Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(25)

“You don’t know true brightness.”

“Wrong. I did. I knew you. You were so impressive, brave…” He pauses, his sadness like a raw thing; even his voice comes out rough. “You were my whole heart.”

Something turns over inside me. It frightens me the way I feel him, the way I know him. But the life he speaks of put scars on my body and landed me over the side of the cliff with nobody searching for me.

He takes both my hands now and lowers his voice to a whisper. “I loved you so much, Tanechka.” He presses his forehead to the unruly ball that our hands make together.

My heart thunders.

“I loved you so much. I need you to remember.” He lifts his brown eyes once again to me. “You saw the tattoo. Could that lie?”

“It tells me only that I had a different life before.”

He studies my eyes as if to search for the woman he has lost, but he’s the one who’s lost. He’s lost and beautiful. I stare at our fingers together, mesmerized by his warmth, by the rough familiarity of his skin.

“I never thought I’d touch you again, never imagined…” He kisses my fingers, quick, fervent kisses that swell something inside me, as if his kisses are nourishment. He glances up at me, then he turns his face back down and kisses my fingers again, and this time his kisses are slow, his lips warm and soft. A strange and pleasant feeling spreads all through me.

Lust.

I yank my hands from his, heart pounding.

I was drugged, kidnapped, threatened, kept prisoner in an underground brothel. I was forced to eat meals with a sick and twisted man, but I was never truly frightened.

Until now.

“I am not her. Respect that.”

His look is stern and dark. He stands. “I respect Tanechka. Tanechka would want me to fight for her. She’d do the same for me.”

“I am Tanechka.”





Chapter Eight




Viktor


Tanechka stops talking with me an hour after she arrives. I show her to our bedroom. I tell her that there are clothes in the drawers and the closet. She informs me again that she won’t change, and she closes the door and locks it.

Fine. The bedroom is a nice room. She’ll be surrounded by familiar things. It’ll be okay.

Aleksio and Mira come by before dinnertime.

“Anything on Kiro?” I need some good news. I need to know he’s not locked away in a prison where we can’t get to him.

Aleksio shakes his head. “Nada.”

I suck in a breath. “Okay, then.”

Mira’s impressed with the home I’ve made. “I didn’t know you had all of this in you,” she says, fingering the rich red tablecloth, embroidered with folk art designs.

“It’s Tanechka. This is like the home she made for us in Moscow.”

“She still doesn’t…” Mira begins.

“No.” I shrug. “She doesn’t remember. Yet. They say to surround her with familiar things. Familiar people.”

“What if she still can’t remember?”

“She will.”

Aleksio studies my face. “What if she does remember?”

“It’s all I want.”

He looks away. “The good news is that your frame worked. Out at Valhalla. They don’t suspect you were anyone.”

We focus on Valhalla, going over what our tech guys have gleaned from their computer files so far. They’ve identified pipelines and intermediaries. Aleksio shows me a chart he has begun. Like something the police might make.

Yuri, Tito, and Nikki arrive along with the rich scent of stroganoff, followed soon after by Pityr, Mischa, and a few others. We set out the feast.

Yuri admires the rich red tablecloth, embroidered with black folk designs. “So Tanechka.”

Aleksio sets the ten-serving to-go pan onto the table. I tell him to use a serving dish, perhaps too fiercely. Tanechka always wanted to use proper dishes.

Aleksio regards me strangely, because it’s not something I would normally care about. “Okay, brother.”

“Tanechka would always try to make things nice,” I say to Mira. “She came up poor. She always said she would never be pushed down by poverty, something she got from her proud mother, I think. Even once we were rich in the Bratva, she would insist on such ceremony. One of her few concessions to polite society.”

“She would get so angry when one of us would throw a plate,” Yuri says. “Though she was the one to throw them half the time.”

“You Russians are so f*cking dramatic,” Aleksio says. “Is she up there?”

“Yes. Locked herself in the bedroom.”

Yuri looks at me sadly. I set out the candles and light them.

“She’ll come. She’ll remember.” I serve our guests vodka, belt back one of my own.

“A nun,” Mischa says. “She never did anything halfway. Neither did you. Both of you, intensity junkies.”

“Remember her wildcat stare?” Yuri says.

I laugh.

“Blyad,” Mischa says. “That stare. That temper.”

Yuri turns to Aleksio and Mira. “She has a stare of hate that can cut a man. She would line her eyes in black makeup, and they would be like two lasers burning at you. When you were on her good side, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for you, but get on her bad side…”