Russian Bad Boy's Princess: A Mafia Romance

by Bella Rose

  She refused to take the bait. Lifting her arm, she drew back and prepared. The spot just as the base of the leg where the ankle joint sat was particularly tender. She’d aim there.

  “Don’t make me drag you out of here, Juliet.” He pushed into the storage closet just a little more.

  Juliet struck like a snake. She jabbed that syringe just as hard as she could, landing the needle in the perfect spot. Dimitri groaned and fell backward, grabbing his foot. He was shouting and cursing, but she didn’t stick around to try and figure out what language he was speaking. She bolted like a sprinter out of a starting gate.

  She scrambled over Dimitri, stepping intentionally on his chest and arm. She’d almost made it. The hallway was clear, and there was an open elevator at the other end. Then at the last second she felt him catch hold of her foot. She tried to slip out of her shoe, but she tripped and went sprawling. Seconds later he was on her.

  “You stupid bitch!” He smashed his fist down in the center of her back. “Why would you do that? Ow!”

  The pain of his fist connecting with her back was excruciating. Agony ripped through her muscles, and she cried out as everything below her waist went briefly numb. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t escape. She was at Dimitri’s mercy, and the evil smile on his face told her that he knew it.

  ***

  THERE WAS SOMETHING wrong in the hospital, and Antonin couldn’t get anyone to tell him what was going on. He had attempted to get the nurse to make contact with Juliet two more times, but she just kept telling him that it would have to wait. Now he was determined to get some answers before he completely lost his mind with worry.

  “Please,” Antonin said, grabbing the woman’s sleeve. “Tell me what’s going on. She’s not my wife, but she’s carrying my unborn child and I need to know that she’d safe.”

  “Oh God,” the nurse whispered, eyes huge in her face. “That woman is pregnant?”

  “What happened?” Antonin snapped. “Tell me. She was with a priest and another man.”

  The nurse bit her lip as though she was really feeling the pressure of not exposing something that was apparently very hush-hush, and knowing that Antonin had a right to know what was going on. “Someone attacked them,” she admitted softly. “We don’t know what happened. It had to have happened right about the time the cops were arresting the man that shot you. That’s the only way we could have missed something like that.”

  “Are they all right?” Antonin was almost afraid to ask.

  “The priest will live. He was unharmed.” The nurse shook her head. “The other guy was dead. His throat was slit. It looked like he tried to stop the assailant. We got a partial look at the guy off of our security cameras. The police are searching the hospital now.”

  “Where is my woman?” Antonin said, his voice just under a roar.

  The nurse gave a helpless shrug. “She disappeared. That’s all we know. Someone saw a woman running down the hallway, but nobody has found her.”

  “He has her,” Antonin started to get up. The nurse pushed him back down. He stood up anyway. “I have to go to her. You don’t understand.”

  “They’re looking right now,” the nurse assured him. “They’ll find her. We have to finish suturing. You can’t run around with holes in your back.”

  Antonin tried to be as gentle as possible, but he shoved the nurse aside all the same. “You don’t understand. He’ll kill her if he finds her just to punish me!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  JULIET BLINKED AS she looked around and tried to decipher where she was. Her head felt heavy, and her thoughts were sluggish. She didn’t actually remember passing out, but she didn’t recall leaving the hospital either. If Dimitri had drugged her and somehow brain-damaged her baby girl, Juliet was going to castrate him and feed his balls to the crows. She had worked too hard to keep this baby for some jealous traitor to screw it all up now.

  “Ah, you’re awake.”

  The thin layer of Russian accent over Dimitri’s very proper English suggested that he was a well-educated man. She couldn’t imagine what he would have to gain by hooking up with someone like Josef.

  Dimitri stood before her and cocked his head to one side. His shoulder-length dark hair framed his handsome face, and his dark eyes were unfathomable. “You are wondering why I would throw in my lot with a man like Josef who was such a lamentable traitor. Yes?”

  Juliet drew back, surprised. Either the guy was a stellar mind reader or his guilt was making the temptation to confess irresistible.

  “You have a terrible poker face,” Dimitri informed her. “I cannot imagine how you expected to rule the Caglione family when you cannot keep even the most minor things that cross your mind private.”

  Okay. She was so done wondering about the “poor” man’s motivations. “Is that right?” she said sarcastically.

  “Yes.” He made a gesture with his finger to indicate her facial expression. “You are worried for the health of your child.” He made a face. “I don’t harm babies. The drugs I gave you were not in such volume to disrupt the flow of oxygen through the placenta.”

  She was going to have to rethink her view on this guy. He wasn’t just intelligent. He was shrewd and very well prepared. Whatever vendetta he had against Antonin, it must have been considerable.

  “You are also wondering about the history between Antonin and I,” Dimitri informed her. “You will find out soon enough.”

  “Ugh!” she growled. “Will you stop? It’s so annoying when someone sits around and informs you of what you’re thinking.”

  His brows lifted in apparent surprise. “Did I miss something?”

  “Yeah. The obvious,” she retorted. “Stuff like, gee, I wonder where I am. I wonder how I can get my hands free and find a weapon. I wonder how many times I’ll have to beat this idiot over the head with a lead pipe in order to knock him unconscious. I wonder when he will shut up!”

  ANTONIN NEARLY LAUGHED out loud when he heard Juliet’s sarcastic response to Dimitri’s attempt at mind games. Antonin’s old friend looked plenty taken aback by the woman’s response to his subtle attempt to get beneath her skin. Dimitri had always played games like this with people. He liked to put them off balance and considered himself a stellar judge of character who was extremely talented at reading people’s thoughts and intentions.

  The old garage was cold and filled with the random noises of machinery settling, piles of metal waste shifting, and rodents scurrying about in the maze of old car parts. Antonin had eased his way through the side door and had immediately been assaulted by memories of a much earlier time. He and Dimitri had gotten their first jobs for the Bratva in this chop shop. Back then it had been a bustling operation. Now it functioned more as a junkyard and disposal area. That of course meant that the car-crushing unit was certainly still in use, but there were no more stolen vehicles being prepared for shipment overseas.

  Antonin made his way carefully around piles of mufflers, towering stacks of old tires, and a selection of license plates that went back thirty years. When he finally reached what was more or less the center of the room, he caught his breath and bit down on a curse.

  Dimitri had placed Juliet inside the car crusher. She sat in an old metal folding chair on top of a platform that would fold in half once activated from a remote switch that hung less than a stone’s throw away from where Dimitri stood. It was the worst possible scenario. If Antonin rushed Dimitri, the traitor could conceivably push the button and start the crushing process before Antonin could intervene. He would be tied up trying to beat Dimitri into submission while Juliet was slowly crushed to death less than a yard away.

  Dimitri paused suddenly. He had been pacing a tiny circle, staying right beside the remote. Now he looked up and cocked his head as though he were listening. “Oh, Antonin!” he called. “I hear you!”

  Antonin frowned. He had made no noise. In fact he hadn’t heard a thing at all, and historically his hearing was much better than Dimitri’s.
This did not bode well at all. There was someone else in the garage.

  “I hear you fumbling around back there, Antonin!” Dimiri shouted. “Just come out before you topple a pile of something heavy on yourself. I cannot have you dying before we can even settle our score.”

  “And what score would that be?” It was Josef that emerged from the building’s office on the opposite side of the room.

  Antonin clenched his hands. He heard Juliet’s sharply inhaled breath and knew that she realized how dangerous this situation had just become. Josef was utterly focused on Dimitri. There didn’t seem to be anything else on his mind other than the apparent betrayal of the man he had presumably hired to help him commit treason against the Pekhan.

  THIS WAS GETTING out of hand, and Juliet was running out of ideas about how to turn the situation around to her benefit. She supposed that some people might have assumed it was good that another bad guy had turned up on the scene after being presumably betrayed by his partner. Maybe the two of them would fight, kill each other, and save her the trouble. The problem was that Juliet had no confidence that Dimitri could get the drop on Josef.

  “What are you doing?” Josef snarled at Dimitri. Josef strode forward and shoved the other man away from the dangling remote control. “This was not the plan!”

  “You were gone,” Dimitri said quickly. “I had to improvise.”

  “So this was your plan,” Josef guessed. “Was I to be left at the hospital no matter what occurred? Or did you plan to murder me right after we killed Mikhail?”

  “None of that,” Dimitri assured him. “The reaction of the men after Mikhail’s death threw off our plan. You know that.”

  Juliet snorted in disbelief. “I hope you’re not buying that,” she told Josef. “He’s such a liar. He showed up to the hospital, and there wasn’t one mention of you or anything else. He already had a plan.”

  “Shut up!” Dimitri started toward her, but Josef fired his weapon and the bullet struck the ground right in front of Dimitri’s feet and pinged away into the surrounding refuse. “What are you doing?” Dimitri yelped. “You could have killed me!”

  “That would have been a bonus,” Josef said darkly. “Did you not know that I was at the hospital?”

  “No.”

  “Did you realize that Antonin was there?” Josef demanded triumphantly.

  Now Dimitri’s face looked ashen. It was odd since he had apparently been perfectly all right with Antonin showing up here at this decrepit garage. The place must mean something to them both. But the idea that Antonin had been that close on his heels for so long apparently put Dimitri off.

  Then Josef turned his gaze toward Juliet and curled his lip in distaste. “Her stupid lover came barreling into the emergency room and told the authorities that I shot him. I was actually arrested!”

  Juliet couldn’t help but find it both funny and odd that Josef would be so surprised that he could be arrested. “Did you think you were impervious to that sort of thing?” she taunted. “Of course you got arrested. I’m sure it’ll happen again. That’s what typically happens to criminals!”

  “Says the last scion of an Italian mafia family that has been responsible for more murders and criminal enterprise than I could have dreamed of!” Josef shouted. “You will be exterminated, Juliet Caglione, and your family’s hold on their territory will be at an end! I am the Pekhan of the Bratva here in this city! It belongs to me. Everything belongs to me!”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Dimitri asked drily. “You haven’t managed to kill Antonin yet. Remember? Without proof of his death, the men will never follow you. I think they made that pretty clear earlier tonight.”

  Juliet raised her eyebrows as Josef had what amounted to a little fit right there in the garage. He balled up his fists, punched the air, and did a little dance as though he were so frustrated with Antonin that he could hardly contain himself anymore.

  “Whoa,” Juliet breathed. She glanced at Dimitri. “Is he always like this, or is he having an epileptic seizure?”

  “No,” Dimitri mused. “This is pretty much how it is.”

  THE WAITING WAS driving Antonin insane. Yet he knew that things were already devolving. Soon there would be a perfect moment for him to step out of the shadows and challenge Josef and Dimitri. If he was lucky, one of them would kill the other before that happened anyway.

  “Untie her and let’s leave this place,” Josef demanded. He imperiously waved his gun at Dimitri. “We need to return to the house and regroup.”

  “Are you insane?” Dimitri held up his hands in flat refusal. “If we go back to the house, the men will tear you apart.”

  “They wouldn’t dare!” Josef argued. “I am their new Pekhan.”

  Dimitri actually rolled his eyes. “Do you listen to anything? You are not the Pekhan yet. By the Bratva’s rules of succession, Antonin is the Pekhan. He’s a little hard to kill, if you hadn’t noticed yet.”

  Antonin leaned around a stack of what appeared to be engine parts. He needed a distraction, and perhaps a way to take at least one of the bad guys out of the equation. Perhaps he could dislodge a towering pile of heavy metal and have it land precisely where he planned. And perhaps he could also fly to the moon and back to get a plate of cheese.

  Bracing his shoulder against a fully assembled engine hanging from a winch, he shoved it into the pile of parts and watched the chain reaction begin. The pile of heavy metal teetered and then fell over. It started a slide that began rushing toward Dimitri and Josef, but Antonin didn’t wait around to see what happened. He needed more distraction.

  The mufflers went next. Antonin sent the whole selection rushing toward Josef and Dimitri. He kicked the tires, picking them up and rolling them in the right direction. Hefting one onto his arm and using every muscle in his torso, he flung one through the air and finally heard it hit a target. Josef’s pained grunt told Antonin that this was the moment he had been waiting for.

  Sprinting around the other side of the garage, Antonin entered the scene from the same point that Josef had. That put him behind both men. Although when he emerged beside the car-crushing machine, Josef was sprawled on the ground with several good-sized truck tires piled against his legs.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  JULIET WATCHED IN amazement as the entire garage seemed to come alive with car parts and tires intent on destroying her enemies. Josef and Dimitri managed to evade most of the debris until a tire sailed through the air and took out Josef in one fell swoop.

  Dimitri was actually laughing. Juliet could not imagine what would induce the man to giggle in a situation like this. Was he insane? He was dancing around, avoiding bits of twisted metal tubing, car parts, and even tires as though it was all a big game. Then Josef went down, and Dimitri began to howl with amusement.

  “Great shot, Antonin!” Dimitri shouted. “You nailed him perfectly!”

  Then as Juliet watched, Dimitri strode toward his former partner in crime and stood over him with a mixed expression on his face. Juliet couldn’t decide if the man hated his deposed partner or respected him. Then Dimitri lifted his right foot and smashed it down on Josef’s windpipe, and Juliet had her answer.

  Josef made a horrible gargling sound and was silent. While Dimitri was so focused on eliminating Josef’s interference, he did not notice Antonin striding onto the scene from the direction of the building’s office.

  “Hello, Dimitri,” Antonin said in a mocking tone of voice. “Let’s see how you do in a fair fight without the aid of those three bullets you put in my back.”

  “You bastard!” Dimitri spun around to face Antonin. “Why won’t you just die? Nobody wants you! Nobody has ever wanted you. Get a clue and go away already!”

  Juliet’s heart went out to Antonin. How awful to hear something like that from a man you once trusted. She didn’t understand the full extent of the history between the two men, but she could recognize that they had once been close. Her respect for Antonin grew when he didn’t sh
ow any outward reaction to the taunts and insults. In fact he looked as stoic as ever, as though nothing had gotten past his armor.

  “Are you through?” Antonin asked. He actually sounded bored. “I’ve been a little tired of your whining for the last—well, the last ten years or so.”

  “What?” Dimitri’s voice rose in volume and octave so that the word almost sounded like an indignant shriek. “What are you talking about? I’m not the one who has been whining. Oh, my father doesn’t love me. Wah! I’m so sorry that you had to work your way up through the ranks!” Dimitri spat. “But you had someplace to go! I was never going to be anything but one of your vory.”

  “And that wasn’t acceptable to you?” Antonin was moving closer to Dimitri. Juliet couldn’t decide if it was intentional or just a response to the conversation. “What did you want? What was it that you thought you deserved? Did you think you should be placed above all others? I would have made you my Brigadier, Dimitri. You were my friend. You were the one man I trusted above all others.”

  “Guess that will teach you to trust.” Dimitri’s withering glare seemed to push Antonin over the edge.

  HE HAD NOT intended to charge. In fact he had intended to goad Dimitri into coming at him. Yet when Antonin heard such derisive words from Dimitri, he could no longer hold back the tide of his anger. This was his friend. This was the only man he had ever truly trusted. Alexei was a good soldier and a loyal man, but he was not Dimitri. Dimitri and Antonin had history that should have meant something.

  Antonin met Dimitri head on, the two of them clashing like a couple of junkyard dogs. Antonin had the advantage of height and perhaps fifty or sixty pounds in pure muscle, but Dimitri was quick on his feet and knew what Antonin was going to do before he even tried it. They grappled, exchanging a few blows but mostly throwing each other around. Antonin smashed into a bunch of car doors that then slid all over the floor, making for treacherous terrain to try and fight. Perhaps the only good news about the mess was that it would slow down the car crusher if the entire floor were covered in debris. Although that wasn’t going to buy much time if it came to using that death machine.