Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(30)

Tanechka eyes her honey cake. “I require only simple food.”

“Honey cake isn’t so complicated.”

She bites into her cake and chews without expression, as if it’s cardboard. It was one of her favorites—layers of honey-soaked cake with creamy frosting between each one. A girl’s cake. She pauses, still looking at nothing, but there’s a slight light in her eyes. Is she remembering?

I stay quiet, but my heart feels like it might explode.

Her famous focus was good for more than killing; it allowed her to enjoy beauty and pleasure more deeply than other people.

I want to tell her this is something beautiful that I loved about her very much, but I hold back. I want this moment to be for her, not for me.

She casts her gaze down at the cake. “Not bad,” she says softly.

I look away before she can catch the shine in my eyes and think me soft. “Hmm,” I say, as if bored. I’d give her anything if only she’d come back. I’d give her a blade and tell her to cut my throat.

Out the corner of my eye I see her take another bite. I school my features to look unimpressed.

“Usually it’s the Russian babies going to the West.”

“What?” I say.

“You. Sent to a Moscow orphanage.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Your enemy wanted to destroy your family. A young family.”

I try not to betray too much happiness that she’s engaged me. “Yes. My father lifted him up to make him his right-hand man, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted the power that our father possessed. He wanted the power to pass on to him, not to me and my brothers. Mira’s father is dead now, but his dangerous kumar, Bloody Lazarus, is even worse. Lazarus is the man who owns Valhalla, where you were.”

“That’s why you want to destroy it, then. To hurt Lazarus.”

“It’s not only self-interest,” I say.

“No?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. We’ll take it down all the same.” I look away. “There was a prophecy—”

“I don’t believe in prophecies.”

“I don’t either, but a lot of people do, and that’s what gives them power. An old crone, honored for her predictions, pointed to the three of us brothers at a party soon after Kiro was born. She said that we brothers together were unbeatable. ‘You boys. Together you rule…you boys, you three boys.’ Aleksio thinks it was part of why Lazarus and Mira’s father went after us.”

Out the corner of my eye I catch her focusing on the box where the rest of the cake still waits. Two more pieces.

I try not to smile. “There’s more.”

“I do not think I want it.”

I wave my hand. “Feed it to the gulls, then.”

She folds her hands in her lap. Oh, she wants the cake. “Your enemies want to keep you from reuniting?”

The old Tanechka would not ask such an obvious question.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s why we have to find Kiro before anybody else can—especially Bloody Lazarus. He needs to prevent the brothers from being together.”

“He believes in the prophecy?”

“I don’t know. But within…our community, it would be an immense psychological advantage for us to bring Kiro back. The three brothers united would command the hearts and minds of people because of that prophecy. But if he kills one of us, it’ll make him stronger. People will more readily follow him. It’s not so easy to kill me or Aleksio. But Kiro is out there unaware. Lost.”

I sit up and put another piece on her plate, then I gaze out at a distant freighter, allowing her privacy. She very much wants that cake.

I tell her about Kiro, how he might be a wild boy. I tell her about the joy I felt when Aleksio showed up at a garage in Moscow. Tanechka would have been every bit as happy for me as Yuri was, seeing that I had a brother. She would’ve jumped into my arms, and the three of us would have gone out and torn up the town.

Now she just listens.

She reaches out and pulls a bit of spongy cake from the edge. My heart lifts. But then she throws it. Gulls fly over. One takes it and flies off. She throws out the rest, bit by bit, feeding the gulls. This, too, is so Tanechka. She will not be managed.





Chapter Ten




Tanechka


The gulls finally leave. I lie back, staring at the sky that is such a beautiful blue. “Just the color is so beautiful, it makes me feel dizzy. As if the color is alive,” I say.

He says nothing. I can’t tell whether he’s happy or sad. So often he seems to have both emotions flowing through him. Never have I met a man so volatile. Then again, I have not met so many men.

That I remember, anyway.

He stares at the lake, arms planted behind him, sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms wild with sinew and muscle.

If he is to be believed, I once loved him. We had sex together.

Thick, thick fingers spread out on the picnic blanket.

If he is to be believed, it means he once touched me everywhere with those fingers. I can’t imagine what it would be like, to allow him to touch me with those thick fingers. To have him put himself inside me.

Sometimes his gaze is invasive, seeing too much. Other times it has weight and warmth. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with such a gaze upon my naked body.