. “Hello, Charles.”

  “I’ll tell you where the cash is,” Charles says. “You can have it.”

  “Is not enough.” H
er Russian accent sounds extra harsh, and I wonder whether she’s doing it for effect. “You remember me?”

  Charles says nothing. The correct answer would be yes. Nobody forgets Tanechka.

  “You kept me in a little room. Prisoner, auctioning me off like eBay. You kept all those girls. You made them cry. You think all I want is cash? Cash is where we start. Can you guess where we end?”

  The man says nothing.

  My brother Viktor grins, stupidly, madly in love with Tanechka. Tito just leans against a wall, enjoying the show.

  Tanechka demands cash, records, and communications equipment. She’s not going to kill Charles, but he thinks she will.

  Any one of us could threaten him, but it feels good to leave it to Tanechka. He wronged her and a lot of other women. He probably has a thing against women.

  He starts spilling. Tanechka smiles over at Viktor. The information he’s giving up will help us destroy our enemy, Lazarus, aka Bloody Lazarus, and take back what’s ours—namely, the kingdom he stole from us when we were too young to understand.

  But our real goal is Kiro. We’ve heard rumors that Lazarus has a lead on finding Kiro.

  Lazarus wants to kill Kiro. He needs to kill Kiro.

  It might seem strange that Lazarus, a powerful Albanian mafia kingpin, would need to kill a man he hasn’t seen for twenty years, but that’s the power of a prophecy for you.

  I know, it’s the twenty-first century, but the Albanians are a superstitious bunch, and the prophecy holds that we brothers together will rule—me, Viktor, and our baby brother, Kiro. Enough people believe the prophecy that it matters—a lot.

  It’s bad. We have to get to Kiro first.

  Unfortunately, Lazarus has ten times the men we do, and ten times the resources.

  The prophecy was given by an elderly crone who supposedly had the evil eye. She had blood-red fingernails that transfixed me as a child, and I can remember her pointing to baby Kiro in his crib and saying that nobody could beat the three of us. That together, we brothers would rule.