Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) Read online

  Chapter Five

  Tanechka

  At mealtimes, we are herded into a large room to eat. My sister captives here are frightened and vulnerable, most of them Russian or Ukrainian, but there are also Americans and several Vietnamese in our group. I make friends, make the women laugh. Sometimes I simply listen.

  I will confess that images of escaping, of taking these women with me, bubble up from deep inside me. These escapes are always exceedingly violent and deadly, though. I reject this.

  At times I am forced to dine with Charles, the man who directs this place—just me and him at a special table. The sides of Charles’s head are shorn like dark velvet, and he has eyes so brown they look almost black. My skin crawls when I must sit with him. I sometimes think he has no soul.

  God says to love your enemy, but it’s not so easy with Charles. The women are frightened of him, as they should be. I am more disgusted. But it is not for me to judge.

  I’m a novice, not yet a nun, but in all things I act as a nun, following the examples of my mentor, Mother Olga, as well as the abbess of the Svyataya Reka convent. And of course, I follow the example of Jesus Christ, whom we imitate in all things. I mean to make my way back to the convent with a clear conscience and a song in my heart. It is my greatest wish for the abbess to ask me to join the convent. I would wear the outer robe and veil marking me as a true ascetic and take a new name. I would return to my prayerful life and my duties with the goats.

  Life was not easy in that part of Ukraine, uncomfortably near the Russian border; we would often find ourselves at the mercy of insurgents and fighters of all kinds, who would come and take our food, sleep in our beds, sometimes get drunk and ruin our furniture or slaughter our animals. There were times we had to flee for our own safety, nights spent huddling in the small outbuildings with what treasures we could rescue. This we would bear. As nuns we pray for many things, but most of all we pray for peace.

  I am grateful for that example to follow in this place.

  I can bear anything for myself, but it does pain me to see how broken some of the women here are. I know what it’s like to find yourself broken and alone in a strange place.

  I know what it is like to feel vulnerable, bewildered, frightened.

  Two years ago I woke up alone in a strange place with no memory.

  My body was twisted on a bed of tree branches, cutting into my flesh, into my back and shoulder. My shoulder blazed with the pain of a thousand blades. That is my earliest memory. My second memory was of looking up at the blazing blue sky, a sky so bright and blue it seemed unreal.

  So beautiful.

  It came soon to me how lucky I was. I had landed on a tree jutting out from a cliff—this was the Dariali Gorge, I later learned. A miracle, but when I looked and saw the distance still below me, I knew that danger still remained.

  I called out for help.

  My call echoed. Nobody called back. Alone.

  I remembered nothing—not my name, nor where I came from, nor how I’d come to be on a tree halfway down this sheer rock face.

  You never feel so frightened as when you don’t remember who you are.

  For two days I picked and slid my way down the sheer rock face. Battered, thirsty, clinging to rocks and roots, sliding, falling, the pain in my shoulder sometimes unbearable. Finally I got to the river at the bottom of this great gorge. I followed the river, only stopping to seek shelter against the night. At times I had to swim, due to the sheer rock faces on either side.

  I wore jeans, a leather jacket, and a T-shirt with the words “The Scorpions.” I hoped it might be a clue to my identity; I later learned that this is a famous rock band from Germany.

  On the fourth day, hikers found me and took me to a hospital in Vladikavkaz. They dressed my wounds and put my shoulder back into place. The nurses there tried to find my family by searching for missing persons on the internet. Afterwards they called the authorities. Nobody had reported me.

  I knew how to speak both English and Russian, and I had a tattoo over my heart that said “Tanechka + Viktor.” These are common names, though.

  My body is covered in ugly scars that didn’t come from the fall—fighting wounds, one of the nurses told me. Some from the bullet, some from the blade. I could see that my wounds frightened them. I wanted to tell them that I wasn’t a bad person, but I didn’t know even this for sure.

  It was at the hospital I met Mother Olga, who had fallen ill visiting relatives. I would sometimes talk to her about how troubled and bewildered I felt, with no memories of who I was. No place in the world.

  When Mother Olga was discharged from the hospital, she offered me a place helping the mothers in the convent in the vast steppe in Donetsk Oblast. She had warned me of the danger there; some of the nuns had fled.

  I went.

  I fell in love with the once-grand convent, a gray stone edifice surrounded by rolling green hills. Half of it was bombed away in the past decade, and much of the stonework is in disrepair, but even in its ruined condition it’s beautiful to me.

  The nuns taught me to care for the goats. They were frightened to take them grazing too far from their home, but I wasn’t. Fighting men didn’t scare me; it was my dark past I was frightened of.

  Mother Olga and the abbess taught me to pray, taught me about the Bible. I found it all quite pleasant, but I was not moved by any type of religious feeling until one day when I was out on the steppes with the goats.

  I had not been sleeping, troubled by an incident in town when I’d wanted badly to break the nose and fingers of a Russian fighter who mocked Mother Olga. Out there in the grass, I accidentally dozed off.

  When I woke up, there was a strange light blazing from a thicket. I went to investigate it and found myself scratching away dried leaves and dirt to uncover what felt to my fingers like a wooden slab the size of my hand. I brushed it off to discover it was an icon of Jesus shining up at me. I did not understand how this painted piece of wood shone so brightly. The light seemed to blaze from Jesus’s eyes and face, brighter than the sun and all the stars.

  All I knew was that I was filled with such indescribable peace, just gazing upon his face.

  This light illuminated the bushes and the faces of the goats who had gathered around me. Like lightning, but brighter. As soon as I was able, I carried it back to the monastery, running at top speed, eager to show the mothers, but the shine faded. By the time I burst through the doors, I held nothing but painted wood, an icon like all the others, only more damaged and weathered, some of the paint off.

  Mother Olga was excited all the same. She told me the icon had been stolen decades ago and was thought to be lost forever.

  The abbess arrived when she heard. She said, “The grace of God has come to comfort you.”

  It was then I knew I wanted to join them. The nuns said Jesus would love me even if I wasn’t a nun, but I was determined, because of the darkness in my past, and the way this light spoke to me.

  The fighters came soon after I found the icon. This was one of the greatest trials in my short memory. I shook at the way the three of them forced us to sit and watch as they took most of our food and relieved themselves on the rest. I heard the others outside, taking our best goats. When they mocked my beloved abbess as she prayed, I started toward them, meaning violence.

  Mother Olga grabbed my arm. “Tanya!” This was the name they called me.

  Hers was an old woman’s grip, but there was power in that grip, and love and goodness and faith. I forced myself to still, heart pounding so fast, I imagined the whole countryside could hear it. It was with an iron will that I stilled myself and bowed my head. “Please excuse me,” I whispered in Russian.

  Even then, I strained not to fly at them, right there in my novice’s robe and head scarf, sure that I could make them sorry, elbow to throat, gun butt to nose, foot to jaw, all in one flowing sequence.

  Oh, it would have been so easy. Bowing my head and saying words of peace… I could have crushed a m
ountain with the effort it took to bow my head and say those words.

  When they left, the abbess lifted my chin with her bony fingers. “I am so proud of you, Tanya.” I wept with the frustration of it.

  After being a novice for a year and a half, they said I was ready to turn in my head scarf for the nun’s veil and a new name. Except then I caught a man who had snuck into the pen at dawn, about to kill my favorite goat. I broke both his arms and his jaw. We had to drive him to a hospital a day away.

  Thus I had to begin my period of being a novice over again.

  It takes such a long time to learn the art of forgiveness. Mother Olga said that my love of fighting and lack of forgiveness was a lion at the gates of my heart’s desire to be a nun. She said that Jesus loves me all the better for it.

  Then I was taken.

  I was napping on a hillock. I woke up with boots pressed down on both my arms, like boulders on my arms, and a sweet cloth being held over my mouth.

  When I awoke again I was locked in a dark freighter container with two dozen other women, out at sea for some weeks. The virgins among us were brought here to this place with cameras and many little rooms. They tested the other women for virginity, but they didn’t test me. It’s strange to me that they didn’t test me. There is no reason to assume a novice nun is a virgin.

  I still have my head scarf and novice’s robe in this place. Still my prayer rope.

  I hate cameras or surveillance of any kind—a feeling from my former life that I don’t understand. Nevertheless, I pray faced away, whispering the Jesus prayer.

  One of the guards asked me whether I would like a cross for the wall. I told him I would prefer an icon, and he was able to get one similar to the one I found on the steppes—a little more modern, but Jesus wears the same colors and holds his hand in the same beautiful gesture. This icon serves as a window to heaven just the same as one covered with gold or lit with a thousand suns.

  I don’t think he got it for me out of kindness; I believe my being a nun makes me desirable to bidders with evil intentions.

  Still I am grateful.

  I pray for salvation from my dark past, and for a peaceful and righteous way to lead these captive sisters of mine to safety.

  Chapter Six

  Viktor

  Aleksio has me help him with the money-laundering surveillance and the plans for the heist. He thinks I need something to focus on other than Valhalla. Maybe he’s right.

  Still I watch Tanechka and track the feeds. I sleep perhaps a little more, but I have to watch her. Sometimes Yuri helps, sometimes Mischa. These brothers of mine understand.

  When two weeks are up, I win the virginity auction on the street urchin named Nikki for a mere $2,678, which means it’s time for us to focus there.

  The men who run the brothel told me what to expect: that I’ll be put in the back of a van and blindfolded for the trip, which will last two hours. I’ll be checked for transmitting devices, weapons, and anything else suspicious. I’ll have a maximum of two unobserved hours with this Nikki, during which time I may do anything aside from striking, choking, maiming, or killing her.

  I put in my request for her to be tied and gagged, and I meet the Valhalla van at the bus station downtown as instructed. I’m posing as a German businessman with very little English. I wear a fat suit, a blond wig, and a fake tattoo on my neck. Aleksio teased me that disguises such as this are so KGB, so Russian spy. In fact they are. Some of the old men in the Russian mafiya got their start in the KGB. We learned much from them.

  I’m instructed to hold out my arms. They bring out the wand. Relief flows through my heart when I see the wand is the type we predicted they would use. The tools I’ve brought are hidden in my fat suit, encased in a pouch with a device designed to manipulate the waves and send them back in a format that tells the men that I carry no hardware or no transmitting devices of any kind.

  I promised Aleksio that I would abort the mission if they tried with any other type of wand. It was a difficult promise to make.

  I ride alone in the back of a windowless van. I take my blindfold off, tracking turns, listening to the route, forming a map in my mind. The trip takes two hours, though I’m quite sure we haven’t left the metro area.

  I’m even more sure of this after they blindfold me again and lead me out; the feel of the air alone tells me we’re near Lake Michigan.

  I’m led into a structure that smells of new lumber and taken downstairs, as I knew I would be.

  We stop, and they remove my blindfold. I’m in a hall in a finished basement flanked by two men, both armed. Guards are stationed on each end of the hall, also armed. Gray carpet underfoot, fluorescent lights above. Tanechka could make a bomb of such lights.

  I remind myself she doesn’t need my help.

  A manager of some kind with a thick white beard comes up and explains the rules to me. He, too, is armed. I nod, keeping my posture humble as I make my assessments: a corridor, exits at either end, five doors on either side. I merge this with the map I created in my head from watching the girls, noting where they are relative to the sun.

  Tanechka is up and over.

  I can feel her—that’s the worst part. My soul orients to her as a flower strains toward the sun.

  The manager tells me the rules in slow, careful English. He wants to make sure I understand. I assure him that I understand, I repeat everything back to him, working to get the full sense of the place before I’m sequestered away. Carpet all around is good. Everything muffled.

  I remind myself of the promise I made to Aleksio—unless Tanechka is in danger and needs me, I will not leave the parameters of my mission. I’ll plant the surveillance and get out. I will not go to her.

  The burly guard shows me his watch. “Knock when you’re finished. If you use the full two hours, you’ll have a ten-minute warning.”

  He opens the door. Nikki is inside, tied to a chair as I’d requested, glaring up at me. She grunts and protests from behind her gag.

  The door shuts and I lock it, though I’m sure they can come in at any time. The room is frilly. Part of the fantasy. It disgusts me. The soundproofing looks good, though. This will work in my favor.

  I turn my attention to Nikki in her white dress, rage in her eyes. Even muffled by the gag, her insults come through. She calls me a disgusting pervert with a small dick and so forth. An American.

  “This is the last time I touch you,” I say to her. “Got it? But you must stay still.”

  She doesn’t believe me. No surprise, but she’ll see. I take the ear plugs from my pocket and stick them into her ears, no easy feat with her head moving so wildly. Then I take the pillowcase and put it over her head. She writhes around, screams muffled.

  I ignore her and check the room for cameras, running my fingers along the molding and the fixtures. They promise no cameras as a part of the terms of the auction, but one never knows.

  I pull my tools from the pouch in my suit. The first thing I do is to I turn on the beacon so Aleksio and the others can get the location. Next, I use heat imaging equipment to plumb the walls in search of a mass of electronic equipment. If the server area doesn’t adjoin this room, my job is all the more difficult.

  Ten feet down the wall to the west I pick up the telltale heat signs of servers. Good. I pull out my tiny circular saw, which runs from a battery pack. Very quiet. I move a dresser and cut a hole in the wall behind it. I run a cable through. I have only a rigid cable with which to maneuver a thumb drive into the port, something I practiced with our tech guy. Using these tools on the ends of rigid cables is like writing a message with a ten-foot-long pen—difficult, to say the least, and there is always the risk of toppling the stack. It takes me the better part of an hour to get the thing in.

  When it’s in, I text out with the phone I smuggled in. The hack is live. I pull my cable out. This is going well.

  That’s when I see her staring at me. She got the fucking pillowcase off, and she knows now. Will she talk if pr
essed? Will she use this information to secure herself favors in this place? To secure her freedom?

  I put my finger over my lips, then I finish my job. I wrap the cables, shove them into the fat suit pouch, and carefully replace the panel I sawed away. I use a kit to mix up a pigment of putty and swipe it around, then I replace the dresser.

  Fifteen minutes left. I turn to Nikki. Again the fear comes into her eyes. I shake my head and remove her earplugs, but not the gag. “I’m your friend,” I say. “Understand?”

  She nods.

  “You will say nothing of this.”

  She shakes her head no, yes, no, grunting, desperate to communicate.

  I sigh and remove the gag. “Take me with you,” she whispers. “You can do it. I can tell you how!”

  I kneel in front of her. “If I take you with me, it means I rescue one person. But with what we learn here? We rescue everybody here today and everybody who will ever be here.”

  “And I fucking care about that why?”

  “Because I care about it, that’s why,” I tell her.

  “Take me.”

  “Not an option,” I say. “You have exactly two choices. You keep quiet about what you just saw and we pull you all out in two weeks, or you tell what you saw and you never get out.”

  She gives me a piercing look, and I know she’s thinking about the angles. The third and fourth options. This is a type of girl I know well.

  “You want to be a fool and try bargaining with these people?” I put my hands on either arm of her chair and get really close. “You think they’ll honor anything? I’m your only hope.”

  She just watches me. She knows. She gets it. “I want to go home,” she whispers.

  I stand. “I watch you all. It’s not so bad.”

  She glares at me. “Yeah, not bad for me yet. But I won’t be in this room after your visit. I go somewhere worse. An underground brothel and it’s not nice like this one.”