Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(47)

“But you give it power when you oppose it. You give things power when you oppose them—you understand that, right?” Konstantin is a great strategist, but I can’t abide this advice.

“In Russia, some crazy people think they’re Stalin. We’d never think to cure them by playing along.”

“It’s a little different, becoming a nun. Don’t you think?” This he says in a voice like I’m a child.

I sigh. “Even if I thought it would help, I’d feel like I was betraying the old Tanechka. She’d hate this nun, Konstantin. I didn’t fight for her before, and sometimes I feel like she’s calling out to me to fight this nun.”

I stop at a different Russian bakery on my way back. The Russian Mafiya guys here tell me it’s the best, where all of their wives go. They have many lemon things for Tanechka.

I choose a selection of lemon jellies shaped like stars and lemon wedges, then I pick up a bottle of pink champagne. We used to drink vodka mostly, but in certain moods, Tanechka would drink pink champagne like soda. She never considered champagne to be an alcoholic beverage on the level of vodka.

Once she starts drinking pink champagne, she doesn’t stop. Can’t stop. Such a sweet tooth.

It’s wrong. I no longer care. I need to get past the nun, to get to Tanechka. Her mind doesn’t remember, but her body does.

At home, I set the bakery bag on the counter and loosen my tie. Pityr comes up and tells me she’s been quiet, except to ask for a Bible. This she is not allowed to have—I don’t care what Konstantin suggests. She gets only the volume of poems by Anatoly Vartov. She also asked for water, but he gave her none, as I instructed.

I want her thirsty. Yes, she could drink from the bathroom faucet, of course, but the old Tanechka would not like that so much.

I take a belt of vodka, then I grab the champagne bottle, two glasses, the bag, and the rest of it, and I trudge upstairs.

I stop at the doorway. She’s lying in front of the fire.

She wears the black jeans still—she has no choice, being that she’s chained by her leg to the radiator, but she changed her top. She wears an oversized white button-down shirt.

My shirt.

I suck in a breath and imagine the scent of my shirt on her skin.

I want to drop everything and take her in my arms and press my face to her breast. I want to pull the shirt off of her and kiss every inch of her.

She makes no sign that she knows I’m there—she refuses even to look at me.

Angry.

Just as well; my hands are trembling. I take a deep breath and stroll in casually. I put down the bottle and the glasses.

Did she change into the shirt to mess with my mind? Or is it because it’s the least form-fitting thing in her closet? Either way, I love her in it. I love her.

I need her back.

This is what I did to my Tanechka. It’s my fault she’s a nun, and it’s up to me to undo it. I owe it to her. To yank her back.

I take off my suit jacket and holster and set them on the bed. The gun I set on a small chest well out of her reach.

“Come here.” I spread the rug back out.

She refuses to move from her place on the hard floor.

“Fine. I’ll pick you up and put the rug under you and set you down on it. And if you kick it away again, I’ll repeat. I’ll spend all day doing it if I have to. I enjoy holding you in my arms. I think you enjoy it, too.”

She glares and stands up. I put out the rug. She sits on it with distaste. I open the bottle.

“No, thank you.”

I pour two glasses anyway. I always have perfect control over my emotions in the field, no matter the danger. Always cool. But here in this room with her in my shirt after so long, I feel nearly crazy to touch her. Just to be near her.

I arrange the sweets and pastries on a plate. I set a colorful cloth napkin in front of her. It’s an Indian-style print. Tanechka loved such prints.

“How’s the hunt for your brother going?” She gazes into the fire. “Any new leads?” She knows about the fake professor’s house with the cage. It was a main subject of conversation when Aleksio and the gang were over for dinner that first night.

“We’re very close, lisichka. But we have to move slowly. It’s frustrating.” I tell her about how our investigator is pretending to be an author. I tell her about the man behind the desk who controls the filings. “A little man playing little power games.”

She hasn’t moved to take a treat, so I set a lemon wedge and two jelly stars on a small plate. The lemon wedge has a sugared lemon on the top of it. She always picked it off and ate it first.

“A little man behind a desk stops you.” She turns the plate clockwise, but doesn’t touch the treats. “Let me guess; you wish so badly you could beat it out of him.”

“I wish it so badly.” I kick off my shiny dress shoes and sit next to her, letting my toes warm by the fire. “But I can’t. We have this lead, this head start that’s ours to exploit. We can’t draw attention to it, or we might squander it.”

She takes her lemon wedge and looks at the top of it.

“Bloody Lazarus’s organization gains in power every day,” I continue. “They outnumber us by hundreds of men. We have money now, yes, but they have the empire and the connections our father built. They have strong warriors who are accustomed to working together. If they knew where our poor bratik was, they could swoop in and take him out from under us. They could pluck him from a supermax prison with a word.”