Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance

by Annika Martin

  She hesitates, and my heart darkens because I know she’ll lie, or at least tell me a half-truth.

  It’s good to remember she’s lying and that she doesn’t want to be with me, that she only wants me for the story.

  “I learned while spending time overseas,” she says finally.

  I nod.

  “Working in conflict zones,” she adds. “Some of these areas, half the cars don’t have keys to them anymore.”

  “You were a nurse in conflict zones?” I ask, smoothing my finger over the side of the plastic wolf that looks so much like my old friend. A true ally. I’ll see them soon. It’s beyond imagining.

  I’m sure they’ll love Ann. I hope she’ll come to love them.

  “You worked as a nurse in war zones,” I say, wanting her to lie more, to remind me what she really is. The professor read me a famous book about a war hospital once. The man was injured in a hospital, and a nurse loved him. The nurse in the book really did love the man, though.

  “I took on nursing roles,” she says.

  It comes to me that this is what she does everywhere—she pretends to be a nurse when she’s not.

  Pretending to care. It shouldn’t feel like a blade in my belly—she does it with everyone.

  Still, I keep going back to that moment when she reached up to me. It felt so real and good.

  I tell myself it doesn’t matter. She’ll submit to me just as prey submits to the superior force of the predator.

  “Have you thought any more about the Kiro thing?” she asks. “Have any more memories come?”

  I study her lips. I love watching her lips. “No.”

  “What were the people who raised you like? Were they Albanian by any chance? The people after us had the tattoos of the Albanian mob.” She pauses. “You know Albania? It’s a tiny country…”

  My face flushes with shame. “I don’t know that country.”

  “A lot of people don’t know Albania. It’s an Eastern European country near Greece. Crime organizations out of that part of the world can be very deadly. Very vicious. Could the people who raised you have any ties at all…”

  “The people who raised me were interested in church and riverboats and fixing their adopted children. My father owned a hardware store. My mother was a teacher.”

  “Hmm. Even so, could they have…I don’t know, taken a loan from the wrong people? Though that’s really a stretch. Plus the men who attacked you called you Kiro,” she says. “Do you remember anything from before your adoptive family?”

  “You certainly are eager for my story.”

  “These people are hunting you for a reason, and it’s a big one,” she says.

  “Does it really matter so much?”

  “They’re desperate to kill you. Don’t you want to know why? If you’ve truly had no interaction with the Albanian mob growing up and don’t know anything that could hurt them, then it means they want to kill you because of who you are. You represent something…a threat. Or maybe you have some sort of power or possession you don’t know about, and they mean to prevent you from seizing it. Maybe you’re important to somebody they want to hurt. Maybe you’re a relative of an enemy. You have a story, Kiro. Don’t you want to know it?”

  “My story,” I spit. “It was because of my story that the reporters mobbed the hospital when I was first taken. It was because of my story that the professor kept me in a cage. Because of my story they’re trying to kill me. I want nothing to do with my story.”

  “What the professor did, what those reporters did, what happened to you at Fancher—all of that was wrong. It disgusts and offends me.”

  Her emotion feels real.

  “But that’s not an argument for ignorance,” she continues. “If you don’t know your own story, it controls you. The ignorance of your story is hurting us.”

  Us. I tell myself not to trust it.

  I thought the professor was on my side. I wanted to believe it so badly I let him trick me.

  I close my eyes, so tired of being alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ann

  He says nothing for miles; he just gazes out at the passing forest land. We’re entering serious wilderness now. The path will be dirt in about fifteen miles, according to the maps.

  He seems so troubled. So sad.

  He sets the little wolf keychain on the dashboard. “They’ll be in their winter place by now.”

  “They have different places?”

  “Nearer to civilization as winter nears.”

  “And they’ll remember you?”

  “They’re family.”

  My gut twists. Going home to his family. That’s what my editor will want images of. Kiro approaching the wolf’s den or whatever it is for the first time would be like gold to Murray Moliter. Nobody could touch that.

  I look away from him and his little keychain, feeling utterly ill, and grateful I have the driving to concentrate on. I don’t want him to see my eyes. I feel like he can read me sometimes. Like he doesn’t trust me sometimes.

  I should tell him what I am, what my plan is.

  But if he knew I was a reporter, he’d hate me. I’d be like all the rest of the people who used him.

  The headlights make splotches of light on the dirt grooves ahead of us. The road is just two tire grooves now. It’s not even a road anymore.

  He stiffens. “There’ll be a chance to go left up ahead. Take it.”

  “Okay.” Sure enough, there’s a fork. I take the left. We’re getting deep into the parkland now.

  Kiro takes over the wheel soon after, and we drive through the night. It’s slow going—we’re on the uncleared back trails, and this truck isn’t the best for that.

  Sleep starts to dull and disorganize my mind. I close my eyes.

  The next thing I know, I’m stretched out alone in the front seat alone. It’s 3 a.m., judging from the dashboard clock. I sit up and rub my eyes. He’s out in front of the truck, clearing branches by the light of the headlights.

  Nobody’s passed through here in a vehicle for months, maybe even years.

  I reinsert my SIM card and check my phone. Still have reception. A miracle. There are texts from my editor loving the picture I sent.

  He’s sent me back promos for the series—it’s a series now—the photo of Kiro with the caption: You won’t believe where we found Savage Adonis. There’s another promo that’s more hypey—Caged by a madman. Strapped to a bed in a mental hospital, Savage Adonis emerges and you wouldn’t believe how. He has another that’s the mystery angle: Why was the public lied to? Why was Savage Adonis being hidden? Get a front seat to his reunion with the pack. The wolf boy bares all, exclusively to Stormline.

  I put in a call.

  “Like them?” he says. “I was going to work in the mob and a hail of bullets, but nobody would believe it then. This fucking story has everything. I need the high-res versions. You need to send those.”

  “Look—I’m not going for the kill here. This is going to be a serious profile. And bares all? No.”

  “He’s practically a caveman. Don’t tell me you can’t get him to strip down and sign a piece of paper.”

  “That’s not how I’m working this story,” I say. “This is not an exploitation piece.”

  There’s a silence. It was the wrong thing to say. From Murray’s point of view, this is all about exploitation.

  “You need to trust me,” I add. “You need to trust me to do the right thing and to deliver.”

  “No, actually I just need you to deliver,” he says. “I’m paying you to deliver, got it?”

  Anger rises up in me. “No, actually, you’re paying me to deliver research and up to a thousand words if needed on a meth supply line at the Fancher Institute,” I say. “Instead you’re getting Savage fucking Adonis. Even though we don’t have so much as a contract on it.”

  “I’ve sent you money.”

  “I’ll send it back.”

  There’s an uncomfortable silence whe
re Murray wants me sweating. I do, a little. I don’t want him sending a team of people up to scour the wilderness area. Though the mob and the police may be doing that soon enough.

  “This is going to be a good story, and it’s going to leave him with dignity and money. Do you want it? Because I’ll get you your meth story instead—”

  “Of course I want Savage Adonis. I’ll send a contract—”

  “I’ll save you some time and send you language to insert about me approving final edit,” I say. He grumbles as I tell him what I want to see in terms of money. “And don’t even think about lowballing me.” I tell him to hurry—I might not have reception for long. Once I have the protections in place, I’ll send him high-res images for the promo. We spend a little time going back and forth until I have the best deal for Kiro that I can negotiate.

  I shove the phone into the recharger.

  Kiro’s still out there, toiling with a massive tree trunk now, his huge, sweaty bulk illuminated by the headlights. He’s trying to push it off the road. When he turns and puts his back to it, I catch sight of blood blooming red on the white of his shoulder bandage. Fuck!

  I open the door and scramble out. “Hey! You’re bleeding!”

  He stops, back pressed against the huge thing, but he’s just leaning on it now. He pants, face framed in sweat-drenched curls.

  “It’s nothing,” he says. A droplet of sweat hovers on the tip of his nose. I really want to touch it, swipe it off of there.

  “Can I just check it?”

  “After this is clear.”

  “I’ll help clear, then.”

  He snorts.

  “Concept of two people better than one? Women’s lib? Ever hear of it?”

  He glowers, radiating a kind of angry, wild brutality that no camera could ever capture. I want to tell him he’s beautiful. I want to stroke his beard the way he likes.

  Instead I put my shoulder against the thing and heave. “Uh.” I look up and find him watching me. “What?”

  “You think you can move it,” he observes.

  “I think I can try.”

  There’s a strange light in his eyes. It might be lust. It might be hate. Maybe it’s both.

  It’s like he’s zeroing in on me, locking in on me. I’ve never had somebody watch me so intently as Kiro does; even as I stand before him, it’s as if he’s tracking me. I was always the tracker, the observer. It’s strange to be on the other end.

  “Take a picture, it might last longer,” I joke, nerves skittering. I’m just so acutely aware of his heat and testosterone. Of us alone out here.

  His nostrils flare.

  Instinctively, I back up. One step. Another, backing along the tree trunk.

  He follows. It’s as if there’s a string between us, and my retreat draws him, steadily, inexorably, eyes glued to mine.

  My ass hits something—part of the downed tree. My pulse races as he continues toward me, closing in.

  “Are you frightened of me, Nurse Ann?”

  “A little. I don’t know, I just woke up.”

  He slides two fingers down my cheek, down my neck. He reaches around and takes my hair in a fist.

  Tightly.

  “Ow,” I breathe.

  His burning eyes fall to my lips. “Now?” he asks.

  He’s manhandling me and it’s heating me up. I can’t seem to answer; all I can do is stare at his lips, his cheekbones, his wild, ferocious beauty.

  He pulls me closer. “Now?”

  “What are you doing?”

  His lips hover over mine, air electric. My heart pounds, and I know that he hears it. I’m utterly fucking aroused, and I know that he smells it. It’s unfair that he has this inside knowledge. “What do you think I’m doing?” he grates out, breath hot, gaze fixed on my lips. “Tell me.”

  The whole conversation is utter nonsense. He doesn’t care what I think he’s doing; he just wants to see my lips move. He enjoys seeing my lips move.

  It’s so crazy. I work with words, and this guy, this hot caveman, he doesn’t give a fuck about words. I throw the sentence back at him, enunciating for maximum lip movement: “What do I think you’re—”

  He devours my mouth before I can finish, twisting my hair, forcing me up against him in a bruising kiss.

  He holds me flush to him, chest to chest, the bulge of his erection between my legs.

  I want him suddenly. I want him all over me. In me.

  He pulls away.

  “Kiro,” I whisper.

  He kisses me again, hauling me up, this time—clear up off the dirt path.

  I make a quick, unromantic calculation: I happen to know I’m clean. I’ve had a birth control shot. And Kiro’s clean. I saw his chart, his tests.

  He breaks the kiss and sets me on a log on the side of the road. “You’ll watch.” He goes back to his exertions.

  “What?”

  “We have to make more progress than this.”

  “Did you kiss me just to distract me from helping?”

  “I kissed you because I wanted to.” He grunts and heaves against the downed tree.

  I spring back up and push alongside him. He glares.

  “Seriously?” I say. Suddenly it’s budging. Moving. Together we get it out of the way.

  He gazes at me like that was something so amazing, us working together to move that thing. The moment feels poignant, somehow.

  I raise my hand. “High-five.”

  He stares at my hand.

  “We’re supposed to slap hands together. It’s a thing you do with somebody at a moment like this. Like, job well done, dude! High-five!”

  “Let’s go.”

  I leave my hand up there, waiting. I don’t know why. I’m all turned around, and I want one thing to feel regular. “Come on, Kiro.”

  He grabs my hand and closes his fingers around mine.

  “We’ll work on it.” I nod at his shoulder. “Now you’re going to let me re-dress that wound, and we’ll be off.”

  He grumbles, but I can tell by the tone of it that he’ll consent.

  Back in the vehicle, I pull the old dressing off and clean the fuck out of the wound. He doesn’t react to the pain, as usual.

  “You need to pay attention to this shoulder. It’s not bad, but it could get bad. There’s a big bottle of rubbing alcohol in the packs, plus sealed packets of anti-bac stuff and more tape and bandages. It’s a really nice kit I put together for you.”

  “You’ll care for my shoulder.”

  “I’m talking about when I’m no longer with you. After we get you home.”

  He grunts. For once I can’t read his grunt.

  Soon enough, we’re back on the road. I try to go back to sleep, but I can’t. A while later, Kiro stops the truck again. The terrain ahead looks extra wild and rough.

  I watch him through slit eyes. His nostrils move in a way that tells me he’s experiencing intense emotion. He eases the door open quietly, slowly, as if not to wake me.

  I stay, letting him have this moment alone.

  Kiro goes to a tree, touches it. Even in the darkness, away from the shine of the headlights, I can see his huge frame rise and fall.

  He falls to his knees.

  Sobbing or laughing or maybe just breathing really hard—it makes no difference. It’s happiness.

  He’s home.

  How long did he dream of this? Strapped to a bed in that horrible place.

  I think, vaguely, that this could be the hook. On instinct I shove the battery back into the phone, fit the back on, and fire it up. Then I pause.

  I can’t do it.

  I don’t have to document every moment. I shouldn’t even be watching.

  I force myself to look down at my phone. This is Kiro’s moment. His alone.

  I take it off airplane mode, just to check, and I’m surprised I still have a signal. Barely, but I have it.

  Texts begin to ping through. Murray. He wants me to send him more images—all the images I have so far. We have
the contract, now he wants me to deliver.

  I start going through the images, making sure they’re backed up into the cloud, emailing a few to myself just to be redundant. There’s the shot from the store where they’d dressed him up with that scarf and glasses, but I see his wild heart shining through in spite of it all. And the before and after haircut pictures. I pause on one of the motel images. Kiro on the bed, back against the headboard, glowering, steak bone in each hand, surrounded by empty to-go cartons, hair still wild and long.

  I spread it large and study his face. I smile, even though he’s glowering. I’ll never get sick of looking at Kiro.

  I decide not to send the photos yet. I’ll deal with it all later. I shut it off and pull the thing apart.

  I store the battery in one baggie and the body in another baggie—it keeps better that way. I tuck the baggies into a pocket in my purse and look out at Kiro, kneeling there, so still. Loving that he’s back.

  How can anybody blame him for wanting to get lost in the wilderness after the way the world treated him?

  I grab the stupid little wolf keychain off the dashboard and turn it around and around in my hand.

  I’ve never known anybody like Kiro. I’ll never know anybody like him ever again.

  It makes my heart ache.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Lazarus

  My executive coach, Valerie, has a bias for the carrot over the stick. If you asked her, she’d try to tell you that fear doesn’t inspire excellence.

  It’s possible she has that right vis-a-vis the corporate world; people fearing for their jobs may not be as creative as they could be. But people fearing for their lives—that’s a whole different level of creativity. The human animal longs to stay alive. Will do nearly anything, even the seemingly impossible, to stay alive.

  So when my team loses Kiro and the girl outside the mall, I send my pet hitter, Tarik, to take out the leader. Because this was a balls-to-the-wall fuckup. Kiro and the girl were in the store. They were sitting ducks. It was a miracle we’d picked up their trail at all.

  And what did my guys do? They set up on the vehicle instead of the people they were following. A team of five lethal killers and they were all standing around that parking lot in sight of one another. It was fucking lazy.