Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(14)

Aleksio and I don’t bother drawing on this retired man; we just push our way in.

The man raises his hands. He knows what it is, what we are. The place smells of chemicals they use to keep the cloth free of moths and other vermin.

Aleksio says, “This is either your worst day ever or your best day ever. Which do you want?”

“Best day,” the man says warily.

Aleksio makes the deal with him. This retired man agrees to let one of our men go up and hide in the chimney and stake out Lazarus’s warehouse. He and Aleksio discuss how they will get the other guard who works there to play along.

This retired man sees that it can be a good day for them both. They’ll both be paid. The warehouse they protect will not be harmed.





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.