Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(21)

The halo of a killer.

I don’t have my memories, but I know a killer when I see one. Like the man who took me out of that place—the man who seemed to know me. Another killer.

These people are in a criminal gang, I think.

I always worried that somebody would appear from my old life and endanger my sister nuns at the convent. I never imagined such a person would find me in an American brothel.

I didn’t want him there. I didn’t need to be rescued. I promised my captive sisters I’d try to help them, that I wouldn’t abandon them. This man didn’t care. He took me away.

“I have to go back,” I tell Tito yet again.

“Wait for Viktor,” he says. “You can ask Viktor.”

Cold comes over me. Viktor. The name on my chest. “Viktor?”

“The man who took you out of there.”

“I will not wait. I will not stay.” I make for the door.

He blocks it. “Not likely, sister.” He points at a chair near the fireplace. “Sit.”

I pull the ends of my head scarf tight under my chin and cross my arms, surveying the exits. I want nothing to do with these men who come to me from the life that gave me a body full of ugly scars.

“Fine, stand,” he says.

Nikki sits instead, swinging an arm over the back of the chair. “Anyone got a smoke?”

“Act right and we’ll see,” Tito says.

I turn away from the strange familiarity of this scene. People like this, a place like this.

I don’t care to know them. I don’t want to know what I was.

Mother Olga always said that God can forgive even the worst of sinners if they come to him with the right feeling in their heart, but what if I was a criminal, too? What if I’ve killed people? Even God has limits.

Ever since I saw that precious light coming from that icon in the thicket, my life has been a journey back to the overflowing sweetness of that moment. I feel sure that remembering my old life will only move me further away from that sweetness. What if I’m not strong enough to resist it?

Sometimes I feel that old life on the edges of my awareness, like a dangerous fog that might swallow up the brightness if I let it.

I reach into my pocket, close my fingers around a corner of the icon.

Tito has several other American men under his command—two inside here, more outside. This habit of counting men and assessing force, this too comes from that dark life. I do not want it.

They ask us whether we want lunch. Nikki wants a burger.

I’m not hungry.

Again Tito asks me to sit. I ask for a phone.

“I need you to sit.”

I stand. It seems to make him nervous. I take up a pen and paper and write a phone number. It’s the cellphone for the convent in Ukraine. “Call and tell them I’m okay.”

Tito takes it and pockets it.

The door opens and a burly bald man comes in with bags. He smiles as soon as he sees me, so very happy. He addresses me in Russian—“It’s you. It’s really you.” He hands the paper bags he carries to Tito, not taking his eyes from me. “Tanechka—remember me?—Mischa?” He searches my eyes with a smile so huge and crooked it makes me feel fond of him. He can’t believe I don’t recognize him. “C’mon, Tata…”

I shake my head. “I’m not somebody you know anymore. Please, bring me back to that place. If you think you’re my friend, if you have any feeling for me, Mischa—bring me back.”

Mischa looks torn, troubled. Tito shrugs.

“Blank slate, folks,” Nikki says.

I turn away, so unsettled.

“Tanechka…” Mischa says again, then pauses, as though there’s so much he wants to say.

“Viktor’s on his way,” Tito says.

Mischa unpacks the bags and arranges pastries on a plate—vatrushkas with curd cheese in the center and lemon wedges. He steals glances at me. “Viktor thought you might be hungry.”

“Hungry?” Tito asks me.

I shake my head.

“Well, you’ll go sit at the table and eat the snack Mischa brought, or I’ll tie you there,” Tito says.

Mischa glares. “I have this. I’ll watch her.”

“Fine,” Tito says.

I sit, but I don’t eat. Mischa stands by, a strong, silent presence, like a tree. “It’s good to have you. So good,” he says after a while.

Nikki eats everything in sight. Afterwards, she snatches a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of a nearby jacket and lights up. Tito slaps it right out of her mouth. “Not in Viktor’s place.”

She stands up and goes for him, and he simply pushes her back down. She laughs. “Punk.”

Nikki would be a lovely young woman if only she’d brush her dark hair out of her eyes and sit nicely. Instead she sits with one leg thrown over the arm of the couch. The men in that place dressed her in a short white frock and white knee socks, and sitting like that, her undergarments show.

“Nikki—your—” I gesture to convey my meaning.

She simply sneers. “Yeah, you can’t get me out of these f*cking clothes fast enough.” She smirks over at Tito. Tito pretends not to notice, but he notices.

“There are women’s clothes above,” one of the guys says.

Tito shakes his head. “Everybody stays in a holding pattern here until Aleksio or Viktor gets back.”