Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(8)

I suck in a breath.

Yuri fixes me with a dead serious gaze. “There is a woman in Valhalla. He thinks it’s Tanechka.”

“Hold on. He thinks he sees Tanechka in the virgin brothel? Is that what you’re telling me here?”

“He sees a ghost in there.”

“Are you shitting me? All this time?”

Yuri nods. “Did you notice on the feeds that there is a nun who prays?”

I frown, recalling the Russian Orthodox nun on the feed. Viktor had gone quiet when we first saw her. I’d thought it was about the impropriety of it. “Yeah…”

“He thinks it is Tanechka. You saw this nun, right? She prays, kneeling, her face always away from the camera. It’s true, she looks like Tanechka from the back. She has her bright blonde hair. You can see this…” He traces the edge of his cheekbone. “Her face on the side, the shape of it. Yes, she is very much like Tanechka from the back and the side, a little bit. He has not seen her face, though—”

“Wait—he thinks she’s Tanechka, and he hasn’t even seen her face?”

“Yes.”

“He thinks the nun is Tanechka based on her back.”

“He says it is her body. Her movement.”

“But it couldn’t be—”

Yuri hesitates just a moment. “I cannot see how. If you would see this gorge, the part where he threw her in…nobody would survive such a fall.”

I scrub my face. All this time I thought he was just obsessive about doing the job. “How could I not have seen this?”

Yuri shrugs. “I only just realized myself. We’ve all been working on Lazarus’s people. Making friends with the Russians over here. Taking the empire.”

“And he’s been hiding it.” I start downstairs, cowboy shirt in hand. I’m angry he would’ve kept this from me. But mostly I’m worried.

Yuri comes after me and tries to stop me. I whirl on him. “You want him killed? We can’t send him into Valhalla delusional. Chasing a ghost.”

“What are you going to do?”

I continue on down. Viktor is still asleep on the couch. Mischa’s there, and he and Tito have dug into a bag of pork rinds with the help of Derek, another of my guys. I study the nun on the screen. “She just stays like that?”

Yuri comes to join me. “Most of the time.”

“Doesn’t she f*cking sleep?”

“Sleeps on her knees.”

I send Tito and Mischa into the kitchen to make coffee, and I go right for Viktor, hauling him up. He’s groggy. “Wake up! When the f*ck were you going to tell me about this?”

“What?”

I shake him, and he comes to, pushing me aside so he can focus on the nun.

“You getting a good look at her?” I demand. “Because it’s not Tanechka.”

He glares at Yuri.

“Hey!” I shake him. “Look in the mirror if you want to find the * in this room! Seriously, Viktor. You would keep something this big from me and Yuri? The two people who love you most in this world?”

He focuses in on me for the first time, and I can see the pain. How could I have missed it?

“We are your family. We’re with you in everything. We’re here for you.”

His eyes look a little glassy.

“Brother,” I say, letting him sink down into the couch. “Let us be with you in this. You’re feeling a little crazy, I get it—”

“You do not get it,” he growls. “It’s her.”

“You threw her off a sheer rock face. That gorge—”

“It’s her.”

“You haven’t even seen this woman’s face. How can you know?”

“It’s her.”

I look helplessly at Yuri, who shakes his head.

Viktor pulls away and sits. “The fact that she’s able to sit there perfectly still—that’s a Tanechka thing to do. The few times a day she leaves the room, she’s careful not to ever face that camera. When she returns to her spot—the same thing. Tanechka was a master of stillness, and she was always aware of camera placement and angle. Always. Why would a nun avoid the camera? This is what an assassin does.”

“You’re registered for the auction. You can write things to the girls. Why not write to her?”

“No,” Viktor says. “Making contact could endanger her. Yuri understands.”

“Is true, but you could write one of your codes,” Yuri says. “Or say something about Gorky Park. ‘I want to take you for lemon ice in Gorky Park.’”

Viktor glares.

Yuri ignores him and turns to me. “Tanechka loved anything lemon-flavored.”

“No contact,” Viktor whispers. “I won’t endanger her.”

We all turn to watch the nun. She kneels at the bed, praying, in the small cell that’s a parody of a nun’s simple room, I suppose. “What’s she holding?”

“Prayer rope. Russian nuns, they do this. Her hair was bright like that,” Viktor whispers. “Blonde like inside a lemon peel. I wish she would take off her head scarf so you could see all of her beautiful hair.” He rubs his eyes. “But I’m glad that she doesn’t. These other men, they don’t deserve to see all of her.”