Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(29)

I turn and walk backwards. “This isn’t your first time in America. Did you know that? Twice we were here.”

“In Chicago?”

“No. Once in Omaha, once in San Francisco. You liked the old houses in San Francisco. You said they looked like frosted cookies.”

“Hmmph.” She looks away as she so often does when I remind her of our old life. I tell myself it’s a good sign that she runs from these memories. You only run from something if it’s a threat.

“You said you wanted to eat those houses right up.” Both times we traveled to America it was to chase and kill those who betrayed the Bratva, but I don’t say that. Omaha got quite bloody. We had to kill one person extra before it was over.

“We were put together because we both knew English. I was born here. You didn’t know that—neither did I, until a year ago.”

She simply watches me.

“I was born here in Chicago to an Albanian family. I was two years old, just learning to talk, when the man my father trusted most attacked our family. Our father ran a business dynasty that stretched across the entire middle of the nation. But this man—Mira’s father—he drugged our parents and killed them.”

“Mira? The one Aleksio loves?”

“Yes. Her father and a man called Bloody Lazarus did it. They drugged our parents and chased them up to the nursery where my brothers and I were. My parents wanted to protect us. Instead they were slaughtered in front of us.”

“You saw it?”

“I remember only…impressions. Aleksio saw it all, in the reflection of a window. He was nine.”

“No.”

“This old hit man, Konstantin, a veteran of the Kosovo wars, he held Aleksio in the shadows, hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t scream. Konstantin saved Aleksio’s life. Our enemies spared me and Kiro, our baby brother, but they would have killed Aleksio. They tried to. All his life, killers were after Aleksio. Me, they sent me across the world to that orphanage in Moscow with no identification. They sold our bratik Kiro into an adoption ring. We still can’t find him.”

She regards me with a look of concern, even tenderness. A nun’s compassion. Nothing more.

“We’ll find him—we have to. Bloody Lazarus doesn’t want the three brothers to be together. He wants to kill Kiro, but we’ll find him first. We have to. He’s very vulnerable at the moment.”

I turn and walk by her side. She sighs, as if it my nearness pains her.

“You were always a little bit jealous of my English abilities, Tanechka. You thought I was so smart, the way I could think and even dream in English. It’s because the language was inside me from that time. I didn’t remember, but the pathways in my brain had been created for English. Because I was a little boy here.”

“Mmm,” she says.

Again I turn and walk backwards. I like to watch her face. “Do you want to know how you came to learn English?”

Behind her are the trees in their fall colors and Lake Shore Drive, gleaming hotels and skyscrapers soaring above.

“You don’t want to know?”

“It’s immaterial.”

I stop when I decide we’re at the perfect spot. I spread out the blanket. I sit and open the basket. “Sit.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You prefer to stand?”

She sits stiffly, like the nun she wants me to take her for, but a small, bright lock of hair has broken free from under her scarf, flying and waving at me like a small flag. I wonder how long her hair is under there. She used to keep it long—she said it gave her a greater diversity of styles. All the better to be a chameleon. A good killer is, above all, a good chameleon.

“You learned English easily because of your obsession with rock and roll,” I say. “That’s how you came to know it. Memorizing songs.”

She frowns.

I take out the bottles of sparkling lemon water, unscrew the top of one, and set it down on a platter. She loves anything citrus. Flavors with bite. Everything with an edge, even sex. She liked to be held tight, to be held down. Make me know you’re there, she’d whisper. Make me know, Viktor.

That was code for her wanting me to be more forceful.

I remove a small box from the basket and open it, pleased to see that the honey cake I bought just a few hours ago survived the trip. I place a piece on a small painted plate and set it in front of her next to her fizzy lemon water. She used to enjoy such water with vodka.

She thanks me politely. “Spasibo.”

“Nezashto.” I take out the book, the poems of Anatoly Vartov.

“A book,” she says.

I grit my teeth. A book. This isn’t just a book; it’s her favorite collection of poems in the world. She had a fiercely personal relationship with each and every one of them, especially the poem titled “Cages.” There was a dark time in her life when she would read it and cry for the beauty of it. Like a gift to her, this poem. “I thought we would read.” I stretch out on my back. “I could read to you if you like.”

“It won’t work, Viktor.”

“Can’t we just enjoy the afternoon?”

“You won’t make me remember.”

“Then what’s the harm?”

She sighs, seeming to relax, and I think maybe Mira was right about letting her relax, surrounding her with goodness. You can’t force a flower to bloom, but you can show it the sun.