“Go ahead, Patient 34, make my day,” Donny says. “Come at me.”
“Fucking seriously?” Aleksio says. “Make my day?” He laughs and points at the road beyond the field. Way off far to the right. “And what about that? Does that make your day, too?”
Donny turns to look.
I look, too.
A blast to my left. I swing my gaze to Viktor. He lowers a weapon, grinning.
Donny’s down, crumpled in the weeds, a hole in his face.
“Do not threaten our bratik,” Viktor says.
A shiver slides over me. These are my brothers.
Aleksio squints at the road. “Goddamnit.” He pulls Viktor and me in. “They’re coming. It’s a fucking caravan.” He checks his phone. “Tito and Yuri and the guys are twenty minutes out. Fuck.”
Viktor speaks in his strange language. He’s not happy.
“Who’s coming?” I ask.
“Lazarus,” Aleksio says.
“Him again,” I growl. “He shot Ann. He’s been after us.”
“Oh, he’s definitely been after you,” Aleksio says. “He needs you dead. Well, any of us.”
“Now he thinks he can get all three of us,” Viktor adds.
Viktor pulls one gun after another from his pack. He sets them on the padded bench. “Lazarus helped to kill our father and mother. He helped send you away and split us up. He is our greatest enemy.”
My head swims. This man who shot Ann—twice—is also why I never had a family? Why I never knew these brothers? And now he wants to kill us?
I begin to feel wild.
“Fucking surround us…” Aleksio tells us what he thinks Lazarus will do now. Fish in a barrel, he calls us.
Viktor pulls the one side of the back door closed. I watch him with a mixture of pride and anguish. My own brothers. They came for me. Now they’re willing to die for me.
My pack is larger than I ever dreamed.
Aleksio has unbolted the bench. He tips it on its side. Preparing for a shootout. “If they have C-4 with them, we’re fucked,” Aleksio says. “A van in the middle of a field. Fucked.”
“I have C-4.” Viktor pulls a small metal container from his pack.
Aleksio snorts. “That would be perfect—if they were the ones in a van trapped in a field.”
“I can hear them coming,” I say. “Two vehicles more. A lot of men, all coming across now.”
My brothers look at me. “You can hear all that?”
“Two different engines just now turned off. Boots crunching dried weeds. All sides. Trying to be quiet.”
Viktor hands me a gun. “You know how to handle one of these?”
I give it back. “No.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“It’s cool,” Aleksio says. “We have your back, Kiro.”
My heart pounds as I breathe in the scent of Lazarus. Our greatest enemy. I look out at the rectangle of sky and field in the back. “He’s out there. Hiding. Waiting for us to look.” I point to where he is.
“This is bad,” Aleksio says. “They’re going to storm this van if they don’t blow it up.”
Viktor says, “Some old crone once said that together we rule. Together we cannot be defeated.”
I’m barely listening anymore. I’ve just found my brothers, and now he’d take them away? Rage boils in my heart.
“We need a plan,” Aleksio says. “The prophecy is not a plan. Holding out is not a plan. They have no cover. Let’s get creative. Can we get up front through this panel? Drive this thing?”
“I’m ready to get bloody,” Viktor says.
“How many, Kiro?” Aleksio asks.
“Twelve, fifteen. All sides. Except—” I motion at the part where we can see.
Aleksio goes on. Tactics.
I’m no longer listening. I smell them. I hear their heartbeats. Frightened. They want to kill my brothers. Something deep and primal animates me.
“Come on, can we shoot through this panel, you think?” Aleksio wants to change things in the van. He has complicated plans.
All I hear is the fury of my own heartbeat.
All I smell is blood. All I feel is love for these brothers who would mock Donny and then kill him for me. It was something I’d always dreamed of doing, and my brothers did it for me.
My brothers.
They came for me.
The heartbeats of our enemies grow stronger as they close in. Wildness fills me with the power of sunshine, huge as the sky. Thoughts fall from my mind. I see only pictures—me flying at the men. Flying through the air.
I leap out the back of the van, spinning at the men. I’m faster than wind. I’m grabbing and crushing their throats and faces, more airborne than not. Snarling, bloody.
They’ll have to shoot off my arms and legs to stop me, and they know it. It makes them hesitate. It makes them afraid.
My brothers yell something.
Their words mean nothing. I fly at our attackers, ripping, kicking.
My brothers are behind me, shooting, taking out those who recover from their shock long enough to fight back.
Time slows. I close my hand a throat and yank, breaking a neck. Warmth in my fingers. I break a face with my foot. I spin and throw. I kill. Some bodies I lift against me. I allow them to absorb the endless bullets shooting from the endless guns.
My brothers fight beside me so beautifully. I feel as if we’ve been together always.
Men fall.
I feel invincible as I meet another set of stunned eyes, as I close my grip around another throat.
Men with guns freeze in the face of animal rage—even if that animal rage is coming from a human.
Nobody will take my brothers from me. Never again.
I feel Viktor come up next to me. “Bratik, hold!” He grips my arm, pulling me. There are bodies all around. We jump into the front of the van.
Aleksio’s driving. He guns it across the field toward a big, blocky tanklike truck up on the road. Bumpy going.
“You sure Lazarus is in that Hummer?” Viktor says.
“Hiding in there like a little girl,” Aleksio says. We bump onto the road, wheels barely intact—you can feel it through the bottom. Viktor hurls something out the window. “Go!”
Aleksio guns the engine. “Goodbye, fucker.” There’s a massive explosion behind us.
Sirens sound in the distance.
“Yuri’s five minutes up the road. We’ve got this!”
“Baby brother. The way you flew at them!” Viktor laughs and slings an arm around my shoulder. “It’s good to get bloody with you, brother. You’re a great warrior. More fierce than I ever imagined.”
I look into his eyes. My heart swells bigger than the sky.
Chapter Forty-One
Ann
“That conviction order was invalidated a week ago. It was invalidated, overturned. There are records of that on file if your men had bothered to check. No—right, overturned by a judge in a court of law…no, that’s bullshit—your men didn’t follow procedure. That’s right, you know how I know? Because I’m the one who got it overturned. I’m the one who saw that it was on file.”
I fight to open my eyes. They feel gluey, gravelly.
“…no, you listen to me. If you interfere with Mr. Dragusha’s rights one more time, deprive him of one more instant of his freedom, I will bring a suit against your department so fast…kidnapping…accessory to attempted murder…collusion with a criminal organization…”
I blink. The light is so bright.
A woman with bright blonde ponytails sits at my bedside. “Good morning!” She has an accent. Slavic. Russian.
The woman speaking legalese is across the room, pacing, phone glued to the side of her head. She has dark hair and an air of authority.
“She’s not as scary as she sounds,” the woman with ponytails says. She wears a red T-shirt with the iconic Rolling Stones lips. Russian.
“Okay,” I breathe.
“My name is Tatiana, but my friends c
all me Tanechka. Kiro sent us.” She smiles. “Nobody will bother you.”
“Okay,” I say again, unsure what’s going on. “Where’s Kiro?”
“He’s okay. He’s coming.”
“What happened.”
“Did you miss the whole press conference?” The dark-haired woman comes up to the other side of my bed. “It was quite the thing. I’ll let him tell you. He’s on his way with his brothers. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble.”
Tanechka grins. “Let them give us trouble. I will fuck them up.”
“A press conference? His brothers?”
“Kiro pretty much called his own press conference. It’s how his brothers found him. I’m Mira. Hi.” She gestures at the tubes in my arm. “I won’t make you shake my hand.”
“He found his family by holding a press conference?” I imagine him up there, standing in front of cameras. The one thing he never wanted.
“Two brothers. Very fierce,” Tanechka says.
Mira grins. “He got himself brothers and a third of a massive criminal empire called the Black Lion clan, but we won’t go into that.”
“What? Black Lion clan?” Things start to make sense. “That’s why they were after him.”
“So you know it,” Mira says. “He’s a Dragusha. Don’t worry, the Black Lion clan…it’ll evolve once things settle.”
Tanechka grins. “We all fell out of our chairs to see Kiro on the internet.”
“Does he know they wanted to find him?” I ask. “Does he know he had brothers out there who loved him all that time?”
Kiro bursts into the room. He comes to my side. He takes my hands.
His face is bloody, and his clothes are torn. He looks every inch the savage, and so do his brothers. And they’re all smiling. All so happy.
Chapter Forty-Two
Ann
Two months later
I start up a fire using a starter log, something Kiro would laugh at, but he’s spending a rare night out with his brothers.
Kiro and I bought a big old apartment near Washington Park in Chicago. It cost a fortune, but it turns out the Dragushas are fabulously wealthy.
Kiro’s gotten used to the city surprisingly well. He says it’s just another forest, just another system. He’s kind of amazing.
He’s starting to trust people and fill the gaps in his education. He’s learning new things and falling into step with his brothers like they were never apart. I’m not so sure how I love his newfound delight in drinking vodka with them, and the way they like to sit around throwing knives at targets…well, I guess he missed a lot of little-brother time.
Still, I know he’s looking forward to getting land up north once I’m fully recovered. A place of our own for the warm months. Lots of wilderness. We spend a lot of time these days dreaming up a life for ourselves. Part time in Chicago, to be with his brothers. Part in the wild.
Aleksio’s girlfriend, Mira, found a great lawyer who got him off on all the charges against him. The six of us go out to restaurants a lot—Kiro and his two brothers and Mira and Tanechka. Like an instant family—for both of us.
At first he wanted us to go overseas together, so I could chase my stories, but chasing those dangerous stories was never something I meant to do all my life. There are stories here. We’re talking about writing a book on the wolves. I’ve always wanted to write a book.
I arrange the presents under our tree and find a new one for me from Kiro. It’s a large box. Hat-sized. Did Kiro go on a secret shopping trip?
He’s been trying to make up for kidnapping me and tying me up. He’s apologized a zillion times. I’ve forgiven him just as many times. But words still don’t mean much to Kiro. He gives me lots of presents. He’s been by my side nearly nonstop while I recover from my injuries.
He’s a good mate. I tell him that sometimes. Understatement of the year. I love being with him. I love him.
Viktor and Tanechka want us to go to Ukraine with them when they visit there this spring. They’re planning on rebuilding the bombed-out convent where Tanechka spent time, but Kiro’s not quite ready for flying. It’s a little suspicious—rebuilding the convent sounds like it might involve a few armed battles.
Maybe someday.
I shake the box. Nothing rattles. It’s heavy, though.
I hear a growl at the doorway. Kiro. He stalks toward me. “What are you doing?”
“Snooping.”
He comes to me and kneels and takes the box from my hands, puts it back under. Then he kisses me. “I love you,” he says. Words mean nothing to Kiro, but he knows they mean everything to me. “But you don’t get to see what’s in the box until Christmas morning.”
“I love you, too, but that doesn’t mean I won’t snoop.”
He twists one of my curls around his finger. He’s always doing that. Still.
“Where were you guys? Out being royal?”
He snorts. The second he was back with his brothers, an entire mafia empire coalesced around them. Apparently everyone was waiting for the return of Kiro. It kind of stunned us, like walking into a royal court and finding a throne waiting for you.
The men who worked for their enemy, Lazarus, either fled or came over to beg for forgiveness. People regard the three of them like…well, royalty.
They never found Lazarus’s body, but it barely matters. Even if he were alive, even if he came back, he would be neutralized so fast.
I’m not so keen on the criminal empire. Luckily, Mira and Tanechka aren’t either. And, while Viktor and Aleksio are pretty damn badass, they’ve been getting into more wholesome things. Aleksio is opening a restaurant.
They’re going legit little by little. Handing off some of the supercriminal parts to their underbosses.
It suits Kiro. He loves fighting, loves playing the tough guy with his brothers, but he’s no fucking criminal.
“Were you out on the docks?”
“Not exactly.” He peels off his shirt. I gasp. His arm is covered in plastic and underneath, an intricate tattoo of a battle scene, covering a huge swath of his arm. “What did you do, Kiro?”
“Viktor and Aleksio and I got tattoos today. It’s a depiction of the prophecy.”
“Uh. That stupid prophecy. Why would you want that on your arm?” The prophecy is why Lazarus and his mentor tore them apart all those years ago.
“The tattoo shows our own version of the prophecy. Everyone thought ‘together the brothers rule’ meant us ruling the Black Lion clan,” he says. “But the old woman who gave the prophecy never said what we would rule. So we decided it meant we would rule our destinies. This is of us finding each other and ruling our own lives.”
“Oh my God. I love that.”
“I got the idea from you. The story is important, that’s what you always say. I said we needed to think of a different story.”
“The tattoos were your idea?”
Kiro grins. He’s been fascinated by tattoos since we got back. “Yes.” He shows the battle flag and the fanciful swirls and scrolls, all meaning something. They put a lot of thought into it. But there’s a part of his that’s different. My name is there. And there’s a wolf. I trace it through the plastic. I know he misses those wolves. He still mourns his dead friends.
“Wait.” I go and grab a small gift. “I want you to open this.”
“It’s not Christmas.”
“I want you to have it now,” I say, heart pounding.
He tears off the paper and lifts the lid of the little box. He goes still, holding it in his shaking hands. “It’s….” He swallows back the emotion.
It’s the keychain with the wolf figurine, the one that reminded him so much of Red. The one he got at the outdoor store. The one he threw into the grass on the hillside.
“You grabbed it,” he says.
“Yeah. I grabbed it. You can keep your keys on it. Keep it with you always.”
He pulls it out of the box and holds it in his palm, reverently. Like it’s precious. He tou
ches its little scruff the way he used to when we first had it.
I look away, thinking to give him a private moment.
“No, you can look, Ann.” He looks up, my beautiful, clear-eyed Kiro. Unflinchingly honest. Utterly there. “I want this with me always.”
“That’s the great thing about a keychain.”
“I want you to be with me always,” he says.
“I want to be with you always,” I say.
“No, I mean…” He crawls under the tree and pulls out a small box I hadn’t noticed. “I want you to be with me always.”
My pulse hammers in my ears as I take it.
A small box. A jewelry box. I hold it to my heart and meet his amber gaze. And smile.
And he smiles. We don’t need words.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed your time with the Dragusha brothers as much as I did!
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Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Page 29
