“What?”
“What it was like to feel safe?” I ask, frustrated. I picture her at birthday parties, picnics on the grounds. The boating outings. Plush, wall-to-wall safety.
I know I can’t have that feeling, that goodness, but I had it once.
It took Konstantin quite a few years to figure out I looked at the photos she appeared in way more than the others. When he figured that out, he hit me so hard he nearly knocked my teeth out. That was back when he was bigger than me, of course. Back when he was in charge of things.
I think she’s gone to sleep, but then she speaks again. “It’s a hard question. Like if I asked you, what does it feel like to be alive? How can you answer if you’ve never been anything else? Safety…” She drifts off. “I don’t know.”
She doesn’t know.
Her answer is a fist slammed into my gut—safety is not knowing what safety is.
It’s the one answer I never imagined, but it’s obvious now. You can’t describe what safety is when it’s all you’ve known. When you’ve never been moved in the middle of the night because of a crackle on the phone or a light in the alley. You never had an itchy fake mole put on your chin or got whacked upside the head for trying to pick it off. Or getting dropped in the middle of unfriendly street gang territory and made to fight your way out.
Safety is going to the same school every year with the same name. Safety is looking forward to going to sleep. Safety is walking down the street without having to worry that someone back there knows who you are. Safety is never thinking about safety or knowing what it is.
You’d think with all that safety she’d be weak, but she’s strong.
I pull her closer. Is that where her optimism comes from? If she lost her safety, would the optimism go with it? I don’t know whether I had optimism back then, but I definitely don’t have it anymore.
“Do you feel safe now?” I ask.
“Yes,” she whispers. Her breathing evens out, but then it changes, gets ragged. “Except he killed your parents.” She’s getting agitated. “He killed them. And the babies…”
“It’s okay now,” I whisper.
“We’re supposed to have each other’s backs,” she says.
I hold her more tightly. Even in her fucked-up state, she cares about rules. She wants people to be good. She wants to think we’re all not animals.
She says, “My mom had my back, but she died.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“Got cancer.” She’s doing that uneven breathing again. Stupid of me to not think about that. Like I’m the only person who lost something.
“I bet she loved you a lot,” I say. “I bet she loved you so much.”
“Yeah.” I can feel her calming.
“Remind me what she was like.” I remember, but that’s not the point.
“She liked old things.”
“And?” I shouldn’t be getting her to talk right now. I should be getting her to sleep.
“She was beautiful,” she whispers. “She laughed a lot. Picnics. She liked ABBA. Scrabble. Badminton down by the lake.”
“A prissy sport.”
I can see from the shape of her cheek that she’s smiling. “You played it.”
“Maybe once.”
“The birdie in the air and Mom laughing. And Sundays…” She trails off. “Umbrellas in the sun Sundays. Tea party. With cubes of sugar. Flowers on them. What was the question?” she says after a while.
She’s drifting off, but I don’t want her to go.
I put my face to her sweet-smelling hair. “Up in the playroom. The happy baby animals? Are they still painted on the wall?”
Her chest moves. I suppose it’s a sort of laugh.
“Are the baby animals still up there? In that secret cubby?”
“You know?”
“I lived there, remember?”
Another jerk of her chest. Laughing, crying. It sort of doesn’t matter. She won’t remember any of this tomorrow, that’s the idea I’m getting. “The happy baby animals,” she says. “Yeah. Their faces are lit by the sun. But only in the winter.”
The shock of the memory goes through me—the sun illuminating those stupid painted faces in the dead of winter. I’d forgotten about that.
“Sunny faces. But then you ruined happy baby animals for me,” she says. “Aleksio—I feel like I’m spinning.”
“I’ve got you.” I hold her tighter. It’s bad what I’m doing—I might as well be fucking her now, because I’m violating her emotionally, yanking out her memories. “And the Chris-Craft? That big old boat. Remember?”
“Picnics in the Chris-Craft,” she mumbles.
“What did the engine sound like? Do you remember?”
She’s gone quiet. I shake her. “Tell me, Mira. The Chris-Craft.”
“Gargly. Gargles.” She lowers her voice, sounding drunk. “Burgh-burgh-burgh.”
“That’s pretty good.” I fucking loved that big, powerful Chris-Craft engine. I loved those baby animal paintings too.
Until the end.
Until Konstantin held me inside that little cubby with his cigar-scented vice-grip of a hand clapped over my mouth to keep me from screaming, holding me tight as Nikolla slaughtered my parents while my baby brothers screamed. I saw it all in the window reflection. The fast way Nikolla moved against my parents, made sluggish with drugs. Darting for my mom. A dog going for a throat.
The baby animals are where I kept my gaze in the hour after the screams died out.
It was in the wine, Konstantin told me later. Konstantin had been drugged, too. An unarmed hit man past his prime, veteran of the Kosovo war, too drugged up to fight a killer like Nikolla and a twenty-year-old Lazarus. Konstantin did the only thing he could—he grabbed me and hid me in a child-sized cubby Nikolla wouldn’t know about, a nook in the wall, an accident of architecture made functional for kids.
Looking back, I sometimes marvel that Konstantin was able to keep hold of me for so many hours with the way I squirmed. I wanted to get to them. My mom and dad were right out there. They’d taken my brothers away in a sack, but Mom and Dad were right there. Motionless. I couldn’t see them any longer in the window reflection, but I knew they were there.
It was the dead of night when we finally stole out of there. The first day of my new life of being shaped into a machine of pure revenge and violence.
She begins to sob, silently now.
“Shhh,” I say, stroking her hair, but she’s inconsolable. My questions dredged up some essential kernel of sadness. “Stop it,” I say.
She won’t.
It rips something out of me to hear her crying. It’s my fault, bringing her into this hell with me. Making her almost lose her finger. “It’s okay, baby,” I whisper. “You’re okay now.”
I never cried for them. Much. Old Konstantin would hit me when I did. It wasn’t malicious, really, he just wanted me to channel all of that emotion into training and revenge. He was doing the best he could, and I learned to bottle up my feelings. Now, lying here with Mira half-unconscious, the girl from my opposite world, I feel like that bottle’s cracking and shattering.
When I’m sure she’s sleeping, I untangle myself from her and get off the bed, disgusted by myself.
Fucking happy baby animals. Fuck them.
I text Konstantin to send over pictures of Lazarus’s people, then I get myself a vodka in the kitchen. Viktor and I have been rubbing off on each other in the past year since we hooked back up. Or more like corrupting each other.
He’s at the table with Currie. “You get the intel?”
“Yup. Konstantin is sending pictures.” I slam it back. “I’m glad I blew up that fucking house.”
“We leave in ten minutes,” he says. “Tito drops you. Currie stays with Mira. I’m out there circulating with my team. The minute you get a lead, you send word and we’re on it. Okay?”
“You see what she did?” I tip my head toward the lawn.
“Yeah, I saw what she did, brat.”
<
br /> “Fuck. With that gun?” I limp over to the table.
“For fuck’s sake, Aleksio,” Currie says. “You need X-rays.”
“Just wrap it.”
“You need real attention. Don’t blow it off—you’re screwed for life if it doesn’t heal right.”
I start pulling off my sock. The thing is so swollen, it looks like something from outer space. “All I need is for you to get it stabilized.”
“You really want to let your ankle heal wrong?” Currie demands. “Is that what you want? Because keeping yourself fucked-up is a bullshit way to atone for your survivor’s guilt.”
I push him against the wall. “Are you suddenly a psychoanalyst? Because here all this time I thought you were a fucking EMT who has a Mustang and a second house instead of being six feet under.” Which is where he’d be without our help on his gambling bills.
He’s looking at me scared. I’m dimly aware of Viktor trying to talk me down.
“Answer! Are you our EMT or what?”
“I’m your EMT.”
“Then don’t you be fucking psychoanalyzing me. I’m fucked up enough to rip your face off if it starts annoying me. Will that atone?”
“Chill the fuck out,” Viktor says, pulling me off.
I get in Viktor’s face, put him against the wall instead. Mira being fucked up is fucking me up.
“Save the anger,” Viktor says.
I sit. “Wrap it enough to get me through, then I’ll think about the X-ray.” Currie starts on the wrap, being his professional, diligent self.
“Sorry,” I say.
“I get it,” he says. “I understand.”
The guys come with the finger and the blood. It’s from an older woman, and it’s frozen. It doesn’t look right until Currie puts it in the microwave with a bowl of water to hydrate it. I make a mental note never to use that microwave again. We’ll sell the house eventually.
I watch the clock while Viktor and his guys seal the finger in a plastic baggie with some blood they got from fuck knows where. They nestle it in an eyeglass case with the ring on top.
Konstantin comes through with instructions for Viktor’s men. They’re to go into the restaurant ahead of me and take pictures, and he’ll vet the patrons himself. I get on the phone with him and thank him. He’s not happy about any of this.
“We’re gonna bring Kiro home safe, and then we’ll take what’s ours in a tornado of fucking bullets—you watch.” I’m channeling Mira’s optimism now, not that she’d approve. “The brothers together will take the whole thing back.”
Five minutes until we leave. Hit Aldo and his men at the heart—exactly what Konstantin didn’t want us to do until we were all three together. In spite of what I said to him, I know perfectly well this thing is going downhill fast.
I wince as Currie wraps my taped ankle with a soft, stretchy bandage. Viktor’s texting, marshaling the troops.
Konstantin’s health isn’t so good, but he’s set up in a posh assisted-living apartment with a part-time nurse to help him out. I’m talking very posh, out in the western suburbs. Don’t let anyone tell you crime doesn’t pay.
I have this fucked-up idea of us all together at Christmas, the three of us and Konstantin. To give Konstantin a Christmas with all of us there.
Ten on a Sunday night, and Agronika is pretty packed.
It’s a dark place, and not for any lack of lights—there are plenty of them around, but they glow instead of actually lighting the place up. Same with the candles on the white-cloth-covered tables. More glowing. Lots of dark wood paneling. Classic Albanian mob. Like an old ship.
I stroll past the soft-talking diners and steaming plates of roasted lamb and stuffed peppers, air rich with the aroma of warm bread with an edge of pickled cabbage.
I straighten my cuffs and move through, smooth and strong like my ankle isn’t crunching in on itself. I feel enemy eyes on me.
It’s laid out in an L with the front being mostly public, but once you turn the corner, you’re in Aldo Nikolla territory.
Walking in here goes against every survival instinct I have. All those years of running from these faces. The target on my back feels like it’s lit in neon.
Viktor’s guys are at the elbow of the L. They’ve been in contact with Konstantin, letting him see the place through the eyes of their iPhones. So far none of Lazarus’s guys have shown. I don’t make eye contact as I go past; I just tip my head in acknowledgement.
The buzz in the air fades as soon as his soldiers see. I can feel the fucking hands reaching under the tables, guns coming out of holsters. Fingers on triggers.
The temperature seems to drop ten degrees.
Going in there is suicide, Tito said.
I’m completely vulnerable. Not even a vest, not that it would help. These guys shoot for the head.
Still I go, heart thundering.
All these men know about the million bucks on my head. It’ll just take one guy who doesn’t know I have Mira under wraps to go for it. One guy who doesn’t know I have that leverage.
Something inside me twists when I see him at a rounded booth in the corner with a few of his minor guys. My fingers stretch and curl with the deep need to tear him apart, muscle from tendon, tendon from bone, sinew by sinew.
That need is so much at the surface right now, it scares me a little bit.
I can still hear the way my mom screamed just before he killed her. My dad made no sound—he was fighting Nikolla and Lazarus to the end, but my mom screamed until Aldo cut off her scream with a hunting blade, turned it into a guttural sound I’ll never forget. And then that thump on the floor. And then the sound of Nikolla puking. My brothers’ cries getting faint as they were taken off.
My skin feels clammy. It’s these soldiers around me. I can feel their fear and loathing. I get that tickle on my back that tells me I’m being sighted.
I shove the feeling back and smile when he catches sight of me. The old man looks stunned. Yeah, it really is insane that I’m walking in here, strides long and lazy. I reach down and adjust my cock, taunting him.
He rises up out of that booth like somebody yanked a string on the top of his head.
I sneer, like I have nothing to fear.
Nikolla grabs me and pushes me to a wooden post between booths. I allow it, laughing. The laugh is for him, but a little bit for Viktor’s guys, who are keeping watch. “What’re you gonna do, old man?” I say.
His eyes bulge a little, the way old man eyes sometimes do. His cheeks are red, and his breath smells like scotch.
“Got something for you,” I say. “It’s from Mira.”
“You didn’t—”
“You want it or not?”
He’s trying to hide the dread, but it’s not so easy because he doesn’t know what I’m made of. He’s wondering right about now how bad a motherfucker I am. Would Aleksio Dragusha chop up his little girl? Worse?
A lot of guys say shit like that, but they don’t follow through. And their stock goes down because of it. You need to follow through on your threats in this business. It’s a matter of loyalty, dignity, the honor of your word.
“Well, do you want it?”
He studies my face.
I smile. I want him to hurt so bad it makes me crazy. It’s a minor miracle my hands aren’t around his throat.
A few of his guys have closed around us, waiting for his orders. It’s unnerving, being alone, surrounded by so many guys itching to kill me, face to face with Nikolla.
“Little privacy,” I say, cool as I can manage it.
He nods, and the guys ease off.
He lets go of my shirt and backs off, motioning me to a booth off to the side. I go, and he follows. We sit across from each other in the booth.
I reach in my jacket pocket, pull out the eyeglass case, and slide it across the table. “Hint,” I say. “It’s not eyeglasses.”
He creaks open the lid. The ring is on top, the finger in a baggie wrapped in a cloth underneath. He take
s out the ring and studies it. I wait, curious what he’ll do with the finger, how he’ll hide his blood aversion. He tips the case toward himself, rustling the cloth, pretending to look at it, just like Mira said he would. Then he snaps it shut, clearly shaken. The ring sold it like Mira said it would.
He holds the ring in the tips of two fat fingers. “I won’t kill you fast,” he manages. “I will hunt you. I will find you. I will kill you slow.”
“Yeah, well, until then you need to be thinking how bad you don’t want another gift like this.”
He studies my eyes.
I sit back. “Service is slow here.”
“What do you want?”
“I’d take a vodka,” I say. “Up.”
It’s not what he meant, but I could use a drink. He motions over a waiter and orders.
“Let me talk to her.”
“She’s sleeping,” I say. “It’s been a busy day.”
Silence. “You did it.”
“Now you need to give us everything on Kiro. If you love your daughter, you want me to get to him first.”
He waits a bit. Then, “Fine.”
I’m instantly suspicious. It’s too easy.
“Ligne has a drinking buddy, Archie Vega,” Nikolla continues. “He offloads some of his work to Vega, but he doesn’t want me to know. He confides in Vega. And Vega is the type…let’s just say he likes to know things. He collects secrets and blackmails people. I’ve been thinking about taking him out. I don’t know that he knows, but I could see him getting it in his pocket. I’ve always thought if I needed to find your brother, it would be Archie Vega who could point me.”
“Address.”
He takes out his phone.
“Easy. Show me.”
He looks it up and lets me read it. Archie Vega. Contact info. I pocket his phone and text Viktor the details. Viktor will be on him in ten minutes.
The waitress brings raki for him, and a vodka for me.
“You couldn’t have told me that in the first place? What’s wrong with you?”
The old man sips his drink. All the old generation, they drink raki—a licorice-y cross between grappa and ouzo.
“I’ll sit here for a while and make sure you don’t warn Vega.” I down the rest of my drink, then I turn the glass around and around on the table.
Dark Mafia Prince: A Dangerous Royals romance Page 12
