My heart pounds. People are looking at me funny. The guys I know well aren’t saying anything. As if they’re holding their breath. I don’t see Dad.
Lazarus clasps his hands over his suit jacket, beaming like the psycho that he is. People who don’t know Lazarus think he has a nice smile, but when you know him, you know his smile is never nice.
“Mira. Always a breath of fresh air. Look who’s here, Aldo.”
I hear a wheezing sound from the corner of the room. “Mira.”
Dad is slumped in the corner of the room, pale, wheezing. He’s in a bed of curtains below a tilted curtain rod, as if he pulled them down.
I rush to his side. “Dad!”
“Kitten.”
All my anger evaporates, seeing him in danger. “Is it your heart?”
Stupid question. Of course.
I pull away the curtains and loosen his tie. “Did anybody call 911? He needs medical attention!” I look around at the dozen guys just standing there. “What the fuck?” I take out Tito’s phone. I don’t know the code but you can always dial 911.
Lazarus comes over and snatches it from my hand. “I don’t think so, Kitten.” He slips it in his pocket. “Say your goodbyes.”
They won’t help him? My blood goes cold, and I see this for what it is: a takeover. All these men are loyal to Bloody Lazarus now.
Why did they even keep him alive? In case they needed persuasion to get me here? Of course.
I look into Dad’s eyes. He’s in pain. “Do you have your pills?”
He moves his hand then and I see the blood he’s been stopping up with his hand, blood all over the white shirt under his jacket. Gut shot. “I tried to stop him—I’d hoped you’d be safe. But Jashari—the ME—he called me to tell me you’d been there, and Lazarus…”
Lazarus was in control and sent people to get me. And predictably, I went to the cemetery.
“Daddy.” Tears blur my vision. “Oh, Dad.” I take his other hand. He feels cold. I should hate him. Why can’t I make myself hate him?
“I know what I did,” he whispers. “I know what Jashari told you.”
“Why?”
“She was going to take you away from me…never let me see you again. I couldn’t bear that.”
“So you killed her?”
“I was weak. I was wrong. I’m so sorry—I never meant to…”
I’m sobbing. My voice sounds gravelly. “She was my mother!”
“I won’t ask for your forgiveness—it was unforgivable, what I did.” His breathing is fucked up. I squeeze his hand. “Every day I died a little, to see you sad. But you bounced back. Always so fierce and optimistic, my Mira. And the way you knew your own mind—you were a gift to me I never deserved.”
Images tumble through my memory like bits in a kaleidoscope. Him swinging me around on the playground. The time we won the three-legged race. When he taught me how to sail out on Lake Geneva. Setting up that stupid blog as cover so I could be my own person. His crimes don’t erase that love, much as I wish they would. I wish it could be simple like that.
“God, Dad,” I whisper.
The guys are on the other side of the room, talking and laughing and smoking. Like it’s a party.
“I had your back sometimes, didn’t I?”
“You did.” This seems to hearten him. “You have to hang on,” I say. “I’m going to think of something. I’m getting you out of here.”
A strange look comes over Dad’s face. “He didn’t do it.” He’s looking at my hand. My finger that’s supposedly gone. “Pull your sleeve over your hand. Don’t let Lazarus see.”
I pull down my sleeve. His breathing is wrong. “Hang on, Dad.”
“I wanted too much.”
“Shhh. You’re okay.”
“Lazarus is dangerous. I made him into a powerful monster. It’s right my monster should bite me, that you should hate me.”
“Oh, Dad—”
“I was so proud of you.” His voice is barely a whisper. “Listen, they’re mounting an attack on Aleksio and Little Vik. They figured out where they are from the GPS on the car you stole.” My eyes widen. “Shhh. Once they’re successful, they’ll kill you. You have to get away.”
“He’s sending men to Aleksio’s now? How many?”
Dad looks at me warily. “Everything. Those boys won’t survive it. It’s already too late.”
My heart pounds.
“You can survive it, though, Kitten. You will have one opening. Take your opening. This is the last thing I give you.”
“Dad!”
He squeezes my hand and fumbles with his lapel, pulls out a blade. I stare out in horror. He’s going out. He’s going to try to take Lazarus with him. “Call him over.”
“No.” They’re arguing and laughing. Fuck! They’re going to surprise Aleksio. Kill him. Maybe he’s not back yet. But I’m sure he is. Tito said he’d be back in “a few.” It’s been more than a few.
“Mira,” Dad says. “I won’t survive this. Let me choose this.”
It can work for sure—it’ll take the focus off of me long enough for me to get out. Especially if he kills Lazarus. But it’s suicide.
“Call him over.”
“No!”
He does it himself. “Lazarus! A word,” he calls. “A deal. A deal for my daughter’s life. A secret.” He nudges me away.
I stand, wrapping my arms around myself. I meet Dad’s eyes. He mouths the words, Got your back.
Lazarus strolls over, stands towering over my father, there on the floor. “What?” He reaches an arm around my neck and pulls me to him before I can move any farther away. “Why kill her when she’s so pretty? Is that what you’re wondering? Maybe I’ll put her in Valhalla.”
My heart thunders. Whatever Valhalla is, I know it’s can’t be good. My father mumbles something. All I hear is “Barbados accounts.”
Lazarus eases off, but he’s suspicious. I twist away. “He needs medical attention!”
“Shut up,” Lazarus says. “What was that, old man?”
My father mumbles something more about Barbados accounts. My heart pounds. I back away as Lazarus kneels in front of my father. My father grabs Lazarus’s tie. He’s going for his neck with the blade. Men close in.
I head for the door, pull it open, and run like hell for the stairway down the hall.
Lazarus’s voice—“Get her!”
I yank open the door, tears in my eyes. If Lazarus survived, it means that Dad didn’t.
Footsteps behind me. Strong hands close onto my shoulders just as I hit the first landing. I kick and twist as Rondo drags me back into the suite, back to a smiling Lazarus. Dad’s lying in the corner at the foot of the drapes, eyes open, blood everywhere.
I fall to my knees.
Lazarus just smiles. “Sucks when things don’t work out how you plan.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Viktor
Mira is gone when we return—gone with Tito’s car, his phone, his gun. Tito tells us what happened.
I thought Aleksio would be enraged, but he seems more hurt. He can’t believe she’s escaped—again. “I thought she…I thought we…” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to. He thought she was with him, that she would wait to see us together with Kiro. He was wrong.
“You kidnapped her, brat,” I say. “You filmed her sucking your cock. Threatened her. She tried to get away once already.”
“But—”
“But what? But you saved her from getting her finger cut off?”
“We were together.” He calls everywhere. He sends two men out to look for her. Our tech guy tries to activate Tito’s GPS remotely. They find it disabled. Of course. Aleksio looks like he wants to crush the phone. “She won’t even answer.” He storms into the study.
I go to my bedroom and check my laptop to the Valhalla feed. There are webcams to all the girls’ rooms, including the one we chose for me to bid on. The one we chose for me is not the one I watch.
There�
�s only woman I watch in Valhalla.
I haven’t slept at all since I saw her on the webcam.
I place the laptop on my bed and sit in front of it.
Turn, I think. She will not.
She’s dressed as a nun, and she prays at the side of her small bed to a small icon. Her blonde hair peeks out from the bottom of her head scarf. I would know that hair anywhere. I know that cheekbone, that way of sitting. I know that walk as she steps out of the room—to use the toilet, or maybe she’s called from the room. Even the casual way she avoids the camera, never showing her face…this, too, I know.
I don’t need her to show her face. I know it’s her. I know.
I’m not the only one who wants her to show her face. Men type things to her. Some of the girls answer when men type things to them, but she never does. She sees the notes—there’s a monitor there for her, always on, always lit. What the other men type come across the screen. Sometimes lewd, sometimes not. Some speculate that she doesn’t know English.
She knows English. She’s quite fluent. Not so much as me, but close.
There’s a dollar number below her, as there is with all the girls. For the nun, the bidding is highest. A night with her is well into six figures now.
This is Valhalla, the brothel, the nerve center of Aldo Nikolla’s billion-dollar flesh trade. We don’t know where Valhalla is located; nobody does. This will soon change.
We’ve set up a bulletproof identity and an account for me with a credit card to match. I’m bidding on the cheapest girl, a young scrawny one named Nikki. Nikki’s virginity auction closes soonest. The plan is for me to get in there and hook up surveillance. It’s the scrawny girl I should be watching, but it’s the nun I can’t take my eyes from.
A knock. Yuri.
I grumble and shut the lid. I can’t let Yuri know.
He comes in. His gaze goes to the closed laptop. “What?”
“Valhalla feed. Disgusting. So many of our women in there being auctioned off to the highest-paying…” I attempt to channel my emotion into it. My emotion needs somewhere to go. “Virgins, girls. A nun, even.”
Though I happen to know she is not a nun.
I force myself to ask about the search for Mira.
I pull up the Valhalla feed on my phone as Yuri speaks. I felt sure she would turn just a moment ago, but no. Tanechka and I used to be able to sense each other. Why can’t she sense me now?
I want to tell Yuri what I’ve discovered, but he’d say I am crazy. I threw her off the side of a cliff into Dariali Gorge. She could not have survived. Yet there she is. Alive. It has to be her.
I fall back into the picture.
Turn, dammit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mira
I watch two of Bloody Lazarus’s men roll a massive plastic bag up around my father’s legs and over his bloody body. Body bag, I think dimly as they close it with a zip tie and haul him away. I mouth the words “I love you” only to look over and catch Lazarus’s cruel smile.
“Touching,” he says. “But it’s nothing compared to what I’ll do to your boyfriend.”
My heart thunders, but I manage to plaster on a smile. You never tell your enemies what’s important to you—Aleksio was right about that. “You mean the boyfriend I ran away from? Stole a car from and Tasered a guy to get away from? Maybe that’s how your girlfriends act toward you, but—”
Lazarus shoves me to the wall, hand on my throat.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I rasp.
“Show me your hands, then.”
I curl my hands into fists deep under my sleeves.
Lazarus laughs and tightens his grip around my throat. I cough and sputter. I start to claw at his massive hand.
He lets me go. “I already saw. You think I wouldn’t notice? Maybe you ran, but it wasn’t about getting away from him. Don’t lie to me again.”
My mouth goes dry.
He watches my eyes. “The sleeping king. Well, he’ll be asleep when we’re through with him, won’t he? And you’ll be our plan B. It’s good to have a backup plan, don’t you think?”
I sit there miserably and listen to their scheming. Lazarus has fifty men assembling near the day trader’s Stonybrook place. Killers. Hitters. They’re staging a mile down. Aleksio will be focused on finding me; he won’t see it coming.
At one point Lazarus looks over at me and smiles. I’m not just alive as plan B, whatever that is. He wants to see me suffer.
It’s then that Tito’s phone vibrates. Probably Aleksio again. Shit.
“They know she has the phone,” Ioannis says. “Has to be him.”
Lazarus hands it to me and presses a gun to my head. “Tell him you’re alone in the car,” he says. “You’re driving around to think. You’re coming back. Ask him to wait for you there. If you tip him off, you will die slowly.” With that he hits speaker.
“Hello?” I say before he can call me “baby” or anything like that. “Aleksio?” I say in as weird a voice as I can manage.
“Mira, where are you?”
“I’m driving around. To think.” I consider blurting it all out—they’re coming! But the men are already near. They’ll just rush him.
“Mira, what are you doing?”
“Aleksio—” I can’t focus. Lazarus is pushing the barrel of the gun harder into my temple, and it’s all I can see.
“Kiro really could be alive. We got an amazing lead on this social worker who’ll help us find him—”
I can feel the shock waves roll through the room. They didn’t think he was alive. Now they know.
“I found the folder on my mom—” I blurt.
“Mira. Baby—that’s why you left? I’m sorry—shit. I know you’re probably reeling—”
“Aleksio—” I suck in a breath. “Stay there. I’ll come back.”
“Of course I’ll stay.”
“It’ll be happy baby animals,” I say. “Okay?”
There’s a silence where I think I’ve shown my hand. Surely he’ll understand that by “happy baby animals,” I mean “blood and death.”
“I’ll wait for you,” Aleksio says. “Hurry, baby.” He cuts the connection.
“What’s happy baby animals?” Lazarus demands.
“That house is in the middle of a forest,” I say. “Baby animals frolicking around.”
“It’s fall,” Lazarus says. “Baby animals are born in spring.”
“Squirrels have two litters,” Ioannis says. “One in spring and one in fall.”
“Ioannis, you are such a fucking nerdboy.” Lazarus takes a bit of my hair and rolls it around his fingers, expression unreadable.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Aleksio
I set down the phone, heart thundering in my fucking ears. “They’re coming,” I say to Tito. I storm into Viktor’s room. “Nikolla’s on his way.”
He stands. “She told? She told where we are?”
“She warned us,” I growl. She sounded so scared. Her father wouldn’t scare her like that, would he? Shivers crawl up my spine. “It could be her father, but I think it’s Lazarus. He’s making his move, and he has Mira.”
“She told you this?”
“More or less.”
“What is more or less?”
“More or less means I know her. They’re coming, got it? They made her answer my call. She endangered herself warning us. They could be out there now.” And if they know she warned us? I can’t think about that.
“You trust her? One word and you trust her?”
“Yeah. I trust her.”
“Just like that.”
“We’re connected, Viktor. I need you to trust me on this. I just know.”
He seems to contemplate this. What is he thinking? Then just like that, he accepts it and shuts his laptop. “I understand, brat. We have that C-4. We rig the house to take them all down if they come. If not…” He shrugs.
“If we move on them like that, they’ll know Mira warned us.” �
��Happy baby animals” wasn’t the most natural comment.
“They’ll know either way. If we run or if we kill them, they’ll know.”
I scrub my hand over my face. “I need to get her out.”
A text. My tech guy comes through with a location—the Beverly Inn. Her dad keeps a suite there. I stand. “I’ll go in there and get her out before they realize what she did.”
“Brat,” Viktor says. “You can’t—”
“I love her.”
He looks surprised. Hell, I’m surprised.
“Just like that.”
“Always.”
“Aleksio,” he says darkly. Leave it to Viktor to see love and trust in a dark and tragic light. “Go, then. Take Tito. Brewer. Take all of my men.”
“Leave you?”
“Yuri and I will rig it. Then we’ll wait in the woods and pick them off. It’ll be bloody as hell.”
“Viktor—”
“We’ve done this many times. We could do this drunk.”
Mira would want to prevent more killing, to be neutral like Switzerland or something. Too late for that.
Yuri and Mischa get to work rigging the place, just like Lazarus did with the adoption agency. They’re like an Indy 500 pit crew, laying down cascading triggers. A lot of people will die. The three of them will snipe the survivors from the trees around. This won’t end the war—it’ll make it worse.
The remaining seven of us sneak out the side in case we’re being watched. We head into the forest, cram into one of the vehicles we have stashed over the ridge, and crash out the side road.
It takes forever. Viktor has agreed to text me when the action starts. We have to reach Mira before they arrive. Once they suspect her of warning us, she’s done. Does she realize what she did?
The traffic is shit. I go up on the shoulder at one point. Let the cops try to stop us. Tito argues with me, tells me to be smart.
I’m not thinking straight, I know. I just need to get to her.
Dark Mafia Prince: A Dangerous Royals romance Page 19
