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

  “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.”

  Chapter Seven

  Tanechka

  Nikki 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.

  They ask us whether we want lunch. Nikki wants a burger.

  I’m not hungry.

  Again Tito asks me to sit. I ask for a phone.

  “I need you to sit.”

  I stand. It seems to make him nervous. I take up a pen and paper and write a phone number. It’s the cellphone for the convent in Ukraine. “Call and tell them I’m okay.”

  Tito takes it and pockets it.

  The door opens and a burly bald man comes in with bags. He smiles as soon as he sees me, so very happy. He addresses me in Russian—“It’s you. It’s really you.” He hands the paper bags he carries to Tito, not taking his eyes from me. “Tanechka—remember me?—Mischa?” He searches my eyes with a smile so huge and crooked it makes me feel fond of him. He can’t believe I don’t recognize him. “C’mon, Tata…”

  I shake my head. “I’m not somebody you know anymore. Please, bring me back to that place. If you think you’re my friend, if you have any feeling for me, Mischa—bring me back.”

  Mischa looks torn, troubled. Tito shrugs.

  “Blank slate, folks,” Nikki says.

  I turn away, so unsettled.

  “Tanechka…” Mischa says again, then pauses, as though there’s so much he wants to say.

  “Viktor’s on his way,” Tito says.

  Mischa unpacks the bags and arranges pastries on a plate—vatrushkas with curd cheese in the center and lemon wedges. He steals glances at me. “Viktor thought you might be hungry.”

  “Hungry?” Tito asks me.

  I shake my head.

  “Well, you’ll go sit at the table and eat the snack Mischa brought, or I’ll tie you there,” Tito says.

  Mischa glares. “I have this. I’ll watch her.”

  “Fine,” Tito says.

  I sit, but I don’t eat. Mischa stands by, a strong, silent presence, like a tree. “It’s good to have you. So good,” he says after a while.

  Nikki eats everything in sight. Afterwards, she snatches a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of a nearby jacket and lights up. Tito slaps it right out of her mouth. “Not in Viktor’s place.”

  She stands up and goes for him, and he simply pushes her back down. She laughs. “Punk.”

  Nikki would be a lovely young woman if only she’d brush her dark hair out of her eyes and sit nicely. Instead she sits with one leg thrown over the arm of the couch. The men in that place dressed her in a short white frock and white knee socks, and sitting like that, her undergarments show.

  “Nikki—your—” I gesture to convey my meaning.

  She simply sneers. “Yeah, you can’t get me out of these fucking clothes fast enough.” She smirks over at Tito. Tito pretends not to notice, but he notices.

  “There are women’s clothes above,” one of the guys says.

  Tito shakes his head. “Everybody stays in a holding pattern here until Aleksio or Viktor gets back.”

  “Come on, Tito,” Nikki says. “You like me in this getup? Yeah, I think you love me in this pervy getup.”

  Tito gets a dark look, then he tips up his chin. “Carlo, you take her up there and let her put something decent on. No messing shit up. Got it?”

  The guard brings Nikki up.

  I scan around the home, which has pleasing colors, a pleasing arrangement. I won’t stay, though. “It is his?”

  “Viktor’s? Yes,” Mischa says.

  “I do not know him.”

  Mischa exchanges glances with Tito.

  “And I will not stay.”

  Mischa just stares at me. You’d think I’m a talking rabbit, the way he stares. Then Nikki comes back down in jeans, sneakers, and a torn black T-shirt that shows her belly button. Mischa widens his eyes and watches me with renewed intensity.

  “Metallica for the win.” Nikki makes a hand signal of some sort, showing me two pointer fingers, two pinkies.

  Mischa continues to watch me, as though I might react to Nikki in these new clothes. Why? I’m happy she has a new outfit. The old outfit was for the men, not for her.

  Footfalls outside the door. I know it’s that Viktor, the one who plucked me from that place. I know it before he enters.

  The door flies open.

  He pauses, framed in the doorway. He wears a black suit, tie askew. He’s shed the stuffing that made him look large. His face is hard and square, but his chocolate-brown eyes sparkle. A little dent forms in his chin as he smiles.

  He looks so happy, and somewhere deep down inside me, the thought that he’s beautiful rises up. But then, the devil is always beautiful.

  “Tanechka.”

  “You’ll take me back to that place, please.”

  Viktor closes the distance between us. He kneels down at my feet, clutching the thick fabric of my nun’s robe, looking up at me from under inky lashes.

  I don’t know what to do with a man kneeling at my feet like this. It’s far too familiar. I don’t recognize him, but he stirs emotions in me, like the air after a rainstorm—fresh and a little bit like tears.

  “Lisichka,” he says. Little fox.r />
  Something tugs at the edges of my mind. I steel myself and address him in Russian. “I don’t know you.” I try to back up. He won’t let me. “Take me back.”

  He presses his forehead to my thighs through the coarse dark material. I feel his heat, his electricity. “I’m so sorry, lisichka.”

  A strange sensation flows through me and I push him off me—with more violence than I should—and he lands on the floor. “I’m not that one,” I say urgently. “Return me.”

  “Tanechka,” Nikki says. “Sister—whatever—I think you should reconsider, because this guy’s pretty fine. IMHO.”

  “What the fuck do are you wearing?” Viktor barks at Nikki. “Those clothes belong to Tanechka.”

  “No, they don’t,” I say.

  Viktor turns to me. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “The first thing, do you mean?”

  A stormy look comes into his eyes. “Fine. First thing.”

  “If you won’t let me go back, did you at least alert the police about what they’re doing to the women there?”

  “We’re handling it, trust me.” He stands. “Please, Tanechka, you won’t even tell me that?” He’s so full of emotion; I know this about him, feel his heart. There are so many things I know about this man. It feels like a wagon wheel finding the groove in the road.

  “I was in a tree jutting out from one of the sheer faces of Dariali Gorge,” I say.

  “Tanechka—” Viktor says, so full of feeling and urgency I think he may burst into flames. He wants to tell me things now.

  I hold up my hand. “I do not want to know how I came to be there.”

  Viktor and Mischa exchange glances.

  “If you’re truly my friends, you’ll be happy for me—happy that I found peace, happy that God sent me to the convent.”

  “God didn’t send you—”

  “God gave me a chance to start anew—it was his grace—”

  Viktor’s voice booms. “No more of this, Tanechka!”

  I fold my arms. Something about him stirs me so wildly. I don’t like it.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers, bereft. “Forgive me.”

  My eyes go naturally to the pulse pounding madly in his throat, as if I knew to expect it there. I have the sense of his blood racing, a volcano trapped inside of him. I can feel his torment, his compunction. I have the impulse to take him in my arms and whisper words of comfort against his cheek. I find that I do not want this one to suffer. “Be happy for me,” I plead.

  Helplessly he studies my face.

  Another man bursts through the door, this one a thick-necked man with honey blond hair and a wide, frank face. In another life he could be an innocent country boy, but in this life he’s a killer among killers. He was outside the virgin brothel when they took me. “Tanechka.”

  Viktor rests a hand on his shoulder. “Look—it’s Yuri. Your good friend.”

  Yuri smiles wide and holds out his hands. “Oh, Tanechka!”

  I don’t take his hands. I turn to Viktor. “I’d be so grateful if you would let me contact my convent…”

  “Later.”

  “They’re my family. They’ll be worried about me.”

  Viktor says, “We’re your family. I’m your family.”

  My heart pounds. “We were married?”

  Viktor snorts, seeming almost angry. “We never had any use for papers or contracts. We were not the running dogs of the state bureaucracy. Our love was so strong, it transcended everything.”

  “I don’t know you,” I say. “I’m not her.”

  “You don’t know that you’re her, that’s all.”

  “You know better than I do?”

  “Yes!” Viktor closes his eyes and seems to center himself. He raises his hands. “It’s okay.” He speaks as if to calm me, but he’s the one who needs calming. He’s highly emotional, this man. “You’ll go at your pace.”

  “I’ll go at no pace. I don’t know you. That won’t change.”

  More people come. Russian men who seem to know me, some other Americans, too.

  Viktor comes to me, stands beside me. I feel shivers as his mouth nears my ear, his hand barely grazing my straight spine. “I want you to know you’re safe now. You understand? You’re safe with me. I won’t let anything happen to you, and I’ll never, ever hurt you.”

  “I want the women freed,” I say. “Will you do that?”

  “We’re on it,” Viktor says. “We’ll take that organization down faster and more effectively than the cops ever could, okay?”

  “When?”

  “As soon as we can take it down in a way where they can’t put it back up.”

  “My sisters there cannot wait.”

  “I understand.”

  I nod. “I’d like to contact my convent…”

  Viktor sighs, exasperated. “It’s okay,” he says, unbidden. “Leave us,” he says to the small gathering.

  I stiffen. I don’t want to be alone with this one.

  An American steps forward and grabs Viktor by the shoulder. “You sure?”

  “Yeah,” Viktor says. “It’s cool.”

  The man cups Viktor’s cheek. His hair is longer than Viktor’s, and curly, but otherwise he looks very much like Viktor. Same dark features, same bold noses, same generous lips. An American brother.

  Viktor smiles, but it isn’t his real smile. It feels strange, the way I can read this Viktor.

  Viktor’s American brother makes a small hand motion. “Let’s move it out.” The group moves as one toward the door—all except for Nikki. Tito takes her by the arm.

  “Leave her,” I say to Tito. “If she doesn’t want to go with you—”

  Nikki snorts and shakes him off. “I got this, sister.” She eyes Tito. “Can I have a smoke?”

  Tito frowns. “Come on.”

  Nikki follows him out.

  “You were always so protective,” Viktor says.

  I say nothing as they head out, the American brother last. He stops in the doorway and turns. “We’re coming back for dinner,” he says. “We’ll bring stroganoff and pirozhki. Okay?”

  “Tanechka doesn’t like potato pirozhki,” Viktor says.

  “Not true.” I put my hand to my chest. “I like potatoes…”

  “You don’t like potato pirozhki, though, trust me. You always say it’s the scam of the pirozhki world.” He turns to his brother. “No potato pirozhki.”

  “Okay, man,” the brother says.

  And like that we’re alone. In Russian, he says, “You don’t like it. I’m saving you the trouble.”

  “I’m not her.”

  “I’m going to light a fire,” Viktor says. “Don’t try to leave. You won’t get far.”

  I nod.

  “I don’t have to tell you that, do I? You probably marked exactly how many guys were out there when you came in. You always track your environment like that. You knew the camera was there in that room—I could tell. You notice and avoid cameras as easily as a fish swims.”

  It feels strange to have him know this. He wads up a handful of paper and shoves it under a log in the fireplace. “We have to get you out of that outfit.”

  My pulse races. “This is what I wear,” I say. “I don’t take it off.”

  He stills, seeming to bite back hard words. Softly, he says, “You’re not a nun.”

  “I’m a novice, hoping to be a nun. I wish you would contact my sisters in the monastery and tell them that I’m all right. It’s near Donetsk.”

  He turns. “You got all the way to Donetsk?”

  “The countryside, in Donetsk Oblast. Not the city.” I tell him the story, the short version. The hospital. Meeting Mother Olga. Nothing of the icon. I don’t want to hear him denigrate my experience.

  “You must have been so frightened.”

  “I was,” I say. “I was mostly thirsty, and in so much pain.”

  “Tanechka—”

  I hold up a hand. “I don’t tell you for pity.” I d
on’t want his pity or his passion. All of his emotions are too large. “I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”

  “Okay. But I wish you’d change into your normal clothes. I’ve collected them for you. You would be more comfortable.”

  “I’m comfortable now. This is who I am.”

  “It’s exactly the opposite of who you are. You would never want this.” He turns away and sets a smaller log on top, concentrating fiercely.

  “You don’t know what I want or who I am.”

  “You never did take shit from anyone.”

  “Stop speaking as though you know me! You knew me once, but you don’t know me now.”

  He turns. “You don’t know you, that’s the problem.” He shoves at the logs and then flicks a long match. Some paper catches. The light kisses his cheekbones, causes his short inky hair to glow brown. He shoves in a poker, and the fire roars to life. It’s nice. “You don’t know you,” he says again.

  The flames dance, lighting the room. It is all the cozier for the gray day outside. I draw near.

  “You used to love fires,” he says.

  I sniff. It seems everything I do stokes his hope like the fire warming the room.

  “We’d speak in English like this. Always English to practice. We had the best English skills of all our gang.”

  That explains some things. “The English I still remember.”

  “I bought this place for you. When I saw you on the website, Tanechka, you can’t imagine what it did to me.” The fire burns brightly behind him now, lighting the edges of him. “Everything stopped for me when…you were gone. And then seeing you…I couldn’t believe it. You’d never turn to the camera, of course, but I knew it was you—just like you know me. You can’t fool me. You’re confused, but I think your heart knows me.”

  “Viktor,” I say, his name a familiar shape on my lips, my tongue. “I can’t be who you want.”

  “You’re always who I want.” He looks around. “I was going to rent some crash pad, but when I saw you, saw we had this chance, I vowed to do this right. Make this beautiful home… Do you recognize any of this furniture? I had this chair sent over from Moscow. That’s where you’re from.” He moves to a gold chair with a carved wood frame. “You remember it?”

  The hope in his eyes is so intense, it breaks my heart a little bit. “I do not.”