Dark Mafia Prince: A Dangerous Royals romance (16 page)

He rises up out of that booth like somebody yanked a string on the top of his head.

I sneer, like I have nothing to fear.

Nikolla grabs me and pushes me to a wooden post between booths. I allow it, laughing. The laugh is for him, but a little bit for Viktor’s guys, who are keeping watch. “What’re you gonna do, old man?” I say.

His eyes bulge a little, the way old man eyes sometimes do. His cheeks are red, and his breath smells like scotch.

“Got something for you,” I say. “It’s from Mira.”

“You didn’t—”

“You want it or not?”

He’s trying to hide the dread, but it’s not so easy because he doesn’t know what I’m made of. He’s wondering right about now how bad a motherfucker I am. Would Aleksio Dragusha chop up his little girl? Worse?

A lot of guys say shit like that, but they don’t follow through. And their stock goes down because of it. You need to follow through on your threats in this business. It’s a matter of loyalty, dignity, the honor of your word.

“Well, do you want it?”

He studies my face.

I smile. I want him to hurt so bad it makes me crazy. It’s a minor miracle my hands aren’t around his throat.

A few of his guys have closed around us, waiting for his orders. It’s unnerving, being alone, surrounded by so many guys itching to kill me, face to face with Nikolla.

“Little privacy,” I say, cool as I can manage it.

He nods, and the guys ease off.

He lets go of my shirt and backs off, motioning me to a booth off to the side. I go, and he follows. We sit across from each other in the booth.

I reach in my jacket pocket, pull out the eyeglass case, and slide it across the table. “Hint,” I say. “It’s not eyeglasses.”

He creaks open the lid. The ring is on top, the finger in a baggie wrapped in a cloth underneath. He takes out the ring and studies it. I wait, curious what he’ll do with the finger, how he’ll hide his blood aversion. He tips the case toward himself, rustling the cloth, pretending to look at it, just like Mira said he would. Then he snaps it shut, clearly shaken. The ring sold it like Mira said it would.

He holds the ring in the tips of two fat fingers. “I won’t kill you fast,” he manages. “I will hunt you. I will find you. I will kill you slow.”

“Yeah, well, until then you need to be thinking how bad you don’t want another gift like this.”

He studies my eyes.

I sit back. “Service is slow here.”

“What do you want?”

“I’d take a vodka,” I say. “Up.”

It’s not what he meant, but I could use a drink. He motions over a waiter and orders.

“Let me talk to her.”

“She’s sleeping,” I say. “It’s been a busy day.”

Silence. “You did it.”

“Now you need to give us everything on Kiro. If you love your daughter, you want me to get to him first.”

He waits a bit. Then, “Fine.”

I’m instantly suspicious. It’s too easy.

“Ligne has a drinking buddy, Archie Vega,” Nikolla continues. “He offloads some of his work to Vega, but he doesn’t want me to know. He confides in Vega. And Vega is the type…let’s just say he likes to know things. He collects secrets and blackmails people. I’ve been thinking about taking him out. I don’t know that he knows, but I could see him getting it in his pocket. I’ve always thought if I needed to find your brother, it would be Archie Vega who could point me.”

“Address.”

He takes out his phone.

“Easy. Show me.”

He looks it up and lets me read it. Archie Vega. Contact info. I pocket his phone and text Viktor the details. Viktor will be on him in ten minutes.

The waitress brings raki for him, and a vodka for me.

“You couldn’t have told me that in the first place? What’s wrong with you?”

The old man sips his drink. All the old generation, they drink raki—a licorice-y cross between grappa and ouzo.

“I’ll sit here for a while and make sure you don’t warn Vega.” I down the rest of my drink, then I turn the glass around and around on the table.

Something feels wrong. This is all going too easy.

Viktor

H
ere is a
secret about the orphanage that nobody will ever tell you: When you’re in one, you always hope that you were not wanted. An accidental pregnancy.

Because the alternative is that you are a product of violence, torture, horror. That you are ugly and hated from birth. That’s what you always believe, though.

When the families pass you over, you think they see your ugly heart. It’s worse when they take you home only to return you. Moving into the Bratva, I became an overachiever in violence. It was a way to get at least somebody to want me.

Now with that talent I help my brothers.

We find Archie Vega is alone in his house, on his Exercycle watching the eleven o’clock news. The TV and the Exercycle keep him from hearing us, and when he sees us, it keeps him from running. He nearly falls off it, trying to get away. I pull him off.

Yuri and Mischa hold him at gunpoint while I ask about Kiro. He tells us he knows nothing. I see in his eyes that this is a lie.

“You want to tell us,” I say simply.

He shakes his head.
Ta quift bota nanen
.

Tito translates: “May the world fuck your mother.”

“Okay then.” We tie him to a weightlifting bench. It’s metal. Good and strong. “I will fuck you up then.” I cut his clothes off him. He needs to feel vulnerable. I need the information fast. To get Aleksio out of that restaurant.

The day Aleksio arrived changed my world. A blood brother.

I belonged. I wanted to drop to my knees and weep there in the garage when Aleksio told me I had a family that actually wanted me. He was so angry with for what I did to Mira. I didn’t think he’d be so angry. It fucked me up, as Aleksio would say. But I will earn back his love.

I wish I could have walked in there with him. Of course it would be madness for us both to go in there. If it gets bloody, the other must remain for Kiro. Still, I hate it. If Aleksio dies, I want to be by his side, dying with him. It would be a privilege to die with Aleksio.

I press the knife to Vega’s belly. I feel the clock ticking, but I smile and laugh. You never let them know you’re in a hurry. It gives them power.

Easy things first. What he ate for dinner. Make him visualize the inside of his belly, and what I will do. Pirogi, he tells me. With white fefferoni. I send Mischa to check his dinner dishes.

Now he begins to freak. Why is this so important? Why do we want to check his dinner dishes? I wait, as though bored. Scaring a man is in the crazy fucking details.

Mischa comes back and confirms it all—in Russian—and I smile. “Okay, then.”

Just like that he calls his maid. An old woman with a head scarf. She was hiding. She leads Mischa to a box of paper files. She says Lazarus got jpeg images of these files. These are the originals.

I find the file about Kiro. A Worland file, like the ones we stole, except nothing is blacked out. An address.

I text Aleksio. I have the address. But so does Lazarus.

Yuri drives like hell back while I go through the box. There are other files, too. Lots of secrets here.

Aleksio

A
ldo Nikolla has
finished his raki, and a new one arrives without his having to ask for it. He lowers his head, voice gravelly. “You want to kill me so bad it hurts,” he says. “You could, you know. You have everything I have on Kiro. You might get out alive. I’m guessing you have guys in here, right?” he looks around and then back at me with curiosity. “Why don’t you go ahead and try it?”

Because I promised Mira. Not like I’ll say that. I turn my tumbler of vodka on the napkin. Something feels wrong. This is all going too easy.

“Is it Lazarus? You don’t want Lazarus in charge?” He picks up his newly arrived raki, cloudy liquid in a slim glass. “A lot of men are scared of Lazarus running the show. But you’re not scared, are you? You don’t scare. Konstantin would’ve beat that right out of you.”

“Say his name again and I’ll take one of
your
fingers.”

“There it is. Loyalty. Sentimentality. Just like your father.”

I know what he’s doing—trying to unbalance me. We’re in a standoff, here in this booth. Neither of us can move on the other. I give him a cool stare. “You don’t know shit about me, old man.”

A kid comes by with a tray of cigarettes, and Nikolla takes one. Chicago has laws about smoking indoors, but Agronika is another world.

“You have a CEO strategy, but inside you’re volatile and emotional, just like him. He played the hard guy, but emotions made him a puppet. Emotions made him
my
puppet.” He lights up.

My face burns. “You’re calling my father sentimental for trusting his supposed best friend and partner? You are
I pa besa,
old man.” Without loyalty, without honor.

It’s the worst thing you can say to a man like Aldo. And in his case, it’s true.

He gives no sign of caring. He barely seems to have heard. Suspicious movement to my side. I don’t like it.

“Your father never saw me coming. Never imagined. That’s how I got the drop on him. He didn’t think strategy; he ruled by his heart. He let his emotions cloud his mind.”

Stay cool, don’t take the bait,
I think through the surge of heat that moves through me. I could make him mad, too. I could tell him how Mira’s lips felt, wrapped around my cock. But, sentimental fucker that I am, I don’t. I protect her. The motherfucker’s right.

He looks up, cold dark eyes under bushy brows. “You really think you will find Kiro alive?”

My heart pounds. I feel him. I know he’s still alive.

“The foolishness of you moving on me before you have Kiro. The three brothers together would have given you credibility. I have a little saying: ‘You only have to shoot when your threats don’t work.’ With Kiro, your threats would have been enough. But you couldn’t wait. Had to ride out to find your brother. Konstantin wouldn’t have allowed it, but he’s old now, isn’t he? You’re running the show now.”

“I will be.”

“
Pah
. You Dragushas. You’re easy. Your father was easy. Your mom was even easier.”

I power through the surge of rage.

“She lay there after with her mouth open. Eyes open. Nobody to close them—that’s what she was worth.”

“I closed them,” I say.

This surprises him.

“You didn’t know? I was there the whole time. Konstantin pulled me into a nook by the window. We saw what you and Lazarus did. We waited until the house was clear. You were searching the grounds for us. So stupid of you not to take a little extra time. I went to her, and I closed her eyes and her mouth. And my father’s. And I vowed to destroy you. You’re already gone, old man.”

I say it calmly, and I make it sound as if the vow was the huge thing, and not creeping around the blood and touching their eyelids like that. I trembled when I closed my mother’s eyes, wanting to throw myself down next to her. And then pushing their lips back together, as is the custom. Konstantin made me do it. My father’s lips wouldn’t stay together, and I nearly lost it—it’s always the little things that put you over. Maybe Konstantin sensed it. He forced my father’s jaw closed for me and we got out.

“Why not kill me? You’re so white hot, you can’t even think straight right now, can you, Aleksio? Why not go for me?”

“You think I won’t?”

He tips his head like he’s just getting something. “Did she make you promise not to off me?”

Shit.

He smiles. “And you fucking went for it? You can’t let her take advantage like that.”

“Advantage? Jesus, you’re her father, and you let us cut her finger off. Why not just tell me about Vega on the lawn? You wait until we start with body parts? Don’t you give a fuck about your daughter?”

“What do I have right now?”

“What?”

“What do I have?” he asks. “Look where I am in this game we’re playing. Let’s compare ledgers, shall we? I bought the time I needed, time to find Kiro myself. Lazarus’ll beat you to your brother and put this prophecy to rest. What’s more, I’m free. I’m safe from you, aren’t I? And what do you have? You took Mira’s finger. Oh, I very much give a fuck about her. I wasn’t playacting out on the lawn, and I
will
make you pay.”

“Your daughter’s finger—”

“I didn’t think you’d do it.” He shrugs.

“We threatened to kill her if Kiro died.”

“Please,” he says smugly. “You won’t kill her. When Viktor said that, I knew instantly you hadn’t discussed it. More than that, I remember you and Mira together as children—probably more than you remember. You two had a rare kind of bond. I knew the more time you spent time together, the safer she would be. Anyway, you’re like your father—I see him in you. Ruled by emotions. Soft when it comes to innocents. Mira’s finger. I’m impressed—”

“How the fuck do you look yourself in the mirror?”

“I’m not the fuckup here, Aleksio. You moved on me without the psychological advantage of the three brothers united. You put sentiment above strategy, and it told me how to play you. And you’re going to walk out of here leaving me alive because you still think you have a chance to rescue Kiro and you won’t leave Viktor to decide Mira’s fate. Lazarus is going to kill Kiro if he hasn’t already, then we’ll take you and Viktor and all his worthless Bratva orphans, and Mira will go back to her life. You’ll just be a sad and hated memory.”

My heart pounds. The text comes in. Viktor. He has the address. I am full of rage—he’s right. I feel Kiro in my heart. I love him. I know he’s still alive—he has to be. And I’ll protect him, and I’ll protect Mira, too.

The old man’s eyes sparkle. “You can’t win this war. You’ll go down just like your daddy.”

I stand and slip my phone in my pocket. “What do I have?”

Aldo narrows his eyes. He doesn’t get the question.

“You asked me what you have. Your fucking ledger comparison and all that. Well, I’ll tell you what I have. I have love, and I have honor. I have a family I’ll die for right on this fucking spot.”