Dark Mafia Prince: A Dangerous Royals romance

Kindle Edition

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

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Interior layout:
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations or locales is completely coincidental.

ISBN-10: 0-9883131-9-7

ISBN-13: 978-0-9883131-9-4

Aleksio

Don’t look at me like that. So trusting.

Like you think I’m not a monster.

Like I won’t wrap your hair in my fist and bend you to my will.

Like I won’t sacrifice you, piece by piece, to save my brother.

I’m the most dangerous enemy you’ll ever have because every time you look at me, you see somebody good. That friend who died.

And when you look at me like that, I die again.

Mira

I spent years making myself invisible.

A good girl, apart from the noise. Then you came back, beautiful and deadly in your Armani suit.

Don’t look at me like you still know me, you say.

But I remember your smile and those sunny days.

Before they lowered your small casket into the ground.

Before they told us the prince was dead.

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A Dangerous Royals Romance

Book 1

Annika Martin

Copyright Page

About the Book

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Books by Annika Martin

Books by Carolyn Crane

Acknowledgements

About Annika

Aleksio

M
ost people who
see the ancient cigarette burn on my arm assume I got it from somebody who wanted to hurt me. It’s natural to think that. But they couldn’t be more wrong.

My cigarette burn is all about love.

Still, it starts getting torn up with the kind of hand-to-hand fighting I’ve been doing. And more guys will arrive any minute. Panting, moving fast in the gloomy nook of the boathouse, I yank the carefully folded handkerchief from my front pocket, loosen my cufflinks, and tie the thing around my forearm, using my teeth to tighten it, making a protective skin.

The burn looks bad, but it hasn’t hurt for years. You can poke it, and there’s no feeling.

Which goes to show, if you fuck something up enough, it loses its capacity to feel.

That’s true of skin, and it’s also true of people. Having no capacity to feel is a definite bonus when you’re doing the kinds of things I’m doing today.

My phone vibrates. It’s my brother, Viktor, giving me the heads-up, as if every molecule in me isn’t already on hyper-alert. But Viktor and I are protective of each other like that. We only just found each other last year.

Viktor and I figure Aldo Nikolla and his underboss—his
kumar
—will come down from the main house last, once they realize they can’t get ahold of their men. That’s when the party really gets started. I almost can’t believe the plan is working. Nikolla is one of the best-protected men in the country, possibly the world. An Albanian mafia kingpin ensconced in a summer residence guarded better than Fort Knox.

We shouldn’t be able to get to him with just ten guys. That’s the magic of planning for you.

I fix my cuffs, let my Sig hang loose in my hand.

Old Konstantin, the hitter who rescued me when I was a boy, never let me forget the traditions—the suits, the codes, cufflinks just so.
The sleeping king
, he always called me.
You will gather your brothers and take back your kingdom.

I focus on the pile of bodies in the dark corner. Six guys shot up with enough tranquilizer to sleep for a day. Still, I think they might wake up. Because they’re Aldo Nikolla’s soldiers. Like he’s all-powerful.

Which of course he is.

And even as well as this attack is going, I’m holding it together by a hair.

It doesn’t help that Konstantin tried to stop this attack.
Don’t do it—you’re only two brothers. All three brothers must be together.

All my life, that was the plan—find my brothers so we can take our kingdom, our vengeance.

The three brothers must be together. You are too early.

Well, priorities change.

I move deeper into the shadows behind the boats and the seaplane. This is a place of dark nooks and crannies. Good hide-and-seek spots. This particular one was a favorite of mine, in another lifetime.

The last time I was this close to Aldo Nikolla was the night I got that burn.

I was nine—Konstantin and I had been on the run two months by then. I had a fever. We crashed in an abandoned building—Kansas City, I think. I woke up in Konstantin’s arms as he sprinted past caged-up, neon-lit stores and turned into an alley that stank of piss. He had a disguise stashed there—a dirty wig and lipstick and clothes. Konstantin did a quick change into a bag lady. It was a disguise no self-respecting Black Lion clan member would ever adopt—that had been the genius of it.

A few terse words from him and I made myself invisible under the pile of clothes next to him, eyes and lips squeezed tight. Old Konstantin lit up a cigarette as they approached. If you knew him—and these killers knew him well—it was the opposite of his way. He never smoked.

We could hear Aldo Nikolla and Bloody Lazarus and the rest of them going at the bums on the next block. I pressed my forehead against Konstantin’s massive thigh, hiding, as the footsteps slowed in front of us. One of Aldo’s soldiers kicked Konstantin and asked whether he’d seen a man and a boy. Konstantin screeched back in crazy old lady gibberish—real Academy Award shit.

That’s when the old man moved his hand—just enough to press the cigarette to my arm. Just pressed that fucker right in there.

He didn’t know he was burning me. He had no idea. He was trying to save us, screeching in that bag lady getup.

I forced myself to stay still—any movement would give me away.

So I let it burn, let the pain turn my brain red with ice. The cigarette had burned through whatever polyester thing I was under, and I’ll never forget the smell. I let the ember sink deep into my arm like a blistering sun, praying he’d move his hand on his own, but he didn’t. All his attention was on screeching at the soldiers, putting them on the defensive.

Keeping us alive.

I let the pain be my teacher. The pain taught me I could survive, that I could endure anything. That I would endure and fight another day, just like Konstantin always said. “
Mbreti gjumi
—the sleeping king. You live to fight another day.”

But that day has never quite come. Konstantin wants everything perfectly in place first. All three Dragusha brothers united. Legions of men behind us.
They will fall into line when they see the Dragusha brothers have made their way back to each other.

Superstitious old Konstantin thinks we can’t attack Nikolla without three brothers together. But we can’t find our missing brother without attacking Nikolla—that’s the problem.

Our baby brother is out there. And he needs us. I’ll burn the world to get to him.

The next guard strolls in the far door, heading for my side of the line of boat slips. This guy’s not thinking about who might be lurking in the best hide-and-seek spot in the place—he’s thinking about the lunch spread that’s supposedly waiting for him on the upper level. Viktor and I took over the texting between the guards as part of the attack. Like taking over their hive brain.

It’s true what they say—the fastest way to a man is through his stomach.

As soon as he’s in my orbit, I lunge for him and twist away his weapon. I choke him out before he can make a sound, and then I jab the needle into his neck and he’s down.

Some of the soldiers are surprisingly easy to take. But then again, all these guys were suckling at the tit of the Xbox while I was getting beaten to a bloody pulp by Konstantin in our endless training sessions.

My guys are up at the house. The idea is to flush everyone my way. We’ve been silent so far. As long as nobody shouts or shoots, we keep our element of surprise.

When Aldo Nikolla senses trouble, he’ll come down with Lazarus and leave Mira at the house, where he’ll think she’s protected. She’s his one weakness. The best way to control him.

I’ve played this day out in my imagination so many times. The horror on Nikolla’s face when he sees I’m back—Aleksio Dragusha, his worst fucking nightmare, all grown up and in his face. The shock when he realizes I’ve reunited with my brother Viktor. Because hey, you’d think that when you send a toddler off to a shithole of a Moscow orphanage with no identification, he’d stay there, right? Wouldn’t you think?

Surprise, motherfucker!

No way will Mira recognize me.

Even if she didn’t think we three Dragusha brothers died alongside our parents, she wouldn’t recognize me as the boy she goofed off with a lifetime ago. Lying around on a sea of green grass in front of this wedding cake of a castle, clouds like seahorses.

I’m worlds different from the good-natured mafia prince she knew. I’m pretty much a different species. Because when you’re hunted every day of your life, fighting for survival like a rat in a pit of vipers, everything inside you changes. You develop weapons and talents no sane person would ever admire. You lose your humanity.

Mira is worlds different too, now—sometimes I can’t believe the shopaholic shit she puts out there on her blog and her Instagram and all the rest of it. But she was pretty amazing when I knew her as a kid.