Dark Mafia Prince: A Dangerous Royals romance (11 page)

Except maybe me. What would it be like to watch us like that?

I flash on the way he looked down at me when I had him in my mouth, like I was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. Like we were connected in this crazy, wrong way. Aleksio, sitting over me in all his brutal glory, familiar old Aleksio grown into a dangerous man. Fuck, it did something to me.

Moving up Aleksio’s legs felt wrong and good. I had no choice. And I was glad I had no choice. I was into it.

How twisted is that? Into it. All my life I’ve been trying to get out from under the thumb of men like him, and suddenly I’m crawling up his legs, begging to be used. But that’s the thing about having no choice—you do it no matter what. You do it if you hate it, and you do it if it’s a twisted thing you find out that you enjoy.

It took me by surprise when he grabbed my hair, taking control so violently. My whole body came to attention. His cock tasted of man and secrets and sweat and need. I wanted him to push me harder. And he did.

God, the way he talked to me. The names. The intensity of his breath as the whole thing spun out of control. The roughness of him.

His roughness a forbidden gift. Aleksio always went too far. The roughness felt beautiful.
I know you,
I thought.

And then he turned it into something ugly with the camera and the gun.

I sigh and twirl my fork.

He doesn’t have his suit jacket on; just a loose tie over his white button-down shirt. All that white in contrast with his chocolaty hair that’s a little too long. He went on a run earlier, and he apparently shaved after; his cheeks are smooth and clear, making him look deceptively innocent. Angelic.

“We’re showing it to him as soon as he wakes up.”

“It’ll kill him.”

He stabs his fork into the greens. “You should pray we find the key, then.”

“It’s just a matter of time.”

He cuts a bit of frittata and holds it up, examining it. “How does a spoiled princess who does international shopping as an extreme sport know about anatomization keys or whatever?”

My face burns. But that was the whole goal, wasn’t it? Aleksio is the exactly kind of person we don’t want knowing about my real life.

I shrug. “Are you telling me you never picked up any useless information in life?”

If he realizes I’m answering a question with a question, he doesn’t show it.

I take another bite of the best meal I’ve eaten all year, not that Aleksio seems to care.

Little Vik comes out. Whatever he has to say, it’s bad.

Aleksio sees it, too. “What?”

He shakes his head.

Aleksio stands and pulls his brother away. I sense trouble, chaos. Doors slam inside the house. Guys moving out.

I stare at Aleksio’s phone, still on the table.
His phone.

I look from Aleksio and Viktor to the phone and back to Aleksio. I could grab it and delete the video—this is my chance. He may have backed it up, but I have a feeling he didn’t, considering how busy he’s been.

He’ll be angry. And it’s a gamble, but I don’t believe Aleksio will take my finger in the end. I snatch the phone and figure out what he used. Fuse. I find the file, hit delete, confirm delete. Just like that it’s gone. I set it back down and pick up my fork.

Aleksio comes back and grabs his phone and suit jacket. He swings it on and fixes his shirt cuffs.

Blood whooshes in my ears. I hope I made the right choice. “What’s going on?”

“Ligne is dead.”

My jaw drops. “Frankie? Frankie Ligne?”

Aleksio nods.

“Are you sure?”

“Most certainly dead, yes,” Viktor says.

“He’s just a sweet old man. Why would you—”

“We didn’t kill him,” Viktor spits.

“Who?”

“Bloody Lazarus,” he growls.

“Why would Lazarus kill somebody from his own organization? My father’s confidante…”

Viktor gives me a jaded look. Like,
really
? Two of the Russians come out, all suited up and holstered.

It can’t be true. “Lazarus wouldn’t kill Ligne. They’re on the same side.”

“Take it up with the witnesses Viktor rounded up,” Aleksio says. “In other news, we got the key to the code.”

“We can read the files now?”

“Yeah,” he says. “If we had the right files. The illegal adoptions were hidden in the basement in the fucking
maintenance record files
.”

“That whole raid and you took the wrong files?”

Tito comes out, Glock in hand.

“Wait! What are you doing? You’re not going back to the Worland…”

“Until Daddy wakes up, it’s what we have.”

Of course. He’ll do anything to find his brother, and when he does, he’ll love him barbarically and unconditionally.

Aleksio’s love is the dangerous kind of love that breaks all the rules. It’s him killing and kidnapping as he goes after his brother. It’s him pulling my hair and shoving his cock in my mouth.

I shouldn’t think it’s beautiful.

He turns and leaves with his guys, through the patio door, through the house.

The front door slams. Car doors slam. I stand there alone, stupidly wistful.

Viktor

T
he area around
Worland is quiet on a Sunday afternoon. We find free spaces at meters. We park a few blocks away and split up, moving through the neighborhood like shadows.

The old buildings in Chicago are very blocky. Old Moscow buildings have more imagination. I have argued with Aleksio on this point, of course.

I move alongside him. Tito and Yuri go up opposite. Others will loop around. We are all on edge.

Hitting this place a second time, it’s madness. We hide in the dark out of the afternoon sun, looking, listening.

“He may not have heard about yesterday,” Aleksio says, hopefully.

Perhaps. But if Bloody Lazarus did hear about our raid yesterday, a raid on the same day as Aldo Nikolla’s disappearance, he may very well think of Kiro. We cannot be sure what Lazarus knows. He may have found out from Ligne where Kiro is.

Our attempts to save Kiro may have gotten him killed.

Still, this thing must be done. We go forward. We hide. Listen.

They say a baby of twenty-some months cannot remember things, but I remember violence. I remember fear and death. My memories are more like dark scribbles than photographs. They are memories all the same.

I did not know they were American memories, however.

When Aleksio came to our garage in Moscow, I did not recognize him, but he recognized me.

With his television clothes and scruffy American hair, Aleksio looked very strange, very out of place; I wondered whether I had known him as a boy in the orphanage. And then he began to speak. A brother, he said.

Yuri came up behind me, amazed.
Brat
, he said. Yuri had heard nothing of what Aleksio said, but he looked at our faces and he knew that we were brothers. Yuri clapped his hand onto my shoulder, over and over, so happy. Yuri and I had come up in the orphanage together, always dreaming of family.

This orphanage was a favorite recruiting ground of the Russian mafia. They would adopt the strong boys and raise us like fighting dogs. Vicious to the last.

“Looks clear,” Aleksio says, seeing nothing in the alley. Tito makes a hand signal, and he and Yuri flank left with some of Aleksio’s men. Our two groups have learned to move together well in the past year. Merging our techniques—his gang, my gang.

There’s a dumpster to the left, stacked-up crates from the restaurant on the other side of the alley. We flow around it, avoiding the cameras, keeping to the shadows.

I lock eyes with Yuri across the span of alley. We wait. We let the area speak to us.

Yuri and I rose up quickly within the Bratva. I was to be a Bratva soldier until they noticed my ability to mimic American actors from the television. I could understand what they were saying when nobody else could.

They sent me to classes. I picked up the strange grammar quickly, easily. Because of my good English I was made a hit man. I even spent ten days in New York once, hunting a man who attempted to flee the Bratva. Never did I imagine I was born here, that I spent some twenty months here—not until Aleksio came to our garage and told me about Aldo Nikolla, who killed our parents and stole our lives. We would make him pay, and we would make Lazarus pay, because Lazarus helped him. And we would find our baby brother Kiro and take back the empire.

With the blessing of my superiors, I took five of our best, including Yuri, and went with Aleksio to Chicago. It was not charity, of course, that our mafia bosses let me go. A position at the top of one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Chicago would be a good thing.

Al Capone! That’s what Mischa and the guys said when they were told they would accompany me. Each and every one of them said the name of Al Capone.

Chicago was Al Capone to me, too, until I met Aleksio.

Yuri slides up to one of the windows. He gets ears in, pressing a listening device to a small square of safety glass.

I exchange glances with Aleksio. He tips his head.
So far, so good.
Perhaps our enemies do not know.

Yuri steals over. “Is quiet,” he says. “Too quiet.”

Tito slips in. Tito is Aleksio’s Yuri. “What’s your feeling?” Aleksio asks Tito.

“Feels like a trap, smells like a trap. Is a trap.” Tito likes to make his hair bright blond on the tips of it. He is very formidable.

“A trap,” I say.

We have men around the neighborhood, and they text in. Nobody is watching.

Aleksio looks up and down the blocky building. “The files are right inside, and we have the fucking decode key,” he says.

No question we’ll risk it. Aldo Nikolla may or may not talk. The file is sure.

We discuss what we would do in the place of Bloody Lazarus if he thought we might be back.

“I’d think about torching the place,” Tito says. “But then I’d say, how can I go for maximum death? That says explosives to me. And if I didn’t have a lot of time? Explosives connected to the door.”

“Or to the alarm system,” I say. “Sound, vibration.”

We narrow it down to the door. Easiest, smartest, fastest.

“Then maybe we should go up the side. Up that old fire escape.” Aleksio points. The fire escape is half falling apart, but it’s still up. “What happens if we break that window?”

I pick up a brick and hurl it. It sails into the window with a crash. We press against the wall, waiting for an explosion.

Nothing. So we have our entrance.

We argue about who’ll go in. “I’m not sending anybody in somewhere where I won’t go myself,” Aleksio growls. He’s like that, a strong leader. But the girl will be trouble. I saw his face in the video clip. I saw the way he looked at her.

Aleksio creeps up the side and leaps to the lowest rung of the fire escape. The apparatus creaks as he begins to climb, balancing on the edges, seasoned criminal that he is. When he is the three stories up top, he throws his jacket over the sill and lifts himself up by his fingers.

He makes it look easy. I know it is not. Aleksio is a strong ally, but a girl like that Mira will weaken him.

I loved a girl once, and then I had to kill her. It was very hard.

An explosion tears out from the second floor below him. The wall buckles—with Aleksio half in the window.

“Fucking hell!” I spring out of the darkness, running toward him as he drops onto the fire escape and grips the rusty pole. The structure separates from the building with Aleksio clinging on. It twists and groans.

Aleksio drops to the alley. He makes himself into a ball and rolls. I grab him, pull him behind the dumpster. He is hurt. His ankle, I think.

“Fucking hell,” I say as the assault weapons start.

Our men shoot back.

“Where the fuck did they come from?” he gasps.

“We have it,
brat
.” Our men are suppressing. The cops will be here soon. “Can you walk?”

Aleksio wears a grim look. He will.

“I got him,” Tito says. “You help cover.” Tito wants me shooting because I am the marksman here. I rest my forearms on the metal lip of the dumpster lid and focus my senses on our attackers. I focus and calm myself, breathing, squeezing the trigger, breathing, squeezing. My bullets find their targets as Tito gets Aleksio away.

Soon the guys scream up in an old Cadillac. I dive in the back with the others.

We head out, losing our attackers easily. They thought we’d be inside for the explosion. They were set up to pick off survivors, not for a full firefight.

Aleksio rides in back with me. He concentrates on breathing, pushing back the pain. Yuri throws back the first aid kit. I pat my thigh, and Aleksio heaves his leg there. He grimaces as I begin to untie his shoe.

I instruct Yuri to call his guy—the one holding Aldo Nikolla. It is time to send the clip.

I get his shoe off. The pain on Aleksio’s face is not just his ankle. Yes, I know what those frittatas meant.

“Just sprained,” he grates out.

“You hope.” I touch his anklebone. He winces. I touch another spot.

“Fuck! Stop it. The ankle is fucked up, okay? Is there something we need to know beyond that?”

I rip up an old shirt and begin to wrap it.

It is very bad that we did not get those files. There is only one route to the information now—through the old man. Aleksio does not want to show the cocksucking clip to Aldo. He’ll do what it takes to save Kiro, though.

His head is tipped back. He’s out of his mind with pain of every kind.

“Aldo Nikolla’s awake,” Yuri calls from the front.

“Good. We go now,” I say. “We show the movie. Tell him how much worse it will get for her next.”

Aleksio hisses out a breath.

I grab his phone, unlock it and scroll. He knows it has to be done. Lazarus is hunting now. He killed Ligne, torched the Worland Agency. He wants to get to Kiro before we can.

“Where is the movie?” I ask.

Aleksio takes it and scrolls. Scowls.

“What?”

“Wait,” he says, and he taps some more. Then, “Fuck.” Then, “
Fuck
!”

“What?”

“Gone.”