Copyright © 2016 by Annika Martin
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Cover art: Bookbeautiful
Interior layout: BB eBooks
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations or locales is completely coincidental.
ISBN-10: 0-9883131-9-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-9883131-9-4
THE DARK PRINCE IS BACK TO RECLAIM EVERYTHING THAT HER FAMILY STOLE.
Aleksio
Don’t look at me like that. So trusting.
Like you think I’m not a monster.
Like I won’t wrap your hair in my fist and bend you to my will.
Like I won’t sacrifice you, piece by piece, to save my brother.
I’m the most dangerous enemy you’ll ever have because every time you look at me, you see somebody good. That friend who died.
And when you look at me like that, I die again.
Mira
I spent years making myself invisible.
A good girl, apart from the noise. Then you came back, beautiful and deadly in your Armani suit.
Don’t look at me like you still know me, you say.
But I remember your smile and those sunny days.
Before they lowered your small casket into the ground.
Before they told us the prince was dead.
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Dark Mafia Prince
A Dangerous Royals Romance
Book 1
Annika Martin
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
About the Book
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Books by Annika Martin
Books by Carolyn Crane
Acknowledgements
About Annika
CHAPTER ONE
Aleksio
Most people who see the ancient cigarette burn on my arm assume I got it from somebody who wanted to hurt me. It’s natural to think that. But they couldn’t be more wrong.
My cigarette burn is all about love.
Still, it starts getting torn up with the kind of hand-to-hand fighting I’ve been doing. And more guys will arrive any minute. Panting, moving fast in the gloomy nook of the boathouse, I yank the carefully folded handkerchief from my front pocket, loosen my cufflinks, and tie the thing around my forearm, using my teeth to tighten it, making a protective skin.
The burn looks bad, but it hasn’t hurt for years. You can poke it, and there’s no feeling.
Which goes to show, if you fuck something up enough, it loses its capacity to feel.
That’s true of skin, and it’s also true of people. Having no capacity to feel is a definite bonus when you’re doing the kinds of things I’m doing today.
My phone vibrates. It’s my brother, Viktor, giving me the heads-up, as if every molecule in me isn’t already on hyper-alert. But Viktor and I are protective of each other like that. We only just found each other last year.
Viktor and I figure Aldo Nikolla and his underboss—his kumar—will come down from the main house last, once they realize they can’t get ahold of their men. That’s when the party really gets started. I almost can’t believe the plan is working. Nikolla is one of the best-protected men in the country, possibly the world. An Albanian mafia kingpin ensconced in a summer residence guarded better than Fort Knox.
We shouldn’t be able to get to him with just ten guys. That’s the magic of planning for you.
I fix my cuffs, let my Sig hang loose in my hand.
Old Konstantin, the hitter who rescued me when I was a boy, never let me forget the traditions—the suits, the codes, cufflinks just so. The sleeping king, he always called me. You will gather your brothers and take back your kingdom.
I focus on the pile of bodies in the dark corner. Six guys shot up with enough tranquilizer to sleep for a day. Still, I think they might wake up. Because they’re Aldo Nikolla’s soldiers. Like he’s all-powerful.
Which of course he is.
And even as well as this attack is going, I’m holding it together by a hair.
It doesn’t help that Konstantin tried to stop this attack. Don’t do it—you’re only two brothers. All three brothers must be together.
All my life, that was the plan—find my brothers so we can take our kingdom, our vengeance.
The three brothers must be together. You are too early.
Well, priorities change.
I move deeper into the shadows behind the boats and the seaplane. This is a place of dark nooks and crannies. Good hide-and-seek spots. This particular one was a favorite of mine, in another lifetime.
The last time I was this close to Aldo Nikolla was the night I got that burn.
I was nine—Konstantin and I had been on the run two months by then. I had a fever. We crashed in an abandoned building—Kansas City, I think. I woke up in Konstantin’s arms as he sprinted past caged-up, neon-lit stores and turned into an alley that stank of piss. He had a disguise stashed there—a dirty wig and lipstick and clothes. Konstantin did a quick change into a bag lady. It was a disguise no self-respecting Black Lion clan member would ever adopt—that had been the genius of it.
A few terse words from him and I made myself invisible under the pile of clothes next to him, eyes and lips squeezed tight. Old Konstantin lit up a cigarette as they approached. If you knew him—and these killers knew him well—it was the opposite of his way. He never smoked.
We could hear Aldo Nikolla and Bloody Lazarus and the rest of them going at the bums on the next block. I pressed my forehead against Konstantin’s massive thigh, hiding, as the footsteps slowed in front of us. One of Aldo’s soldiers kicked Konstantin and asked whether he’d seen a man and a boy. Konstantin screeched back in crazy old lady gibberish—real Academy Award shit.
That’s when the old man moved his hand—just enough to press the cigarette to my arm. Just pressed that fucker right in there.
He didn’t know he was burning me. He had no idea. He was trying to save us, screeching in that bag lady getup.
I forced myself to stay still—any movement would give me away.
So I let it burn, let the pain turn my brain red with ice. The cigarette had burned through whatever polyester thing I was under, and I’ll never fo
rget the smell. I let the ember sink deep into my arm like a blistering sun, praying he’d move his hand on his own, but he didn’t. All his attention was on screeching at the soldiers, putting them on the defensive.
Keeping us alive.
I let the pain be my teacher. The pain taught me I could survive, that I could endure anything. That I would endure and fight another day, just like Konstantin always said. “Mbreti gjumi—the sleeping king. You live to fight another day.”
But that day has never quite come. Konstantin wants everything perfectly in place first. All three Dragusha brothers united. Legions of men behind us. They will fall into line when they see the Dragusha brothers have made their way back to each other.
Superstitious old Konstantin thinks we can’t attack Nikolla without three brothers together. But we can’t find our missing brother without attacking Nikolla—that’s the problem.
Our baby brother is out there. And he needs us. I’ll burn the world to get to him.
The next guard strolls in the far door, heading for my side of the line of boat slips. This guy’s not thinking about who might be lurking in the best hide-and-seek spot in the place—he’s thinking about the lunch spread that’s supposedly waiting for him on the upper level. Viktor and I took over the texting between the guards as part of the attack. Like taking over their hive brain.
It’s true what they say—the fastest way to a man is through his stomach.
As soon as he’s in my orbit, I lunge for him and twist away his weapon. I choke him out before he can make a sound, and then I jab the needle into his neck and he’s down.
Some of the soldiers are surprisingly easy to take. But then again, all these guys were suckling at the tit of the Xbox while I was getting beaten to a bloody pulp by Konstantin in our endless training sessions.
My guys are up at the house. The idea is to flush everyone my way. We’ve been silent so far. As long as nobody shouts or shoots, we keep our element of surprise.
When Aldo Nikolla senses trouble, he’ll come down with Lazarus and leave Mira at the house, where he’ll think she’s protected. She’s his one weakness. The best way to control him.
I’ve played this day out in my imagination so many times. The horror on Nikolla’s face when he sees I’m back—Aleksio Dragusha, his worst fucking nightmare, all grown up and in his face. The shock when he realizes I’ve reunited with my brother Viktor. Because hey, you’d think that when you send a toddler off to a shithole of a Moscow orphanage with no identification, he’d stay there, right? Wouldn’t you think?
Surprise, motherfucker!
No way will Mira recognize me.
Even if she didn’t think we three Dragusha brothers died alongside our parents, she wouldn’t recognize me as the boy she goofed off with a lifetime ago. Lying around on a sea of green grass in front of this wedding cake of a castle, clouds like seahorses.
I’m worlds different from the good-natured mafia prince she knew. I’m pretty much a different species. Because when you’re hunted every day of your life, fighting for survival like a rat in a pit of vipers, everything inside you changes. You develop weapons and talents no sane person would ever admire. You lose your humanity.
Mira is worlds different too, now—sometimes I can’t believe the shopaholic shit she puts out there on her blog and her Instagram and all the rest of it. But she was pretty amazing when I knew her as a kid.
I guess this life twists everyone, eventually.
It’s better that she’s not the same person. It makes my job easier.
CHAPTER TWO
Mira
My father has a black cellphone that he never uses, but it’s always on, always charged, and always within reach, full of dark threat, just like his gun. He’s had it for years, and I never heard it ring.
I hear it the week after my twenty-eighth birthday.
It’s a Saturday afternoon. We’re out on the porch. I came back for a ribbon-cutting ceremony where I put in a rare cameo as mafia princess Mira Nikolla in Oscar de la Renta and Manolo Blahnik. I was so proud that he’d funded the research wing of the local hospital where Mom died—a research wing in her name. Not a lot will bring me back home these days, but a wing in Mom’s name? I’m there.
Missing Mom is one of the few things we have in common anymore.
The cynical part of me wonders if he funded the wing just to get a visit out of me. Maybe he did. It doesn’t even touch the debt he owes to society.
Do I sound pissed at my own father? I am. Do I still love him? Always.
We’re all each other has left. We’ve had each other’s backs since the day Mom died. The day he fixed me with that intense gaze of his and said, “It’s us two now, Kitten. It’s us two. Two against everything, alright?”
I should be packing—the limo is coming in a few hours to take me to the airport. I’ll be back in New York at the advocacy center where I work, back to being the lawyer in jeans and Target tops, like some kind of reverse Wonder Woman—I spin around and turn into a girl you’d forget two minutes after you pass her by.
Which is exactly how I like it. It makes it easier for me to do my job, fighting for kids and families.
We have people thinking I’ve spent these past years on worldwide shopping sprees, which is embarrassing, but better than having bodyguards follow me around—that would not work at the advocacy center. PR people maintain a fake life for me. A sad social media construct that keeps me under the radar. And mostly it keeps Dad safe. I’m his Achilles’ heel. A way to make him weak.
There’s a type of bird that lays its eggs in other birds’ nests. Sometimes I feel like I ended up in the wrong nest like that. But we’re family—that’s the bottom line.
Dad did terrible things coming up like he did, but we have each other’s backs. Even at the age of ten, I understood. Me and Dad against the world. It still means everything that he said that.
So we’re out on the porch of the lake residence, me still in my mafia princess pink, when the chirp sounds out. I have no idea that it’s that second cellphone. I guess I never imagined it would have the bird-chirp type of ring. I always thought it would be something more ominous. Like a blaring tone.
But the chirp is ominous to my father. His face goes white.
He answers it, and I can tell it’s Lazarus. In addition to being Dad’s enforcer, Bloody Lazarus is pretty much the worst psycho I’ve ever met. Even across the large, lavish porch table laden with feta and olives and strong Turkish coffee in priceless china, even with my dad pressing that phone to his ear, I can hear the psycho.
It takes exactly two seconds for Dad to pull me inside and call out for the house staff guys.
“What’s going on?”
He just shakes his head and resumes his conversation. “Put Jetmir on it. Fuck! Fuck! Where’s Leke? Fuck.”
Dad’s voice is higher, not in volume, but octave. It’s a bad sign.
But here’s the really bad sign: Nobody comes. Dad called for staff, and none have arrived. They always appear instantly. “Staff,” in this case, is a euphemism for soldiers whose job is to hang around the house and not be seen or heard unless they’re needed.
I never see Dad worried. I never see the world not bending to his every whim. My blood races.
There’s only one reason dozens of soldiers wouldn’t come running when my father yells for them.
He gets his go bag out of the front closet, grabs his headset, and sticks his Luger into his belt. He hands me a small revolver. Mother-of-pearl handle. Loaded. “Down to the seaplane. Now.”
“Dad.” I hold it like a dead thing, looking up at him, like, really? I don’t do firearms, and he knows it. But he’s completely freaked out. And I’m thinking about his bad heart. I shouldn’t add to his stress.
“Got it.” I put it in a proper grip like I learned in shooting lessons. Like a dog, fake sitting down. I’ll ditch it later.
He throws me the boat and seaplane keychain. The keys are attached to a little buoy that floats i
f you drop it in the water. “Get that plane out of the boathouse. Now! I’ll meet you.”
“We’re going in the seaplane?” The seaplane is a fun-time thing. It’s a recreational vehicle, not a getaway vehicle.
He tips his head up at the ceiling, a movement that tells me everything. We’re going in the seaplane because somebody might be on the roof, expecting him to go in the helicopter.
It’s a takeover.
Shit.
I grab my purse, kick off my heels, and take the stairs to the lower level. I head through the ornate rooms and back through the servant areas, and burst out the side delivery door.
It’s a cool autumn afternoon. Nice. Or at least, it was nice.
I run along the perimeter of the estate, where it’s shaded by trees and the limestone wall. Less obvious if you’re on the roof.
The first few minutes I jog stealthily, grass cool on my bare feet, but then something builds up in me and I’m just running like hell, shoes and satchel in one hand, gun in the other.
I won’t use the gun. Dad always says having to shoot just means your threats didn’t work. As if I’ll even make threats.
I round a tree, keeping to the shadows. I get down to the seawall and run along it, heart thundering, up to the boathouse door. I punch in the combo and pull it open.
It’s dark and gloomy inside the boathouse; Just a few high windows let in the sun.
I scurry around the slips past the speedboats to the seaplane at the end. I unlock the lift with the key that hangs from a string, and then I hit the button to start lowering it to the water. Usually the grounds guy does this. Where is everybody?
The motor whines as it lowers the plane, white with blue stripes and blue pontoons. While I’m waiting for that, I go to the corner, lift a panel, and slam my palm onto a button. One of the boathouse doors jerks and squeals as it begins to raise up like a garage door, unveiling the sparkling blue water of Lake Geneva.
Inch by inch, the light slants in.
Movement from the dark side. I’m not alone. A man.
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