Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) by Annika Martin Page B

assures me. Ona nasha dorogaya podruga, he calls her—“the one we love the most.”
    I thank him and send them back out, then I unlock Tanechka. “If you have to pee, go now. We’re leaving for a picnic.”
    She rubs her wrist, glaring at me.
    An hour later we’re parking on the lakefront. It’s a sunny, brilliant fall day, the sky a bright, almost electric blue—candy sky, she used to call it. I’ve brought her a sweater, but she doesn’t wish to put it on. Nuns back home are famously ascetic.
    No matter. I get out, grab the picnic basket and blanket, and go around to her door.
    She looks up at me warily.
    It is all I can do to stop myself from taking her cheeks and kissing her. I love her so much I can’t think.
    She doesn’t wish to get out.
    “You want me to carry you?”
    This gets her out. I give her the sweater and lead her across the pale, cool sand toward the dark water, rough with whitecaps. The beach is deserted today. People aren’t so interested in the beach in autumn. Always everything needs to be perfect for the Americans.
    She gives me one of her challenging Tanechka looks. Just this look fills my heart with love. She addresses me in Russian. “Aren’t you worried I’ll try to run off?”
    “Maybe I’d like it. Maybe I’d enjoy catching you.”
    Quickly she looks away. Sander and his men tailed us, just in case she decides to run and I can’t catch her for whatever reason. You never want to underestimate Tanechka.
    I turn and walk backwards. “This isn’t your first time in America. Did you know that? Twice we were here.”
    “In Chicago?”
    “No. Once in Omaha, once in San Francisco. You liked the old houses in San Francisco. You said they looked like frosted cookies.”
    “Hmmph.” She looks away as she so often does when I remind her of our old life. I tell myself it’s a good sign that she runs from these memories. You only run from something if it’s a threat.
    “You said you wanted to eat those houses right up.” Both times we traveled to America it was to chase and kill those who betrayed the Bratva, but I don’t say that. Omaha got quite bloody. We had to kill one person extra before it was over.
    “We were put together because we both knew English. I was born here. You didn’t know that—neither did I, until a year ago.”
    She simply watches me.
    “I was born here in Chicago to an Albanian family. I was two years old, just learning to talk, when the man my father trusted most attacked our family. Our father ran a business dynasty that stretched across the entire middle of the nation. But this man—Mira’s father—he drugged our parents and killed them.”
    “Mira? The one Aleksio loves?”
    “Yes. Her father and a man called Bloody Lazarus did it. They drugged our parents and chased them up to the nursery where my brothers and I were. My parents wanted to protect us. Instead they were slaughtered in front of us.”
    “You saw it?”
    “I remember only…impressions. Aleksio saw it all, in the reflection of a window. He was nine.”
    “No.”
    “This old hit man, Konstantin, a veteran of the Kosovo wars, he held Aleksio in the shadows, hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t scream. Konstantin saved Aleksio’s life. Our enemies spared me and Kiro, our baby brother, but they would have killed Aleksio. They tried to. All his life, killers were after Aleksio. Me, they sent me across the world to that orphanage in Moscow with no identification. They sold our bratik Kiro into an adoption ring. We still can’t find him.”
    She regards me with a look of concern, even tenderness. A nun’s compassion. Nothing more.
    “We’ll find him—we have to. Bloody Lazarus doesn’t want the three brothers to be together. He wants to kill Kiro, but we’ll find him first. We have to. He’s very vulnerable at the moment.”
    I turn and walk by her side. She sighs, as if it my nearness pains her.
    “You were always a little bit jealous of my English abilities, Tanechka. You