Dark Mafia Prince: A Dangerous Royals romance by Annika Martin Page A
Authors: Annika Martin
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the code.”
“We can read the files now?”
“Yeah,” he says. “If we had the right files. The illegal adoptions were hidden in the basement in the fucking maintenance record files .”
“That whole raid and you took the wrong files?”
Tito comes out, Glock in hand.
“Wait! What are you doing? You’re not going back to the Worland…”
“Until Daddy wakes up, it’s what we have.”
Of course. He’ll do anything to find his brother, and when he does, he’ll love him barbarically and unconditionally.
Aleksio’s love is the dangerous kind of love that breaks all the rules. It’s him killing and kidnapping as he goes after his brother. It’s him pulling my hair and shoving his cock in my mouth.
I shouldn’t think it’s beautiful.
He turns and leaves with his guys, through the patio door, through the house.
The front door slams. Car doors slam. I stand there alone, stupidly wistful.
CHAPTER NINE
Viktor
T he area around Worland is quiet on a Sunday afternoon. We find free spaces at meters. We park a few blocks away and split up, moving through the neighborhood like shadows.
The old buildings in Chicago are very blocky. Old Moscow buildings have more imagination. I have argued with Aleksio on this point, of course.
I move alongside him. Tito and Yuri go up opposite. Others will loop around. We are all on edge.
Hitting this place a second time, it’s madness. We hide in the dark out of the afternoon sun, looking, listening.
“He may not have heard about yesterday,” Aleksio says, hopefully.
Perhaps. But if Bloody Lazarus did hear about our raid yesterday, a raid on the same day as Aldo Nikolla’s disappearance, he may very well think of Kiro. We cannot be sure what Lazarus knows. He may have found out from Ligne where Kiro is.
Our attempts to save Kiro may have gotten him killed.
Still, this thing must be done. We go forward. We hide. Listen.
They say a baby of twenty-some months cannot remember things, but I remember violence. I remember fear and death. My memories are more like dark scribbles than photographs. They are memories all the same.
I did not know they were American memories, however.
When Aleksio came to our garage in Moscow, I did not recognize him, but he recognized me.
With his television clothes and scruffy American hair, Aleksio looked very strange, very out of place; I wondered whether I had known him as a boy in the orphanage. And then he began to speak. A brother, he said.
Yuri came up behind me, amazed. Brat , he said. Yuri had heard nothing of what Aleksio said, but he looked at our faces and he knew that we were brothers. Yuri clapped his hand onto my shoulder, over and over, so happy. Yuri and I had come up in the orphanage together, always dreaming of family.
This orphanage was a favorite recruiting ground of the Russian mafia. They would adopt the strong boys and raise us like fighting dogs. Vicious to the last.
“Looks clear,” Aleksio says, seeing nothing in the alley. Tito makes a hand signal, and he and Yuri flank left with some of Aleksio’s men. Our two groups have learned to move together well in the past year. Merging our techniques—his gang, my gang.
There’s a dumpster to the left, stacked-up crates from the restaurant on the other side of the alley. We flow around it, avoiding the cameras, keeping to the shadows.
I lock eyes with Yuri across the span of alley. We wait. We let the area speak to us.
Yuri and I rose up quickly within the Bratva. I was to be a Bratva soldier until they noticed my ability to mimic American actors from the television. I could understand what they were saying when nobody else could.
They sent me to classes. I picked up the strange grammar quickly, easily. Because of my good English I was made a hit man. I even spent ten days in New York once, hunting a man who attempted to flee the Bratva. Never did I imagine I was born here, that I spent some twenty months here—not until Aleksio came to our garage and told
“We can read the files now?”
“Yeah,” he says. “If we had the right files. The illegal adoptions were hidden in the basement in the fucking maintenance record files .”
“That whole raid and you took the wrong files?”
Tito comes out, Glock in hand.
“Wait! What are you doing? You’re not going back to the Worland…”
“Until Daddy wakes up, it’s what we have.”
Of course. He’ll do anything to find his brother, and when he does, he’ll love him barbarically and unconditionally.
Aleksio’s love is the dangerous kind of love that breaks all the rules. It’s him killing and kidnapping as he goes after his brother. It’s him pulling my hair and shoving his cock in my mouth.
I shouldn’t think it’s beautiful.
He turns and leaves with his guys, through the patio door, through the house.
The front door slams. Car doors slam. I stand there alone, stupidly wistful.
CHAPTER NINE
Viktor
T he area around Worland is quiet on a Sunday afternoon. We find free spaces at meters. We park a few blocks away and split up, moving through the neighborhood like shadows.
The old buildings in Chicago are very blocky. Old Moscow buildings have more imagination. I have argued with Aleksio on this point, of course.
I move alongside him. Tito and Yuri go up opposite. Others will loop around. We are all on edge.
Hitting this place a second time, it’s madness. We hide in the dark out of the afternoon sun, looking, listening.
“He may not have heard about yesterday,” Aleksio says, hopefully.
Perhaps. But if Bloody Lazarus did hear about our raid yesterday, a raid on the same day as Aldo Nikolla’s disappearance, he may very well think of Kiro. We cannot be sure what Lazarus knows. He may have found out from Ligne where Kiro is.
Our attempts to save Kiro may have gotten him killed.
Still, this thing must be done. We go forward. We hide. Listen.
They say a baby of twenty-some months cannot remember things, but I remember violence. I remember fear and death. My memories are more like dark scribbles than photographs. They are memories all the same.
I did not know they were American memories, however.
When Aleksio came to our garage in Moscow, I did not recognize him, but he recognized me.
With his television clothes and scruffy American hair, Aleksio looked very strange, very out of place; I wondered whether I had known him as a boy in the orphanage. And then he began to speak. A brother, he said.
Yuri came up behind me, amazed. Brat , he said. Yuri had heard nothing of what Aleksio said, but he looked at our faces and he knew that we were brothers. Yuri clapped his hand onto my shoulder, over and over, so happy. Yuri and I had come up in the orphanage together, always dreaming of family.
This orphanage was a favorite recruiting ground of the Russian mafia. They would adopt the strong boys and raise us like fighting dogs. Vicious to the last.
“Looks clear,” Aleksio says, seeing nothing in the alley. Tito makes a hand signal, and he and Yuri flank left with some of Aleksio’s men. Our two groups have learned to move together well in the past year. Merging our techniques—his gang, my gang.
There’s a dumpster to the left, stacked-up crates from the restaurant on the other side of the alley. We flow around it, avoiding the cameras, keeping to the shadows.
I lock eyes with Yuri across the span of alley. We wait. We let the area speak to us.
Yuri and I rose up quickly within the Bratva. I was to be a Bratva soldier until they noticed my ability to mimic American actors from the television. I could understand what they were saying when nobody else could.
They sent me to classes. I picked up the strange grammar quickly, easily. Because of my good English I was made a hit man. I even spent ten days in New York once, hunting a man who attempted to flee the Bratva. Never did I imagine I was born here, that I spent some twenty months here—not until Aleksio came to our garage and told
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