Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(18)

“She is in danger.” I say it aloud.

Nikki begins again to speak, calling me Sherlock.

“Quiet—let me think.”

Nikki quiets.

I pinch the sides of my nose. Aleksio and the gang are probably in the neighborhood by now. The plan was that I would leave the way I came, allowing these people to blindfold me and drive me back. Aleksio and the gang were to follow.

This is no longer the plan. It cannot be.

I go and put my ear to the door. “You said the guard with the big white Santa beard is obsessed with the nun?”

Nikki nods.

“What kind of guy is he? Would he do anything impulsive? Stupid?”

“Besides being a guard at a virgin brothel?”

“How obsessed is he? Does everyone think it?”

“Like I said, they moved him down off her floor. Didn’t trust him around her. Seriously, what is it about a blonde nun?”

“She’s up and two rooms to the right?”

Nikki narrows her eyes. “How do you know?”

I pull off my belt.

Her eyes go wide. “What are you doing?”

I peel a pair of plastic shivs from the inside of it. “It’s your lucky day. You’re getting out of here. You know how to defend yourself?”

“Fuck yeah.”

“Tell me. Tell me what you can do. Can you shoot a gun? Be honest.”

“You got a gun?”

“Not yet.”

She gives me a slow smile. “Sure, I can shoot.”

I cut the ropes from her wrists and feet. “Pocket these. We can’t leave them.”

“I don’t have pockets but…” She loops the rope loosely around her neck and ties bits together and stuffs it all under her dress. Good. Obeying without question. This can work. I can save Tanechka and the mission.

“You ever hold up a place?”

She nods.

“Successfully?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I was in the Lady Sixx. You know who that is? It’s a girl gang.”

“You ever shoot anyone?”

She gives me a look—steady and straight and right into my eyes. “I’m a hundred percent. Whatever you need.”

Good enough.

“I’m going to break the nun out and make it look like the Santa guard took her. We’ll make it look like you got lucky and grabbed your chance to escape.”

“Why the nun? The nun’s gonna be dead weight.”

I eye her, turning the shiv over and over, an extension of my hand. “Maybe you’re dead weight.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Santa beard is going to come and knock to warn me in two minutes. Will he come alone?”

“Yeah,” she says. “But there have been times when the men don’t want to go when their two hours are up, and then they come in with three guards. But that’s after.”

“Okay.” I draw a map of the basement on the carpet with my finger. Nikki helps me do the next floor and together we develop a plan. The girl’s good; she’s been paying attention to her environment, making plans of her own. She knows about a large duct. It’s good information that I didn’t have.

We decide she’ll hold the obsessed guard at gunpoint inside this room while I get Tanechka. I stress that her job is to hold him and keep him quiet until I’m back.

“I got it,” she says.

I nod at the shiv in her hand. “You may have to use that. We may have to get bloody before this is over.”

She nods. This girl will lose no sleep over getting bloody in this place.

“The gun is the last resort. Any noise will f*ck up our escape.”

“I got it!” she says again, impatient this time.

I text Aleksio with instructions. He knows not to argue in the middle of the mission. I adjust my fat suit and put it right. I listen at the door for footsteps. Eventually the Santa-bearded guard comes. He knocks. “Ten minutes.”

“I’m ready now.” I jiggle the doorknob as though I can’t get it open. I flatten to the wall, and when he opens it I yank him in and disarm him easily. I hold his piece to his temple while Nikki searches him. She pulls out car keys. “Score,” she whispers.

“You want to live? You cooperate,” I growl.

The guard gives up the location, make, and model of his car. I tie his hands; Nikki stuffs part of the pillowcase in his mouth and gags him in a dead f*cking serious way. I let her keep his revolver.

I take the guard’s cap and shirt and another ring of keys. These would be the keys to the women’s rooms. I close the door behind me. I don’t have his beard, but this will be enough. I know how to move in front of the cameras.

I beeline down the hall to the boiler room. Every feeling in the world swirls inside of me as I near Tanechka. I unscrew a vent in the ceiling duct, hands trembling. This is the duct Nikki told me about. She’d been saving it for herself, thinking to hide in it if she ever got free. I pull up to the upper floor, just under the hall. I wait out the footsteps, aware that my ten-minute window has gone to five.

When the hall is vacant I push up. I go to Tanechka’s room, hesitating at her door, frightened it might be her. Frightened it might not.

I unlock it and pull it open.

There she is, kneeling, just as she does on the camera.