Brothers. Something about the picture tugs at the edges of my memory.
The Russian one says, “We get our brother back alive, or we kill your kitten, you understand?”
I suck in a breath. I’ve been around this life long enough to know there’s nothing empty about that threat.
“A name and an address,” my captor says.
“I don’t have that—I swear!” Dad says. And I don’t believe him.
When in my life has my father not bent over backward for me?
Cold horror slides through me.
CHAPTER THREE
Aleksio
Aldo Nikolla looked so much bigger when he was slaughtering our parents. But then, I was small. Just nine.
And then there’s Mira. I have this weird feeling that she almost recognizes me. It fucks me up a little.
I tell myself to stay cool, stay hard. I take Mira back—she’s his weak spot, his only pressure point. I hold her a little more tightly than I should, and she gasps.
It affects him. I see it in his eyes. Good.
I slide my finger back from her chin and down her jawline. Rough, scarred finger over the unbroken creamy expanse of her cheek—a metaphor for the two of us now.
Mira was there in the background of a lot of the surveillance photos over the years, the cherished daughter in the castle her family ripped from ours. We’d been friends before the attack—as much of friends as nine-year-olds can be. I’d study her expressions when new pictures came in. Always smiling.
She smiles, so happy, Konstantin would say. The slaughter of the Dragushas has been very, very good to Mira. She takes everything while you hide like a dog. She shops with your millions. Of course she smiles.
Konstantin imagined I hated her for those smiles, but I didn’t. I’d wonder how she was doing, what she was thinking. Sometimes I’d enlarge the shit out of the images. I felt bad for her when her mother died. I was actually worried about her. She had no idea that her own father was capable of slaughtering his dearest friends in cold blood. I thought to warn her. It was a childish impulse.
Needless to say, I didn’t admit any of this to Konstantin. He was a hardened Kosovo war vet, out for bloody vengeance. He’d say I was fixating on her, obsessing over her. He’d think I couldn’t do what needed to be done. But I’ve always done what I have to.
Over time, those smiles intensified, and Mira appeared to transform into a plastic princess, a black-haired Barbie doll. Meanwhile, I transformed into something cold and dark and barely human. So I guess I can’t fault her.
I hold her a little more tightly than I should and slide my finger back from her chin and down her jawline. I always wondered what her skin feels like. Answer: softer than imagined.
I feel her pulse pounding—she’s frightened, but she puts on a good front. For him? I continue down to her collarbone, I stop just before the perfect line of it disappears into her filmy white top. I’m scaring her in order to fuck up the old man. A means to an end.
It’s not supposed to be fucking me up.
“I’ll kill you,” the old man says.
I smile. I’m getting to him. He’s a gambler. He’ll gamble Mira—to a point. I just need to push more. Make it more real for him—and for her. I can’t let him set the terms.
“Let her go,” he growls.
I point the piece at him. “Mira is mine until we have Kiro back. That’s done. What you do now determines how bad it goes for her. That’s all that’s on the table…” But why am I pointing a gun at him? I put it back on her cheek. That perks him up.
“Take off your panties, Kitten,” I say.
Her chest jerks with an intake of breath.
That’s right, I think. I’m the motherfucker who will cross every fucking line to get my baby brother back. I turn my head and growl into her ear. “Take ’em off.”
Viktor shoots me an approving look. He loves when things get really twisted. He and the mafiya guys he brought over, they’re all insane.
Daddy speaks up, finally. “I don’t know where he is. I have one thing you could try.”
“One thing we could try?” Right. Meanwhile, he hunts and kills us. “You think I’m fucking around here? Off, Kitten. Now.”
She glares at me. All those hours when I was supposed to be studying Aldo Nikolla and his men, memorizing their names and weaknesses, I would look at her and wonder what it would’ve been like to have stayed there. To have all that safety. It comes to me now that I can make her tell me if I want.
I put the gun back on her father. “Your panties or Daddy’s kneecaps. Something’s gotta go here.”
This gets her moving. She reaches under her pink skirt, grabbing at the panties underneath. She starts shimmying, eyes full of fear and emotion.
I look away, reminding myself that she’s just a spoiled mafia princess now, not the loyal, happy tomboy pal she once was. She probably has a diamond-studded pink lace thong under there or something. She’s not the same, just like I’m not the same.
She leans over and pulls them off her feet. They’re blue. Simple. Laundry day, I tell myself.
“Toss them on the ground. You won’t need ’em where you’re going.”
Viktor’s lips quirk in dark delight.
She hesitates. I feel everybody’s attention, wondering how fucked up I can get. But we’re running out of time—we won’t be in control of this situation for long. We need answers—fast.
Which means I have to get very, very fucked up.
She throws them onto the grass.
“Get them, Daddy,” I growl.
“Pervert,” she whispers.
“I’m a lot worse than a pervert, Kitten. As you’ll soon find out.”
She looks disgusted. I tell myself it’s good that she’s getting with the program. Because I’ll be as fucked up as I need to be to get our baby brother back. I’ll trash my very soul to save him—it’s how it has to be.
“If my dad says he doesn’t know anything more, he doesn’t know anything more.”
“I won’t ask again,” I say.
He bends and snaps them up from the ground. “Good,” I say. “Now. Kiro. An address.”
“I only have a name. The agency.”
Fuck. I need more than an agency. I slide the gun across her cheek. She stiffens. Her eyes are big and dark and fringed with thick lashes. Holding her now, she seems more like the girl I knew. That’s just what the mind does, though. It pastes in what you want over what’s really there. “You really don’t want to see her again, do you?”
“It’s all I have—I swear it! She’s not in this. She’s innocent!”
“You’re telling me you didn’t bother keeping tabs?”
“The Worland Agency insists on anonymity. It’s where I’d start if I needed to find him.”
“What’s going on?” Mira asks. “Somebody tell me what’s going on!”
Nobody answers her.
“It’s all I have,” Nikolla says.
“Dad?” Mira says.
Fuck. The clock is ticking. Is he bluffing? Gambling with his own daughter? I close my eyes and try to think, but all I can see is Konstantin in his wheelchair, warning me off of this: Once you start that fight with Nikolla, it’s a fight to the death. Once he sees you’re back and that you have Viktor with you, all the firepower in Chicago turns on you. Their cops, their made guys.
Only the three Dragusha brothers together can win such a fight.
Except Kiro is out there somewhere, and the only way to Kiro is through Aldo Nikolla. Viktor doesn’t remember Kiro, but I do, if only in the barest flashes. A happy baby waving his tiny hands in the air. Big eyes. A sweet nature. Not like Viktor and me.
If Kiro is dead, I will destroy the world. I grab Mira’s dark hair and pull her to me.
“Don’t touch her.”
“I’ll touch her as much as I want,” I say. “She’s mine, isn’t she? Didn’t you say I could have anything of yours I wanted?”
The old boss’s lips move,
but nothing comes out. The great boss—the krye—of the Black Lion clan, is finally feeling desperate. They say when you have your enemy on his knees, you start to feel sorry for him, but I’ll never feel sorry for Aldo Nikolla. No destruction will ever be enough for what he did. And he’s as dangerous as a king cobra, even with this supposedly bad heart.
“If she’s mine,” I continue, “I can do anything I want with her, can’t I?” I press my face to her hair. “She tasted so good.”
“You’re a dead man,” Nikolla growls.
What if that’s all he knows?
I glance at Viktor. It’s time. Viktor and me, we don’t need words. We’re one mind. Brothers up from the shadows. Viktor gets on the phone. Time to go to plan B.
I slip an arm around Mira. “Probably a good time to adjust your expectations for your weekend downward, Kitten.”
She stiffens in my grip—just as angry as she is pissed, it seems. She never did scare easy.
“Kitten.” Nikolla gives his daughter a doleful look. “We’re okay.”
“I might not go with okay, exactly,” I say.
“His heart is bad, you jerk.” She rips away from me and hauls off, like she’s going to hit me.
I catch her arms and get her back under control. She’s still something of a warrior, a fact that doesn’t come through on her idiotic fashion blog. And all this time I thought she’d turned out like the other princesses. A beautiful show horse.
It’s not ideal. I didn’t plan on her actually affecting me.
I give her a long, hard look that lets her see the cold parts of my soul, and finally I feel her tremble. I flash on what it would be like to have her naked at my feet, trembling like that. I shake the thought out of my mind.
The sound of breaking glass up at the house tells me Viktor’s guys are in there looting. Mira looks stunned. “Bind him, gag him, and take him away,” I say.
Tito moves on the old man and sticks a needle in his arm. Mira screams and jerks. The old man is out like a light. “Where are you taking him?”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “We won’t let him die.”
She looks up at me with something like hope in her eyes.
“For now,” I say.
Tito loads him up into the ridiculous golf cart. “Note to self,” I say aloud. “Have Viktor shoot me if I ever get one of those things.”
Viktor grins.
She follows the golf cart up the hill with a hopeless gaze.
A few more of our guys have arrived, sliding across the grounds like shadows. The Russians reporting to Viktor.
Viktor nods up at the house.
“Come on.” I push her toward the house.
She stops and turns. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
“You don’t know?” I’m a little surprised she hasn’t figured it out by now, but then again, she thought we died that day, just like everyone. Except her father and Lazarus.
“Tell me,” she says.
“Taking weapons, cash, souvenirs. Maybe some of the art. Maybe wreck a few things. I believe the technical term is pillaging. Or is it plundering? I’m never sure about that. You’d think I would’ve looked into that.”
Mira stares at me with a stunned expression.
“What’s wrong?” I growl. “I got a bluebird on my head or something?”
“He dies. You die. What’s the point?”
Again I hear old Konstantin’s warning. If you hit the hornet’s nest, if you show that you and Viktor are alive and together, all of Nikolla’s firepower turns on you.
As if on cue, some windows break. Then gunfire sounds out.
“Antique gun collection, I think,” Viktor says.
I push her. “Go.”
The princess looks up at her precious castle. Does that house represent a sunny, safe, beautiful life? Does trashing it change that? Does it change something inside her? “Can I keep…one thing?”
I’m guessing jewelry. Something valuable. Shoes, maybe. There are rumors about her shoe collection. “Depends. Can it shoot bullets? Because, lenient as I am—”
“It’s just a coffee mug. Nobody’ll care about it.”
Another window breaks. Viktor’s guys’ll break a lot of the stuff, but they’ll be able to tell what’s good to sell. They’ve brought vans for the loot.
“It’s easy to find. It’s just a chipped mug with a picture of a cat head. It’s in the lower kitchen cupboard. No—it’s out on the counter…”
I motion to one of Viktor’s guys and send him ahead for the mug. “Mind the time.”
I flash on the old Mira, all pigtails and grass stains. Champion of trapped bugs and bullied kids. Everything in the house and she picks a coffee mug.
I snort. Like I think it’s stupid. Like it’s not a little bit of a knife in my abs when I think what I might have to do to save Kiro’s life.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mira
We’re up at the drive in front of the house. I hate not having underwear on. It makes me feel vulnerable. Especially in this uncomfortable skirt suit. Not that I don’t have worse things to worry about.
I plead repeatedly for news of my father, if only to know he’s still alive. My captor just texts.
I can barely watch as thugs carry off the beautiful things my mother collected—the period chairs, the Warhols, the chinoiserie. I stifle a sob as I catch sight of my mother’s inlaid harp. Mom loved that harp. It’s like they’re taking the last little pieces of my mother from me.
A crash from inside. They’re wrecking the place.
“This is pointless.” When he doesn’t acknowledge me, I grab his wrist. “What does this get you? Come on!”
He looks at my hand and then looks up at me. For a moment, I think he, too, senses that weird familiarity between us. As though we knew each other in a dream. He drops his phone in his pocket, and takes my wrists. “You need to stop focusing on your beautiful life in there and start praying that Daddy decides to come through.”
“Ow,” I breathe.
“Good. That’s you getting with the program. I’ll do whatever I have to do to get my brother back. Do I want to hurt you? No. I don’t. Will I?”
My heart races.
“Will I?”
“I get it,” I whisper.
His grip is too tight, his gaze too intense, like he sees everything inside me. People rarely look too hard at me. When they look at me at all, they accept the version of me I serve up to them. The shopaholic mafia princess. The dedicated, lawyer in glasses.
“Dad’s innocent. He’d tell you if he knew anything else.”
“Wrong, Kitten. Dad’s playing the odds.”
“Don’t call me that.”
A ping sounds. He lets me go and pulls his phone out of his pocket. A twenty-first-century general waging battle.
Whatever the person on the other ends has texted him, it troubles him.
That’s my chance—I take off running, tearing for the trees and the main road.
I get maybe ten feet before guys seem to materialize around me, taking me by the shoulders. I twist and fight. They lift me right off the ground, carrying me back.
The strangely familiar intruder is still on the phone, eyeing me with that intensity, watching me struggle. A model between photo shoots if you didn’t know any better.
They put me back in front of him. He lowers the phone and addresses me quietly. “Do it. Go ahead, Mimi, do it again. See what happens.”
Mimi.
He blinks, waiting. “Do it, go for it.”
Mimi. Only one person ever called me Mimi—Aleksio Dragusha. My childhood friend. But Aleksio and his family were slaughtered by a rival clan back when we were kids. I was wild with grief. They had to sedate me.
Five caskets lowered into the ground. Three small, two large.
I focus on the familiar freckle on his cheekbone. This man is so much bigger. So much harder and meaner. But his freckle…his eyes… “Aleksio?” I say in a small voice.
“Ding
ding ding, we have a winner.” He says it off-handedly, as though our friendship meant nothing. He simply keeps his eyes fixed on the mansion with its majestic stone wings stretching out on either side. The place where he once lived. Prince of a mafia empire.
“Oh my God. Aleksio!”
Mimi is what his baby brother Little Vik called me. Little Vik couldn’t say the r. Aleksio would tease Little Vik about it, and the name stuck. A nickname. His brother. Viktor Dragusha.
“We thought you were dead. We buried you!”
“You buried a few rocks. Maybe some boiled cabbages, who knows.”
I can’t believe he’s being so…flip. “Aleksio! We buried you.” I’m repeating myself. “I thought they killed you…” If my life were postcards on a bulletin board, the image of Aleksio Dragusha’s casket being covered up with dirt would be central, affecting everything around it. He was my best friend. I doubt I was his. Aleksio had lots of friends. Everybody loved Aleksio.
“And Viktor. Little Vik! Oh my God. You’re both alive…”
He focuses on his phone, running his guys.
“We went to your funeral. It was so, so…”
“Sad” isn’t the word. “Sad” barely touches it. He was my best friend in the world. We were adventurers together, bonded together, carving out a sunny niche inside a world of darkness and secrets we sensed but didn’t understand. I think that’s what made us friends—the feeling of being refugees at the edges of something evil.
“Aleksio,” I whisper. I think about his remote control car, Rangermaster. I took it after he died, and I kept it in my room. I didn’t have the controller, just the car. I used to talk to it like I could still talk to Aleksio. “I kept Rangermaster. You remember Rangermaster?”
He looks at me like I’m a little bit crazy, but he doesn’t fool me. He remembers. “You need to stop thinking you know me,” he says. “You knew me once, but I promise, you don’t know me anymore. Got it?”
“Why are you so angry at my dad? You were like a son to him. He loved you. He grieved over your death! Aleksio, come on!”
“Did your father look like a man overjoyed to see me?”
Dark Mafia Prince: A Dangerous Royals romance Page 3
