Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(4)

“I know what you think, but it’s her. You think I wouldn’t recognize her? Twenty hours a day she prays like that. But I don’t think she’s praying; she’s meditating. Remember how Tanechka used to do that? She would focus her mind to a tenacious point before a kill. Tanechka’s perfect icy calm. Look at the way her hands are. Do you see? I think she is doing a form of isometrics in the guise of praying…”

He grabs my shirt collar and pulls me away from the monitor. “Listen to yourself!”

I try to push him off.

He is too strong, too angry. He shoves me to the couch, gets in my face. “Do you hear yourself?”

“It’s her. You don’t know her like I do. It’s her.”

“Tanechka is dead. You killed her. You threw her into Dariali Gorge.”

“We never saw the body.”

“Dariali Gorge, Viktor! She cannot be alive.”

“It’s her.” I push him off me.

“What do you imagine she’s doing? Is she there to bring the brothel down?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Probably.”

“Think. If Tanechka wanted to bring this thing down, she’d bring it down. She has access to a computer in there. Tanechka could make five kinds of weapons out of a computer. She wouldn’t kneel and pray. Tanechka kneels before no one!”

I stand and glare. I’m sure he didn’t mean to put that picture in my mind, but there it is: Tanechka, big blue eyes, hair like sunshine, light freckles across her face, kneeling, looking up at me, hungry for my cock.

I swallow, pull myself together. “Perhaps she waits for somebody she has a contract on. Maybe even Bloody Lazarus. She loved to take advantage of her looks. Remember how she’d do that? Remember her white dress and high boots? Those clothes she’d wear for the fancy jobs?”

“Brat,” Yuri says sadly.

“It’s her. You haven’t been watching.”

He points. “Message her, then.”

“A message,” I spit. “She’s undercover. I might as well put a bullet in her brain.”

“Or a message could prove that it’s not her.”

“I won’t endanger her. Don’t ask again.”

“You used to have those codes between you. What was that one—‘coffee with ten sugars’—that meant, ‘do you have an SOS?’ Try it.”

“Are you crazy?”

“That’s not so strange a thing to say. That way, you could test whether she’s Tanechka.”

“She’s Tanechka.”

I don’t like the look that passes over Yuri’s face now. Worry.

“You don’t have to believe me,” I say. “Find it out for yourself. You knew her. Come. Sit. Watch her. You’ll see.”

“Blyad!” He sits by me in a huff. “This is psycho.”

“Look how she breathes. Remember how Tanechka would do that? She wouldn’t breathe for a long time, and then this lift of her shoulders.”

“You see a ghost.”

We watch in silence.

“You see this woman with your eyes, but I see her with my heart,” I say. “A superior form of knowing. There are forms of knowing we can’t explain, I think. But I know, I know…” I lose my train of thought here.

“Viktor…”

“If only she would turn, you would see.”

He sighs. His attention goes to the other women in their cages. He points to Nikki. “That one’s yours?”

“Yeah. She just sleeps.”

“She looks like a bednyazhka from a little village. What is that in English?”

I shrug.

He looks it up on his iPhone. “Ragamuffin,” he says. “Nikki looks like a ragamuffin from a little village.”

“Perhaps.”

After a long silence, he says, “It’s not Tanechka. You don’t see her with your heart. You see her with your guilt.”

I shrug. “You’ll see.”

“Viktor—” He rest his hand on the side of my neck and makes me turn to him. “This is a ghost here to say that you need to forgive yourself for what you did. You had no choice.”

“If I’d truly loved and trusted Tanechka, I would have fought for her. Believed her.”

“Then you would have died too.”

“Don’t make excuses for me.”

“Blyad!” he says suddenly.

“What?” I tear my gaze from Tanechka.

He’s pointing at the curtains. Sunflower curtains. “Blyad, Viktor!” He stands and walks all around, looking at the furniture. He picks up a fuzzy blanket and throws it across the room, knocking over a vase.

I turn to watch Tanechka praying through it all, powerful and immovable as a mountain. Sometimes I wonder whether she feels me.

“You’re making a nest for her.”

“I want it nice for when I bring her back here.”

He goes to the front closet. I sigh, knowing what he’ll find. Still, I cringe when he comes back holding the white leather jacket. It’s identical to the one she used to wear when she wasn’t trying to be anybody else. The Tanechka trademark. He hurls it at me.

I catch it, regard him defiantly. “It’s her.” I squeeze her jacket in my hands. I want to press it to my chest, but not in front of him. I wish very much that he would be happy for me.