Copyright ©2016 by Annika Martin
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Cover art: Bookbeautiful
Interior layout: BB eBooks
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations or locales is completely coincidental.
ISBN-10: 1-944736-00-X
ISBN-13: 978-1-944736-00-2
Viktor
You were the love of my life.
Beautiful and radiant.
Then you betrayed our mafiya family—the only family we ever knew.
Grief-stricken, I did the honor killing.
Quick and vicious.
Your heart no longer beating. Mine ripped to shreds.
When I discovered you were innocent, I was destroyed.
Now, years later—somehow, impossibly—there you are, alive.
The nun who prays and never shows her face.
Trapped on the other side of a webcam.
How can it be?
They think I’m obsessed. Imagining ghosts.
But I’ll always know you.
I’ll always know my Tanechka.
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Wicked Mafia Prince
A Dangerous Royals Romance
Book 2
Annika Martin
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
About the Book
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Books by Annika Martin
Books by Carolyn Crane
Acknowledgements
About Annika
Chapter One
Viktor
The girls move around in their rooms like caged animals. They exercise, they pace, they pound on the walls. Some gesture lewdly to the cameras. Others act pleasant, thinking, perhaps, things will improve things for them.
This I doubt very much.
There are thirty Valhalla virginity auction feeds in all. I track them on nine monitors, most of which are split into multiple screens. I have arranged the monitors on a set of shelves in front of the living room couch in my new home, like nine TVs.
I watch the feeds nonstop, recording them during the few hours that I sleep. I can’t allow myself to miss even the slightest clue. My brother and I need the location of this place.
The laptop in the center shows Tanechka and only Tanechka. She is dressed as a nun. She never turns her face to the camera.
I know it’s her. I’ll always know moya Tanechka—my Tanechka.
Always praying. Tanechka never falters in her one-pointed concentration. She seems to be concentrating on an icon, as a nun would. Such fierce concentration. So very Tanechka.
The nun disguise is brilliant. If this were the old days in Moscow, we would laugh together about such a disguise, relish it like fine vodka. When I imagine this too much, tears leak from my eyes. It’s okay. The pain feels good because the pain connects me to her.
Pain was my only connection to her in those dark months after I killed her. When I wanted to die, too.
I threw her over the steep, rocky side of Dariali Gorge. My mafiya brothers and I killed several traitors in this way while we were down south working with the Georgian gangs. The animals below would eat their corpses and scatter their bones.
That was two years ago.
Now here she is.
My Tanechka survived.
I cannot describe the storm of joy and disbelief that raged inside me upon seeing her for the first time on the virginity auction feed. Even with her back to the camera, I knew it was her.
I didn’t have faith in her two years ago. I should have believed in her, even when all the world and all the evidence told me different.
Now is my second chance to fight for her.
Her real name is Tatiana, but we all called her Tanechka, and I threw her into the gorge, yet here she is, outrageous as the torch lily. I will give her everything. I will turn myself inside out to show her my love, my guilt. I will rip my belly open if she wants it.
Who is she working for now? What is her mission? She’s been there for weeks. Why does she wait? Does she wait for backup?
What are you doing, moya Tanechka?
Tanechka has attracted the attention of many bidders. She has the cheek of an angel and glorious blonde hair—you can see it peek out from under the head scarf that she ties under her chin, traditional for a nun in Ukraine. Numbers on the screen below her webcam feed show the latest bid. The number climbs daily. Everybody wants to have the blonde nun who won’t stop praying. Everybody wants to see her face. To destroy something beautiful.
Turn, Tanechka, I think.
Not that I need to confirm it. This is nobody but Tanechka.
Back home in Moscow, we were so deeply connected to each other we often thought the same things, and when we didn’t, we would read each other with the barest of clues. We would read people and environments in the same way.
Turn. Let me see your face. Let me see your eyes. I think I would understand her mission if only I could see her eyes.
But no, Tanechka stays at her pretense of prayer with her usual unwavering concentration. Back in Russia, she could train her scope on a specific doorway for hours, waiting for a mark to walk through. True as a diamond, Tanechka was. She could watch a doorway all through the night, long after my own eyes drifted closed.
I don’t know why she’d wear a nun’s outfit, pretending to be a captive woman whose virginity is up for auction, a helpless victim. Tanechka is not a virgin and not a victim, aside from the day I killed her.
Though it seems she was not a victim even then. I shouldn’t be surprised she survived.
She’s there undercover, so she must intend to take down the Valhalla brothel, a vile place. Taking down this brothel is precisely what my brother Aleksio and I are working to do.
But who is Tanechka here with? Has she gone vigilante? Or is another gang involved, with Tanechka scouting things? Six weeks she has been in this place, judging from the bidding roster. Tanechka never approved of sex slavery. She would have hated staying in a place like this for so long. It is strange, really, that she stays.
Valhalla is the primary income source of our enemy, Bloody Lazarus. He runs the most powerful crime dynasty in Chicago—a dynasty stolen from my brothers and me. We
plan to take much of it back from him, but we want nothing to do with a place like Valhalla. We won’t just destroy it—we’ll reach into the pipeline that feeds it and destroy everybody who has ever been involved with it. We will tear this operation out by the roots so that it can never grow again.
In M-1 Global, our Russian version of Ultimate Fighting Championship, the best fighters know to soften their foes with strikes to the body before going for the knockout. Destroying income sources like the Valhalla brothel is a body blow to Bloody Lazarus. Once he is hurting, we go in for the knockout.
Lazarus helped kill my parents and separate me from my brothers. I wasn’t yet two years old when he helped to rip me from my family in Chicago and dump me in a Moscow orphanage.
I grew up understanding nothing of who I was, with only the vaguest images of my life in America. I thought they were dreams, these images.
My older brother, Aleksio, found me just last year. Kiro, our baby brother—malinky brat—is still out there, lost. In danger.
I focus on Tanechka, so steadfast.
To destroy Valhalla, we must find Valhalla.
My role is to pose as a customer, a man bidding on these poor, trapped girls. Aleksio and I decided that I would win one of the insignificant auctions. We chose a scrawny girl, Nikki, for me to bid on.
When you win an auction at Valhalla, they take you in blindfolded to claim your prize. Some say that Valhalla is not even in this state, that they fly you there, but Aleksio and I believe it is here in Chicago.
Valhalla has thirty auctions running at any one time. There is a feed below the current bid price where you can read the messages that the men type to the laptops in the girls’ rooms. Some girls write back in bad English. Some seem even to be practicing their English through these exchanges. Some ignore the messages.
Tanechka ignores them, but she sees them. They are right there in her field of vision.
She speaks English fluently. This is how we met; Tanechka and I were singled out by the Bratva leadership—the heads of our mafiya gang—for our fluency with English. We were chosen to work as assassins, often having to pose as Americans. Whenever we were together, we spoke to each other in English or else in French. Always practicing, sharpening our skills.
Two overachieving killers, Tanechka and I.
If only I could see her face, I would know what she’s doing and whether she needs anything.
I wouldn’t dare send her a message. There is nothing more dangerous than somebody trying to help you on an undercover mission when you don’t want or need help.
Hard as it is, going about your business is the best help you can offer an undercover agent.
So I wait. Watch. But one word from her, one sign that she’s in danger, and I’ll try to get there sooner. I just need to know where it is.
So I watch for clues.
My fake identity for the Nikki auction is Peter, a German software engineer. The Nikki auction that I am to win closes in five days, and Peter will win it easily because few want this young girl. In this way Nikki is perfect as our point of infiltration.
Nikki is kept in the basement. I know this because I’ve made maps of the relative locations of the women in the place by tracking their eye movements. I can tell when there are loud sounds there, and I track the directions of their gazes to get their locations. The servers will likely be located in the basement.
The Valhalla handlers force Nikki to wear the white dress of a little girl. Advertised as a virgin. Perhaps she is. But she is not so innocent; any predator could see that she is a predator herself, 100% hoodlum. She would tear a man apart. Even tied, she would find a way. She would bite your cock off, I think.
Tanechka could do even worse than that, but she remains perfectly in character, kneeling at her bedside. Bidding for the nun who prays nonstop is off the charts, as the Americans say. High six figures now. Maybe it will get to a million. She closes in three weeks.
What are you doing, Tanechka? How are you alive?
I aim to destroy this operation from the inside out before Tanechka’s auction closes. I didn’t protect her before. I have a second chance now.
The plan: I go as Peter the software engineer to Nikki’s room. They promise to turn off the camera when a customer comes to claim his prize. I will ensure this is done, of course.
I will not fuck her. I only need to get to the servers to plant spyware. We’ve decided that I’ll request that Nikki be gagged and tied for me, so I don’t have to do it myself. This will save time. I’ll convince Nikki to tell a tale of how I fucked her. We’ll hope that she’s grateful enough to cooperate in exchange for her eventual freedom.
Hard to wait.
I force myself to stand. Sitting on the couch all day, it is not so good. I bring last night’s pizza box and a few glasses into the kitchen, where I also have a monitor showing the Tanechka feed.
I should clean. After this is over, I’ll bring Tanechka here, and she always liked things clean and bright. She loved sunflowers and daisies and soft lighting from lamps—never overhead lighting; only lamps.
Tanechka gets cold easily. Back home, we could never have enough comfortable quilts and furs and blankets. She likes big slippers. Thick shag carpets. She was such a fierce soldier out in the field, never complaining; it was as if she saved up her warmth-seeking, comfort-loving self for later.
Back in the living room I study her. Now and then the girls all cock their heads or change the directions of their glances in response to sound—a scream. A siren.
Only Tanechka stays still. She gives the camera nothing.
So often I picture myself finding this place and storming in. I imagine going to Tanechka’s bedside. I would pull her up and tell she can rest now, that I will do anything for her. What would she do? I knew her so well when we were together, but two years have passed. What’s more, the man she loved and trusted with all her heart cast her into Dariali Gorge.
I walk around to the back of my couch and study the screens.
I’m recording them, but it takes so many hours to review and catch up that I watch them live as much as possible. I look for anything. A hand with a telltale ring coming into view. A reflection on glassware that I can run through facial recognition.
I need to know everything.
I grab a barbell and do curls as I watch. Curls are good for keeping awake.
I cringe when I hear the knock at my door. Yuri. My best friend, one of the men I brought from Russia. I’ve been putting him off. Always too busy to see him. Now here he is. I cut the light on Tanechka’s screen. I can’t let him see. He’ll think I’m crazy, believing this is Tanechka.
Worse, he’ll tell my brother Aleksio. They would pull me from this mission. I would do the same if I were them.
“Come in,” I say.
He walks in, addresses me in Russian. “What are you doing?”
I nod at the barbell.
“Do you have your phone off or what? You’re not answering.”
I grab my phone and see that it’s dead. “Ah.” I plug it in.
“Chto eta…” He gestures at the monitors. He wants to know what’s up with the monitors.
“Preparing,” I say. “Getting ready. Confirming the relationship of rooms. I’m more convinced than ever that Nikki’s room is in the center of the basement.” I show him my diagram, the gap where I believe the server closet is.
“Well, you look like fucking hell.” He switches to English with “fucking hell.” More and more he speaks in English. He opens the curtains.
I squint.
“Aleksio wants to know why you missed the meeting.”
“I’m getting ready to be software engineer Peter.” I move Tanechka’s laptop down alongside the others so Yuri won’t think it’s special. “I’ve arranged the monitors according to where I believe they are, relative within the structure.”
“Mmm.” Yuri comes round and looks. In Russian, he says, “It’s a simple infiltration. Do you need such a thorough layo
ut?”
He knows I don’t. My job is simple: get spyware on the server. If I can’t do that, I must get to one of the girls’ computers. I wave off the question. “I’m hoping for a clue to the location of this place…”
“We’ll know the location when you get there,” Yuri says.
“Best to know it ahead of time.”
He furrows his brow. “Does Aleksio think this is the best use of time?”
“What are you saying?” I sound belligerent. Unreasonable.
He comes near. “Chto eta?” he asks again.
Insolently, I grab a vodka bottle. Beluga, our favorite. “A Boy Scout is always prepared.” Yuri loves the American phrases. When I remember it’s morning, I put the bottle down.
“No, something’s wrong.” Yuri’s looking at the monitors. I know the instant he zeroes in on the laptop with the dark screen. He looks from me to the screen and back. He wants to know what he’ll see if he lights it. The question is, does he want to know enough to defy me?
When he makes his move, I pull him back. “Is this my operation or yours?”
“What’s on the dark screen?”
“Idi nahuy,” I say. “Go fuck,” it means in Russian. “This isn’t your home.”
“Chto eta?”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you.”
Yuri is fast for such a large man, and he’s been getting a proper amount of sleep, unlike me. No surprise, then, that the second I release him, he’s able to get to the monitor and turn the screen on. I can’t stop him.
“A nun.” He eyes me suspiciously.
“Satisfied?” I sit back down. “It disgusts me. Auctioning off her virginity.”
“You don’t give a fuck about nuns.”
“Anything else?” I demand.
“No…” He turns back to the screen. And then he sees it. “Wait,” he whispers. “Wait…”
“What now? Did you come here for a reason or…”
“Her hair…”
My heart pounds. Does he see it? “What?”
“Her hair. The cheekbone.” He turns to me in shock. “She reminds you of her. This is why you watch?”
Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) Page 1
