It’s Viktor, his face bloody. He holds a man at knife point. “The nun comes with me.”
My heart pounds. He came for me. He’s hurt. He has one of Lazarus’s men. But Lazarus has me.
“This is certainly a dilemma,” Lazarus says, as though amused. “Except not really.”
“Behind!” I gasp as a shadow closes in behind Viktor.
Too late. A man puts a gun to Viktor’s head. “Ease up,” the man says.
Viktor stays, his head wound bleeding all over his face.
“Do it or the nun dies,” Lazarus says.
Viktor drops his knife. He’s looking at me. He wants something from me. To move, perhaps. How?
Panic fills me. I can’t think forward like that.
“Viktor,” Lazarus says. “This is a nice surprise.” He kicks away the knife.
“Let her go.”
Lazarus laughs. “Why would I do that?”
“You have me.”
“But haven’t you heard? Two birds in the hand are better than one in the bush. No? That’s not how it goes?”
The man presses the gun to Viktor’s head.
Lazarus drapes an arm around my shoulders and addresses Viktor. “Now, what’s this lead on Kiro I’ve been hearing about?”
Viktor gazes at me, dark eyes shining. He’s hurt—I can tell from the way he breathes. A rib, maybe. He tries to conceal it. “Gut me. Bleed me. I do not give up my brother.”
“You know we only need to kill one of you for the Dragusha brother prophecy to die, and it looks to me like you’re volunteering. So that’s basically already happened. But why not two? I think it would make a statement. Lazarus 2.0, biotches.”
The man shoves Viktor’s head sideways with the gun. If he pulls the trigger, the shot will kill him. I meet his beautiful eyes.
Time seems to stop when I gaze into Viktor’s eyes.
“The question is, what happens to the nun? Tell me about Kiro and I’ll let her go on her merry way.” He tightens his arm around my neck.
Panic flows through me, and in a flash I see the scene move forward, like a Rubik’s Cube.
It all fits together in a flash. Colors turning, planes of action lining up.
And suddenly I’m moving. My elbow slides up to Lazarus’s face. He regards me with shock during the split second before the pain sets in. His shock gives me what I need—the opening to remove myself from the blade while taking his hair and driving his still-stunned face into the concrete wall.
He crumples to the ground. I kick up, planting a foot in the burly man’s also-stunned face. I have given Viktor the distraction he needed to take the gun.
It worked to my advantage—the helpless nun becoming a ball of fury.
“No killing,” I say to him in Russian.
“Tanechka!”
“I mean it.”
Viktor doesn’t argue. We know how to move together. I grab the switchblade, the faux-wood handle as familiar as honey. The same make as the first blade I owned.
The memories are crashing in. I remember my childhood room. My father raising us. My mother taking tickets on the passenger rail, back and forth across the country. School in a gray cement building. Playground benches. Rides at Sky World, the feeling of flying there, lights in all colors. Something cold tugs at the edges of my mind. Something cold and dark.
A gunshot rips through the air, and I spin. Viktor has the man’s arm. He breaks it with a crack, and then he knocks the man out.
We move into the hall, fighting back to back.
“Hear me—no killing!” I say this in Russian as we pull out into the hall, fighting our way out.
“Blyad!” he says. “More coming up and back.”
It’s small, this hall. The tightness gives us the advantage of only having to take down one man each at a time. I’m still in this nun’s garb. This is another advantage.
Again we fight back to back. Men come from each way. They don’t shoot because if they miss us they hit one of their people.
One man comes at me with a blade, and I sever a nerve in his arm. He collapses. Very painful, but he won’t die. Viktor grunts behind me, taking out more men.
The fight opens in my mind, a fast-moving grid. I move left when Viktor moves right. I track him as I finish another. He appears when I need him, knocking people out instead of killing them. We get to the small steps and run up. We get out the door. But there’s something else—more wrong.
Something…something so very wrong.
Viktor wipes the blood from his eyes. My heart lurches to see him hurt. Is that it?
“Come on.” He holds out his hand. I take it. We run down the broken sidewalk to a black truck.
Viktor swings open the door for me, and I climb in. He goes around and takes the wheel. My heart pounds as we scream out. I find a shirt in the back and use it to wipe the blood from his eyes.
“I got it.” He snatches the shirt—he’ll handle it himself. “Belt up.”
I slide over to my side and click the seatbelt over me, just as he screams around a corner. Sirens behind us.
“Lazarus’s cops,” he growls. “Hold on. I have you.”
“How did you find me?”
He wipes more blood from his eyes. “Tracker in your shoe.”
Viktor. He came for me.
But something tugs at the edges of my mind. Something wrong.
I feel a chill right then. In the cab of the truck, I feel a chill.
“Tanechka? Are you okay?” His voice sounds so far away. I hear the whoosh of wind. This chill I feel goes into my bones.
Tanechka?
He calls for me, but I’m not in the truck. I’m on top of that cliff, cold wind at my back.
I’m shaking, clinging to him, begging, crying.
Dariali Gorge.
It’s Viktor, but I don’t know his eyes.
Predatel! he shouts, peeling my fingers from his arm.
I remember his eyes—so cold. Cold nothingness howling at my back.
I’m begging him to believe me. I’m trying to explain about my mother. He doesn’t believe me. I’m innocent, and he won’t believe me.
I press my hands to my belly, remembering, feeling like I’m back there.
The cold wind. He’s pulling my fingers off his arm.
And I love him so much.
I’m reaching for him, but he’s too fast—he shoves me backwards into the darkness of Dariali Gorge.
I’m gasping for air. Falling. Gasping.
I turn to him. “You didn’t believe me! You thought I betrayed you!”
He looks at me wildly. “Tanechka—”
The world swims before my eyes. “You thought I betrayed you! Betrayed our gang!”
He looks back and forth from the road to me, talking on and on. “I was wrong. So wrong. Please, Tanechka! I’m so sorry. I didn’t think—”
“I would’ve never betrayed you!” I can barely get the words out. “I loved you so much. So much!”
He swears and takes a turn. “We’re in trouble, Tanechka. You need to get that piece out and start shooting some tires.”
My hands are shaking too much to shoot.
“You peeled my fingers from your arms. I was so scared, Viktor. Not about the gorge, but to be without your love. You glared at me with the eyes of a stranger! I loved you so much! We were all each other had. You peeled my fingers from your arms like I was an urchin! And then you shoved me back!”
“I know!” Blood drips down the side of his face. “I know—I know what I did! Tanechka, if I could take it back—”
“You looked into my eyes and shoved me into the gorge like I was a piece of trash. Predatel!”
“I deserve to die a thousand times over for what I did. But I’m getting you out of here first.” A shot rings past.
Rage flows through me. Who the fuck is shooting at us?
Like a woman possessed, I shove in the magazine and roll down the window. I hit the front tire of the pursuing car, and it spins out.
I take another shot, and then I turn back.
He concentrates on the chase.
“Predatel?! Predatel?!” More cars are behind us. I turn and shoot, annoyed. I hit the engine block, the tires. My aim is as sharp as cut glass, even through my tears.
“I’ll do anything—”
I turn back around. “Sergei kidnapped my mother. I had to fool everyone. I couldn’t tell.”
“You never betrayed us, I know! I betrayed you. I betrayed us. It was me who should’ve gone into the gorge. A million times I thought it.”
I freeze. “Viktor—my mother—is she…” I brace myself as he does a U-turn and then another, shooting down the sidewalk.
“Alive? Yes. I got her out.”
My blood races. “She’s safe?”
“I went in and fucking grabbed her.”
“How?”
“You’d be amazed what a man can do when he no longer cares for his life. I would’ve done anything. I still would. When I realized what I’d done, I knew saving your mother wouldn’t bring you back, but I knew it’s what you’d want.”
“She’s okay? You promise?”
“She’s still in her little flat. Still complaining about the loud TV downstairs. Wearing the flowered scarves.”
My pulse drums in my ears. Rage. “How she must have suffered, thinking I was dead.”
“When she sees you, when she learns you’re alive…you can’t imagine the joy…”
“Thank you for saving her,” I grate through the rage in my heart.
“The debt I have to you will never be repaid.”
“Konstantin—”
“Dead.” One clipped word. His face is stone.
I suck in a breath. “Mne ochen zhal.”
“Thank you.”
I gaze out the window. A passing strip mall. All the American brands with their colors and confidence.
He slows. Our pursuers are nowhere in sight. We’ve lost them.
Lost everything.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Viktor
Words will never be enough. I wish I could rip my heart from my chest and show her the scars, the hours of agony I suffered. The agony I’m willing to suffer in whatever way she pleases if that’s what she wants. “Tanechka?”
She stares out the window. Maybe she’s frightened of me. Maybe she hates me.
In a strange voice, she says, “Bring me to the brothel. We will free those women now.”
I tell her we’re working on it, almost ready to pounce, but we have to concentrate on Kiro.
She frowns. “Bring me to Nikki.”
“Why? Why Nikki?”
“You said you’d do anything. Bring me to Nikki.”
I call Aleksio. I tell him I have Tanechka.
“Good.” He lowers his voice. “And it’s good you aren’t here. Cops everywhere wanting identification, statements. A few reporters. Best to keep you out of it.” He says Tito is there. Tito is helping. I ask him to pass the phone to Tito. Tito tells me Nikki is staying at his place.
We hang up. I start to say something, but she holds up a hand.
Fair enough. I head for Tito’s.
Tanechka’s silence is worse than her recriminations. “Say something.”
“I’m sorry about Konstantin. He was like a father to you, I know.”
“Mostly to Aleksio,” I say. “I knew him only a year.”
“A year can run deep.”
Tito’s place is a brownstone on the North Side. Nikki’s already expecting us—she’s the only one around, except for the P.I.’s large black-and-white dog. I wash and bandage my head wound in the bathroom. The wound stings. Perversely, I’m glad.
I go back to Tito’s kitchen and call Aleksio again. I need to hear his voice, to know he’s okay. I don’t like that he’s out in the open while he’s grieving. This is a dangerous time. He assures me Tito’s on the fringes managing security.
Tanechka is back with a duffel bag. “Sit.” She sets it on the floor.
I sit. “What’s in there?”
“A surprise.” She gives me a kind look.
The kind look makes me stupid, and I sit.
In a flash, she grabs my arms and cuffs them to the metal chair back. I stand, chair and all, swinging wildly, trying to wrench free. I succeed only in smashing cupboards. She and Nikki grab the chair. They anchor me to the floor with their combined weight. Nikki cuffs each of my ankles to each leg as the dog barks. Then she tapes me.
Wildly I look up, yanking at my restraints. “What are you doing?”
“We need to take those women out of the brothel.”
“We have a plan for them!” I say. “We’ll have them out within the week. You can’t go now. You can’t do this.”
“You have most of the pipeline shut down. I’ve heard you. I am weary of your words.”
“Don’t do it.”
“We’ll call the police after we have the women out,” she says.
Nikki hauls a semiautomatic from the duffel, dark hair swinging around her shoulders. “How do you use this?”
“You don’t.” Tanechka takes it from her. “No killing.”
“You’re going to take that place down without killing anybody?” I say. “Without me? No. You can’t.”
“We can,” she says. “All that time when I was in there, I could’ve broken out of that little room at any time. I should’ve pulled those girls out weeks ago. I didn’t remember, but I do now.” She turns to Nikki. “You know where Tito keeps his toolbox?”
“Basement utility room. Last door on the left,” Nikki says.
Tanechka takes a 9mm from the pack and hands it to Nikki. “Watch him. Yell if he tries to get free. The chair won’t hold him; it’ll only slow him down.” Tanechka strolls out.
“This is suicide,” I say to Nikki once we’re alone.
“No talking.” She stands across the kitchen from me and studies the black glittery nails of her non-gun hand, hair falling once again in her eyes.
After a while, I nod at the 9mm in her hand. “You know how to handle one of those, but how well?”
She snorts and looks away. A brave front. The shape of her brave front shows me she is frightened.
“You can’t do this, just you two,” I say. “Tanechka’s feeling fucked up. She’s not thinking straight—she does big things when she’s upset. You and her can’t do this alone.”
Nikki flicks her hair from her eyes. “I’m not worried. Tito told me all about her.”
“Who got you out of there? Me. Not her—me.”
She just shrugs. The cool little street urchin.
“You didn’t even like her before.”
“I sure like her now.”
“You need to hear me. You need to trust me.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says. “That would hold more weight if you hadn’t tried to cut off Mira’s finger and kill your girlfriend.”
Tanechka’s back. She slings an assault rifle around her shoulder. “Hurry. The switchover time is soon.”
“What’s switchover time?” I ask.
“You are not in this.”
“Let me be in it. Let me back you up. Let us be a team. Let me take the dangerous parts.”
Nikki heads for the door with the duffel bag. “Tell Tito yo for me and whatever you do, don’t let the dog out.”
“Let me kill for you,” I say. “I’ll take it all on myself, all the darkness. Let me take it all on for you.”
Tanechka turns back, eyes shining.
“Some part of you wants to trust me,” I say. “Trust me, Tanechka.”
Her words are a whisper—“Too late.” She walks out and leaves me.
Wildly I jerk my arms, jerking at the joints of the chair. I can’t let her go—she really isn’t thinking straight. The chair is metal, but it’s held together with little screws. I only have to be stronger than those screws. I have to get out. I focus my mind on getting out, and not on the bleak reality of everything.
Because if
I look too hard, I see Konstantin, our guiding light, dead in his foyer.
I see one brother bereft. My other brother in grave danger.
I see our Russian allies turning on us, becoming dangerous enemies.
And I see the woman I love, walking into a fight she can’t win.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tanechka
Our raid on the virgin brothel starts out well.
We park the SUV in the back, keys in, doors unlocked. I hotwire a van and get it running.
We get there with five minutes to spare before the guards have their staff meeting at switchover time—in a windowless room with a door that can be bolted from the outside. It was converted from one of the women’s room. The bolt they keep taped open. It will be so easy to imprison them. They’ll see how it feels.
We wait in the bushes at the front of the place. The staff room is the second door in the front.
“We have this,” I tell her. “These guards are soft, sloppy.”
She nods, but I can see Viktor wobbled her a bit.
We go over the plan. We’ll slip the knockout gas canister in and bolt the door. Nikki will keep cover behind the line of metal lockers in the hallway and shoot low when she sees shadows underneath.
She nods. She is not relaxed. She needs to be relaxed.
“Your part of this operation will be like a video game. See a shadow and shoot,” I say.
She nods.
“But if they start to escape, if you feel scared, you end it, just like a video game. You run. You’ll help me most by running if things go wrong. Do you understand?”
Again she nods.
“They’ll be slow in their thinking from the knockout gas, and you’ll have the mask. They’re more scared of you than you are of them.”
She smiles uncertainly. “That’s what they say about bears.”
“With that gun you are more dangerous than any bear.” Simple truth.
When the time comes, I take the canister of gas from Tito’s duffel and make her hold it for me. The writing on it is Hungarian, but the ingredients I recognized when I saw it in Tito’s basement.
We hide the duffel in some bushes with some extra weapons, just in case. I steal up and pick the front door lock, and we slip in.
The hallway is dark, hushed. Voices inside the room. The smell of something spicy—Albanian food. Quiet as a mouse, I pull the tape from the bolt and make sure it slides. I ease the door open. I gesture to Nikki to put the mask over her nose and mouth.
Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) Page 20
