I sigh and take it, not wanting to give him any more opportunities for contact. It’s powerful enough to have him near me, to have this electricity dancing between us. I take the pear slice. It’s delicious, like all of the food he feeds me.
He slices another, then looks up at me and smiles his charming smile.
Chapter Sixteen
Viktor
She recognized it instantly. Her favorite weapon, the R-37 with the silver barrel handle. It wasn’t so easy to acquire. She loved this blade, my Tanechka. So dangerous with the pika.
She has her hair pulled back in a ponytail, one strand curling around her face. She takes my breath away. She pushed away the rug, refusing comfort. So like her. I love her with everything.
I cut another slice—slowly—letting her feel it, then I pass it over. “You think you’re being unlike the old Tanechka by holding fast to the nun identity. What you don’t understand, Tanechka, is that you were just as fierce in your old beliefs. You had such a strong code of honor. We all did, but you were different. The most fierce. The most loyal.”
“You won’t change my mind,” she says.
I hand her another slice. She loved a sweet pear.
“I wanted to kill your father for the trouble he caused you growing up. So many times I wanted to kill him. But you wouldn’t condemn him for what he was. ‘He is my father,’ you’d say. ‘He does the best he can.’” I snort. “I wanted to gut him like the junk fish he was.”
She regards her pear slice thoughtfully. Does she remember anything at all from then?
I take a slice for myself. “We had the opposite childhoods in many ways. You had a bad father who hung onto you as if his life depended on it. You’d have been better off in an orphanage. I was in the orphanage, and I wanted a family. I’d be sent to these beautiful homes for a test, but they’d always send me back. Defective.”
I say it casually, hating that it hurts still. I slice off another, hand it to her. She takes it without a word, seeming to listen intently. It feels like old times, sitting side by side in front of a fire. She chews thoughtfully. Does she remember at all?
“I was desperate to be wanted by a family. You were desperate to get out. Opposites.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing. When you’re an orphan, a family is a blank screen where you project your dreams. It wouldn’t have worked out with me and a family.” I study her pale freckles in the firelight. She can’t choose to remember, I know this, and the internet says so. But she seems so much like the woman she once was. Like a hand, reaching across to me.
“It must’ve hurt, to be sent back.”
I shrug. “I’d get a few nice meals out of it, at least. Sleep in a nice bed. But the family puts their dreams on the child, too, and I could never measure up. They’d see that I wasn’t the kind of boy they hoped for.” Why am I telling her this? The conversation makes me remember the shame of it. Going to the family so full of hope, only to be thrown away.
That rejection was the worst kind of ache.
I find her watching me. I wipe the blade and retract it. Then I flick it out. Does she remember the sound? The pika was second nature to us. The best thing about a nice sharp blade is that you don’t have to cut with it; you merely have to touch the person with it. The blade does the cutting for you.
“Yuri was adopted out for almost three years. I couldn’t fault him for leaving. I was sad to see him go, though. Wild to lose him. He got nearly three years with a family.”
“And you stayed.”
“Yuri has more impulse control.” I smile as though it’s amusing. “I’d get things into my head, and I’d burn with them. I’d forget everything, and I’d burn to correct this slight or prove something. Like a matchstick, with my head on fire, burning with anger. With injustice.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “If I thought somebody betrayed me, I would feel as if my head was on fire.”
“Do you think it’s because you were in the room when your parents were killed?”
My heart pounds. “That has nothing to do with anything.”
She contemplates the fire with sad, faraway eyes. Then, “You shouldn’t be ashamed to feel deeply. You call it impulse control, but maybe you simply feel things more.”
“You shouldn’t make excuses for me.”
“Many people let you down, abandoned you,” she says. “You were a boy desperate to be loved.”
I concentrate on cutting the next slice, but my heart is cracking. So Tanechka. “Savior of puppies. Children. The unloved. That was you.”
“And then I came along, and I loved you. But then I left you, didn’t I?”
I look at her, heart thundering.
“You thought I was dead. That’s like leaving you.”
Is she remembering?
“So many people let you down and abandoned you,” she says. “You, who feel so deeply. Love so deeply. It must have hurt.”
I concentrate on cutting the next slice, but she’s the one who’s doing the slicing here—she’s slicing me right open. It’s true—everything in my world changed when I met Tanechka. She showed somebody could love me.
And then she betrayed me, betrayed the gang. Or seemed to.
I felt so wild when I thought she’d turned traitor. Like a bull with arrows stuck into it. Yet deep down I suppose it felt inevitable, too.
I didn’t know she was innocent.
And I killed her.
My pulse races, thinking about what Aleksio said. Part of me wants to confess—confess to the nun. Yet a sickly sweet nausea blooms inside me at the very thought.
“I have killed so many people. Some slowly and painfully. Some I tortured. I don’t concern myself with love the way you imagine.”
“I think you love your brothers. I think having a family means the world to you. Somebody who will always be there. Somebody who can never leave. The gang, too—you’re seeking a family.”
“Don’t make excuses for me. You won’t like the result.”
“You should’ve seen your eyes when Aleksio called you brother.”
I pocket the blade and stand, feeling dizzy.
“You’re not a terrible person,” she says. “You’re just a man who feels deeply. You want to be loved. To be forgiven.”
My blood races. “Is there nothing you won’t spin fairy tales about?” I grab her hair and yank her up to me. I feel insane. “Look at me. Look!”
She looks into my eyes.
“I’m not a man who feels deeply, much as you wish I was. I’m not a good man.”
“I won’t accept that.”
“No?” I twist her hair harder. I bring her face close to mine. “No?”
“No,” she gasps.
So I kiss her—roughly. I kiss her, not caring that she doesn’t kiss back.
When she struggles, I clasp my arm around her and force her up against me, up against my cock. I nestle in my cock where I know she can feel it.
I twist her hair as I take her lips. I suck. I bite. I slide her against me, moving her ever so slightly. I often did this when she felt angry—I kissed and manhandled her, cock notched between her legs, until she softened.
“I’m not a good man, Tanechka,” I say into the kiss.
She presses her hand to my chest, pushing. Perhaps she’s angry now.
“I’m the man who’ll make you wet whether you like it or not,” I whisper, hot into her ear. “I’m the man who’ll shove apart your legs and destroy you—with just the tip of my tongue.”
“Get away,” she pleads.
“You think I’m being brutal with you? When I get brutal with you, you’ll know it. You’ll know it because you’ll be screaming my name, begging for more.”
I kiss her neck, now, merciless with my teeth. I want to mark her.
“Every curve, every breath, every nook, all of you is mine.”
She hisses out a breath. She’s softening. The breath is always a sign.
“You’re feeling it now, aren’t you?�
�
She doesn’t answer, but she’s soft to me now. I pull away, pull us apart.
I stare into her eyes. “I’m the man who will keep you from your god until you remember you’re a devil.”
With that, I turn and leave.
Chapter Seventeen
Viktor
I spend the next day at Konstantin’s with Aleksio, Yuri, and Tito. We focus on our many operations—the brothel pipeline, the money-laundering robbery. These things we can affect.
But when I think of my Tanechka trapped inside that nun, I feel helpless.
And when I think of that clerk behind a desk somewhere keeping us from the information that will lead us to Kiro, my face feels hot. Wherever he is, Kiro is vulnerable.
It’s a good thing I don’t know this desk clerk’s name. But I tell myself, Leave him alone. We’re protecting Kiro by moving under the radar.
I don’t truly believe it.
I bring the old man a quilt to put over his legs, and I push him outside to feed his ducks. He gets cold. He wears an old man’s hat over his bald head. “You’ll meet her soon,” I say. “You’ll like her. She’ll remember who she is soon. I’m sure of it.”
“It’s only been a few days, Viktor. Give it time.”
“It’s…frustrating. To have what you want most in the world in front of you. But it’s an illusion. Like a mirage in the desert. I surround her with her favorite things, and she resists. Her favorite poetry.”
The old man throws bread. The ducks come, quacking.
“They sound always like they’re complaining,” I say.
“Ducks. Whadya gonna do.” He throws out more bread with the unsteady hands of an old man. “Maybe she needs to feel like you understand her,” he says. “You bring her books the old Tanechka liked. What about the Bible? Why not bring her the Bible and ask her to read you her favorite part.”
“I will not encourage her delusion.”
“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.”
She picks the sugared lemon off the fluffy pastry. Only half comes up, but she puts it in her mouth and sucks with keen concentration. Then she breaks off a corner and eats it.
My fucking heart soars. Tanechka loves food. Back when we were together, she had more meat on her bones than this nun. Better for fighting, better for fucking. Still, she’s beautiful to me. When we were together I’d always be holding her hand, touching her arm. I loved the feel of her skin. Sometimes I couldn’t believe she was mine.
“Drink your champagne,” I say, taking a sip from my own glass, though it
’s not my kind of drink.
“I really would rather have water. Or tea.”
“Maybe so, but you’ll drink champagne instead. Jesus lets you drink wine, doesn’t he?”
She stares at the fire. “It’s not about that.”
“You’ll drink it, Tanechka, or I’ll climb on top of you and press your hands above your head and dribble it into your mouth little by little.”
“I’ll close my lips.”
“You think I can’t get around that?”
In truth, I probably can’t, but she doesn’t know. There are some advantages to her lack of memory.
“I’ll stretch out warm on top of you and make you drink, little by little. Maybe I’ll tie your hands. You always loved that.” I take a sip. “It’s a slightly perverted way to drink champagne but very erotic.”
She eyes her glass. If only I could get her to take a sip, the battle is half-won. She won’t stop. It’s how she is.
“You’ll enjoy the way I help you drink it,” I say. “I’ll move on top of you in a way that you’ll find very pleasurable.”
She takes up her glass, finally—and sips.
Yes.
She holds it in front of her face, regarding it with just a tinge of wonder. Staring at the bubbles. Pink champagne. An old friend. Does she remember the taste?
“See? It’s hardly strong at all.” I take a lemon wedge and break off part. “You first had this champagne in Hotel National off Red Square. I wore my best suit—not like this one, but a fine one, the sort to fool people who see such things. We knew how to blend, you and I. You wore a pink skirt suit—you called it your Taylor Swift outfit. You had a picture of her, and you’d style your hair like hers when we would go out pretending to be American newlyweds, our favorite cover.”
I stare at the bubbles in my own glass, remembering.
“The time you first tasted this, we were in the hotel bar hoping to pick up a trail on somebody. We had rings. We had the look right, but we didn’t know what to order for drinks.” I fight to keep my face neutral as she sips again. “We knew that vodka would give us away as Russians. ‘What would Taylor Swift drink?’ you whispered to me. You ordered pink champagne to go with your outfit. I had a Manhattan.”
Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) Page 14
