Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(22)

“Come on, Tito,” Nikki says. “You like me in this getup? Yeah, I think you love me in this pervy getup.”

Tito gets a dark look, then he tips up his chin. “Carlo, you take her up there and let her put something decent on. No messing shit up. Got it?”

The guard brings Nikki up.

I scan around the home, which has pleasing colors, a pleasing arrangement. I won’t stay, though. “It is his?”

“Viktor’s? Yes,” Mischa says.

“I do not know him.”

Mischa exchanges glances with Tito.

“And I will not stay.”

Mischa just stares at me. You’d think I’m a talking rabbit, the way he stares. Then Nikki comes back down in jeans, sneakers, and a torn black T-shirt that shows her belly button. Mischa widens his eyes and watches me with renewed intensity.

“Metallica for the win.” Nikki makes a hand signal of some sort, showing me two pointer fingers, two pinkies.

Mischa continues to watch me, as though I might react to Nikki in these new clothes. Why? I’m happy she has a new outfit. The old outfit was for the men, not for her.

Footfalls outside the door. I know it’s that Viktor, the one who plucked me from that place. I know it before he enters.

The door flies open.

He pauses, framed in the doorway. He wears a black suit, tie askew. He’s shed the stuffing that made him look large. His face is hard and square, but his chocolate-brown eyes sparkle. A little dent forms in his chin as he smiles.

He looks so happy, and somewhere deep down inside me, the thought that he’s beautiful rises up. But then, the devil is always beautiful.

“Tanechka.”

“You’ll take me back to that place, please.”

Viktor closes the distance between us. He kneels down at my feet, clutching the thick fabric of my nun’s robe, looking up at me from under inky lashes.

I don’t know what to do with a man kneeling at my feet like this. It’s far too familiar. I don’t recognize him, but he stirs emotions in me, like the air after a rainstorm—fresh and a little bit like tears.

“Lisichka,” he says. Little fox.

Something tugs at the edges of my mind. I steel myself and address him in Russian. “I don’t know you.” I try to back up. He won’t let me. “Take me back.”

He presses his forehead to my thighs through the coarse dark material. I feel his heat, his electricity. “I’m so sorry, lisichka.”

A strange sensation flows through me and I push him off me—with more violence than I should—and he lands on the floor. “I’m not that one,” I say urgently. “Return me.”

“Tanechka,” Nikki says. “Sister—whatever—I think you should reconsider, because this guy’s pretty fine. IMHO.”

“What the f*ck do are you wearing?” Viktor barks at Nikki. “Those clothes belong to Tanechka.”

“No, they don’t,” I say.

Viktor turns to me. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“The first thing, do you mean?”

A stormy look comes into his eyes. “Fine. First thing.”

“If you won’t let me go back, did you at least alert the police about what they’re doing to the women there?”

“We’re handling it, trust me.” He stands. “Please, Tanechka, you won’t even tell me that?” He’s so full of emotion; I know this about him, feel his heart. There are so many things I know about this man. It feels like a wagon wheel finding the groove in the road.

“I was in a tree jutting out from one of the sheer faces of Dariali Gorge,” I say.

“Tanechka—” Viktor says, so full of feeling and urgency I think he may burst into flames. He wants to tell me things now.

I hold up my hand. “I do not want to know how I came to be there.”

Viktor and Mischa exchange glances.

“If you’re truly my friends, you’ll be happy for me—happy that I found peace, happy that God sent me to the convent.”

“God didn’t send you—”

“God gave me a chance to start anew—it was his grace—”

Viktor’s voice booms. “No more of this, Tanechka!”

I fold my arms. Something about him stirs me so wildly. I don’t like it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, bereft. “Forgive me.”

My eyes go naturally to the pulse pounding madly in his throat, as if I knew to expect it there. I have the sense of his blood racing, a volcano trapped inside of him. I can feel his torment, his compunction. I have the impulse to take him in my arms and whisper words of comfort against his cheek. I find that I do not want this one to suffer. “Be happy for me,” I plead.

Helplessly he studies my face.

Another man bursts through the door, this one a thick-necked man with honey blond hair and a wide, frank face. In another life he could be an innocent country boy, but in this life he’s a killer among killers. He was outside the virgin brothel when they took me. “Tanechka.”

Viktor rests a hand on his shoulder. “Look—it’s Yuri. Your good friend.”

Yuri smiles wide and holds out his hands. “Oh, Tanechka!”

I don’t take his hands. I turn to Viktor. “I’d be so grateful if you would let me contact my convent…”