Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(35)

In addition to finding the nun, I have to end the Dragusha brothers, do what Aldo Nikolla didn’t have the balls to let me do all those nineteen years ago.

Everybody knows Aleksio and Viktor Dragusha are in play now. People are holding their breath, thinking the brothers will unite and take everything, just like in the prophecy.

Killing all of them would be ideal, but I only need one. It clearly has to be Kiro. I’ve tried sending people after Aleksio and Viktor, but it doesn’t work out. My top guys won’t touch that job—no f*cking way. Aleksio and Viktor are too dangerous, too well-defended.

Killing Kiro will be easy once we find him.

Best of all, killing Kiro will solidify my leadership like nothing else. It’s what my people need to see, like King Arthur pulling the sword from the stone.

Charles, in his anger, has people searching for the guard, but again, stupid. Where do frightened people go? They go where they feel safe. Where do people feel safe? Home. Where is home for a nun? A church.

I need Charles to get the idea. Make your people feel smart, Valerie always says. You want them feeling good when they look in the mirror.

I sit down with him and ask about his nun. He has a good deal of intel on her. He thinks she’s smarter than she acts. She’s from a convent out near the Russian-Ukrainian border called Svyataya Reka, which translates to Holy River, according to the internet. I ask him questions until he hits on the idea that she might seek out a church if she escapes from the guard. We do a little research together and locate a Russian Orthodox church on Leavitt Street. Very central, the largest in Chicago. And the names are similar.

“What do you think, Charles?”

“Tanechka will go there if she can,” he informs me, quite pleased with himself. “They have nuns there, too. This is the one she’ll pick.”

I beam at him, mirroring his pleasure. “Awesome,” I say. “Right. Then she’ll lead us to him. Just in case, do you think we should post people at all of the Russian Orthodox churches in Chicago?”

“Better to be safe,” he says.

“Good. Consider it done.”

Well, it is done—I already have men at them, but he doesn’t need to know.

The nun will escape—hopefully. Charles will get his victim to f*ck with, like a Boy Scout with a spider; I’ll make a bloody example of the guard; and it’ll be a f*cking coup.

I think.

Valerie sometimes sees angles that I don’t. I really wish I could get Valerie’s honest take.

But even if I kidnapped her, made her serve me that way, it probably wouldn’t turn out. Or would it?

Ironically, Valerie would be the perfect person to ask about that, too.





Chapter Twelve




Viktor


Tanechka is again locked in our bedroom. Her bedroom now. I let her have that. She can have anything she wants. Almost anything.

She can have anything the old Tanechka would want.

I head to the kitchen.

Something broke in me when she began to sob. She’s still sobbing up there, my beautiful Tanechka.

I learned what it was to suffer after I thought I’d killed her. This is hard in a different way, because it’s Tanechka suffering, right before my eyes.

I twist the cap off a bottle of vodka, throw it across the room, and drink. The bottle won’t be needing the cap anymore.

I collapse on the couch, head bowed, bottle dangling from my fingertips.

I’d rip my beating heart from my chest if it would buy her even a minute of peace from this pain.

I trail over the afternoon in my mind. The way she looked when she ate the honey cake, how happy I was to give her that pleasure. For a moment, she felt like her.

When the bottle is half-gone, I go up the stairs to check on her. It’s quiet. I put my ear to the door.

“Go away,” she calls out. “Leave me.”

“I’ll never leave you, lisichka.”

Silence.

I slide down to the floor outside the room, sitting with my back to the door. She hates me. She should, of course. Especially if she gets her memory back.

For now, all I can do is to show her that she isn’t alone. “I love you beyond anything,” I say.

Sniffles from inside the room.

I take another swig, letting the liquid coat my throat against the darkness of memory. She cries softly now and then, every small sound like a blade to my belly.

“You’ll never be alone,” I say. “I’ll always be here, a dog at your feet.”

Quietly she weeps.

I press the heels of my palms into my eyes, listening to what I’ve wrought. This woman I love in agony.

Grief and shame and guilt and self-loathing mix together into a familiar cocktail, churning in my chest.

Now and then I feel rageful toward the nuns, even though I know they saved her and gave her a home. If only she’d been taken in by farmers or a government clerk. Anybody but nuns, because then she wouldn’t feel such anguish.

And the woman with the ring was an assassin, after all. Her death saved lives. Tanechka’s god should care about that.

Sometimes I see the nun that she’s become as a jailer, keeping the real Tanechka buried and hidden. Other times I know this nun is a form of her.

I drink.

On she cries.

I can bear it no longer. I stand. I pound. “Let me in.”