It was the week after Kiro was born. I was eight or nine, and Viktor was maybe two.
People have been trying to tear us apart ever since. Or, barring that, to kill at least one of us.
That would be Lazarus’s goal. He can never truly rule if all three of the Dragusha brothers are alive with the potential of uniting.
Viktor and I are hard as hell to kill. I doubt there are any guys left who are willing to try anymore. But where’s Kiro? He has no idea of any of this. No awareness of the firestorm with his name on it. He could be easy to kill.
A sitting duck.
Viktor and I found each other last year. Now we just need Kiro. Kiro’s more important than ruling or being invincible. But short of finding him, the fastest way to protect him is to take down Lazarus. Keep him hurting. Rattle every cage.
It’s about family.
A few months after the prophecy came down, Lazarus and his mentor slaughtered our parents in the nursery where we used to play. They carried off Viktor and Kiro, both screaming and crying.
I saw it all.
A family friend grabbed me and hid me before all this went down, but he wasn’t quite fast enough to get me out of the house. The best he could do was to pull me into a dark nursery nook and hold me tight while the bloodbath raged. While my brothers were taken. His arms were iron bands around me, his hand a cigar-scented seal over my mouth.
That was the last time I saw Kiro. A baby with big, bright eyes.
I make the sign again. Little boy. Ask about Kiro.
“What is this about Kiro Dragusha I hear?” Tanechka asks Charles. “Is it true Bloody Lazarus has found him? Perhaps if you tell me, perhaps I won’t make you a pincushion for my pika.” She moves her blade in a figure-eight, silver flashing in the light.
“Kiro Dragusha is dead,” Charles says. “Everyone knows.”
Viktor shoots me a glance. I shake my head grimly. Not true. I’d feel it if Kiro were dead.
“You have seen the body?” Tanechka asks.
“Not me, but people have.”
“Who?”
“Sabri, I think…”
I shake my head at Viktor. It’s bullshit. This guy doesn’t know.
We start pulling them out.
Tito comes up beside me. “It’s bad that everyone thinks he’s dead.”
“He’s not dead,” I bite out.
“I get it,” Tito says. “But the more guys think Kiro is dead, the more they want to go over to Lazarus. Be on the winning team. And the more powerful he gets. Perception is reality, man.”
“Fuck that,” I say. “The reality is that we just took down Bloody Lazarus’s most profitable operation and took ten of his guys off the street. The reality is that we’ll just keep hitting and hitting until Laz is ended and Kiro is back.” I turn to Viktor. “Get that C-4. I want this place rubble.”
Tito eyes me. “You sure? This warehouse is a nice fucking asset.”
“Now it’s a fucking message,” I growl.
Chapter Five
Kiro
Wait for my chance to escape. Destroy anybody who tries to stop me. A simple strategy. It was always so simple here.
Until her.
Morning. I catch her clean, spicy scent in the hall. Starting her rounds for the day. My body floods with heat.
I try to calm myself. I listen to her with Randall. She rips the Velcro. Pumps the pumps.
The cart squeaks nearer. My heart pounds. Lightness in my chest.
Her kindness is the most dangerous weapon they’ve brought out because it screws me up and makes me forget she’s one of them. Makes me forget she’s the enemy.
I recite my three conditions of escape: a clear head, bonds broken, gate guards distracted or incapacitated.
Three conditions. Ann is irrelevant. She’s just one of them. An enemy.
The cart wheels squeak, then stop. Four stops before she gets to me.
She doesn’t ever sit and talk with the other patients, but she almost always sits and talks to me these days.
I turn her words over in my mind in the hours after she leaves. I don’t know half the things she talks about. I don’t know what Freudian projection is. I don’t know what One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest means or what Kabul is.
I don’t understand her story about the kitten or the rubble. I can’t tell if it’s one story or many stories, or what any of it has to do with being a nurse.
The professor tried to stuff a lot of words and concepts into my head over the year he held me and studied me, but there’s a lot he didn’t teach me. I understand nothing about the pads and phones they all have. Always touching the glass to light it up.
The professor was studying me, but really I was studying him. Absorbing his language. Learning how to act like him so that he could forget what I was. So that he could forget I was dangerous. It worked.
I killed him.
And ended up in this place—a far worse place. Never mind; I’ll get out of this place, too.
Nurse Ann found herself holding the kitten in the middle of the street. Drawn by its cries. I understand that part.
The squeaky cart wheels. Another door. Another patient. Soon it will be me.
I love it and hate it when she talks to me.
It’s the worst when she sounds sad. I want to break my bonds and grab her, hold her, speak to her in soft tones like she does with me. It’s stupid to blow my one chance at escape just to comfort her.
She’s one of them.
Nurse Ann has already tried to hurt me—she ran to get Nurse Zara when she caught me staring at her.
If they understood my head was clear, they’d give me more drugs, and my chance to escape would be gone. Everything in me needs to be pointed at getting back home—not at Nurse Ann with her sad stories and pretty green eyes and the unbearable torment of her touch.
Never again.
I have to get away from them all, back to the wilderness where nobody can find me.
Home.
Ann thinks I’m playing games. She couldn’t be more wrong. I’m in a struggle for my life.
Voices. The orderlies gathering outside. Waiting for Ann.
I resolve to keep my face and eyes perfectly blank this time.
I was angry when she raised the alarm, but I still felt sorry for her when Nurse Zara made her feel stupid for thinking I was alert.
Do you need me to have one of the other staff members take him over? Nurse Ann was so upset, so distressed. God, I could feel her pain like a blade.
The impulse to break away was nearly overwhelming. I wanted to rip Nurse Zara’s throat out. I wanted to hold Nurse Ann in my arms.
My heart was racing so wildly, it was a miracle nobody noticed.
I loved the angry way she spoke after Nurse Zara scolded her, though. Fuck you, you fucking faker. I felt so proud of her for the way she refused to collapse.
I stare at the water-stained tiles above me, getting myself under control. They’re waiting for the third orderly, following the rules. They like three out there. They think three could stop me.
Three would not stop me.
I’m not good with words or technology or knowing TV or movies or the names of faraway places, but I’m good with my hands. Good at killing. I just need the perimeter guards handled—that’s the lesson I learned the last time I tried to get out. There will be a storm. A disaster. Any day now, a hole in the security will appear.
And I’ll be ready to take advantage of it.
Squeaky cart wheels. She talks with the orderlies in low tones.
I shake the thoughts from my head.
The door opens. She walks into the room. Heat floods my veins.
“Hi, 34.” The pain in her voice cuts me.
She sits so near my right hand, I can feel her warmth.
She folds her hands and rests them near my hand. So near.
I stare at the ceiling, fighting the urge to look into her eyes and show her she’s not alone here. She sighs. The sensation of
her crashes into me.
“Another shit day at Casa Fancher.” No, it’s not sadness; it’s distress. My muscles buzz with energy. I stare at the ceiling, faking blankness.
It’s here I smell Donny on her. My pulse spikes. My blood races with the need to go crazy.
Donny touched her.
Every nerve ending in my body goes on wild alert. I ball my fists before I can stop myself. I force myself to relax them. Luckily, she doesn’t see.
I remind myself that Donny touches people all the time. He touches Nurse Zara. He slaps guys on the shoulder. It doesn’t mean anything.
Still my blood races.
She’s rustling wrappers. Something’s wrong—I can tell by her face, and even if I couldn’t see her, I would know from the way she rustles wrappers. Wildly, recklessly, I study her profile for clues to her state of mind—sadness, desperation, fear? I study the swoop of her nose, the way her lips plump out in silent concentration. I love her lips.
When she’s upset, pink spots mark the skin under her cheekbones. When she’s embarrassed, pink creeps up her neck. Her emotions live at the surface of her pale skin.
She’s so pale, but her spirit is rich and wild. Her heart beats strong and true.
It’s hard not to stare at her. Hard not to imagine touching her. Feeling her warmth. Kissing her.
She takes out the computer tablet and studies the screen, tapping it now and then. I’m grateful she’s not looking at me—my eyes are anything but vacant. I imagine pulling her to me and burying my nose in her neck—that’s where her clean spicy scent comes from. Mostly from the left side of her neck. I imagine putting my nose there and sucking in her scent, of taking just that one thing for myself. Like everything might be worth that one moment of holding her.
I want to do it so badly, spots appear before my eyes.
I haven’t felt sunlight on my skin since that brief race for freedom some months back. If I ever want to feel sunshine on my skin again, I need to ignore her. I tell this to myself over and over.
I manage dull eyes just in time for her to look over at me.
“We’re going to do blood pressure first. What do you think?” Rrrrip. Velcro. “Please be low,” she whispers. “Please just be low.”
Desperation. Weariness. What happened?
My blood pressure won’t be low. Her distress is ruining my calm.
Ignore her!
It would be better if Nurse Zara sent a different nurse to manage me, but I think I would die if I couldn’t see Ann again.
Electricity slides over my skin as she takes hold of my arm. With gentle movements, she fits the cuff around my arm. The sweetness of her touch kills me, even through the gloves. What would it be like if she touched me skin to skin?
She sighs the way she sometimes does before she speaks.
Every fiber in me strains toward her. She mumbles something unintelligible about counting, then, “Fucking antiseptic.” More mumbling. Then, “If I just didn’t smell it at home. If I could go an hour without it in my nose. Like particles of smell are stuck in there. Or is it some hallucination? Fuck. Sorry.”
She rips off the cuff and repositions it. My mouth goes dry.
“Maybe I should wear that stuff mortuary workers wear, you know? Under their noses? To mask the smell? That menthol. What do you think? That menthol. A little menthol…lotta menthol.” She sighs.
Her sad sigh makes me want to rip the clouds down. She repositions the cuff and pumps. She won’t like the number.
“I should do that, huh? Anything’s better. If I could go a few days without the smell, I could sleep. It’s just the smell. It’s the smell. Of course it’s bothering me. Who wouldn’t be bothered?” She checks the numbers. “Fuck.”
You get a lot of self-control living wild. I could stay hungry for days. I could catch and kill prey with my bare hands. I could sit in a snowy glen for hours and melt the snow around my skin long before I felt cold. I used to be able to control my blood pressure here, once I’d realized that a higher number meant more attention, sometimes more drugs.
Try harder. Fight for the sunshine. Fight for your life.
She sighs. Everything about her is beautiful.
My desire to touch her twists my heart.
Chapter Six
Ann
The problem with being sleep-deprived is that you lose your center, your ballast. I feel like I’m drifting in a boat at the mercy of wind and waves.
I tell myself that people go without sleep for days on end all the time. I tell myself it’s fine.
It’s not fine, though.
I’m tired. Mentally fragile as a tissue. I cried on the way driving here because of a Tom Petty song on the radio. Fucking Tom Petty, right?
It doesn’t help that Donny was out in the parking lot when I arrived. He popped up out of nowhere and scared the shit out of me.
It was pretty clear that he was waiting for me. Thank goodness I had my keychain in my hand with a mini-canister of mace attached. I smiled and twirled it on my finger, then clasped it, making sure he saw it. A silent threat.
A man like Donny, he’s had mace in his face before.
We went into the facility together with its fog of antiseptic smell. Of course I had to ditch my mace with my keys in my locker before I passed through security. Mace and keys are on the list of things you’re not supposed to bring in. Can’t have the patients get hold of anything they could use as a weapon.
Donny smiled and headed through security ahead of me. I let him get some distance, then I went through.
Without the mace, my self-defense skills amount to what places to kick a guy. A guy like Donny would be ready for those kicks.
I said hi to the other staffers in the hall. Most grudgingly said hi back. It’s better to force people to pretend to act civil—that’s the decision I’ve come to.
The antiseptic smell is strong today. Sometimes I have this feeling that the smell will cling to me and chase me even after I quit here. Maybe it was already there. Maybe it seeped into my soul after the hospital bombing. It never bothered me before that.
A lot of soldiers who see action end up with tinnitus, a permanent ringing in the ears, from exposure to explosions or loud gunfire. Maybe the antiseptic smell is my tinnitus. The smell. The screams. The songs that didn’t work to cover the screams.
Just do the job and get out, I remind myself for the zillionth time. And no more thinking about Patient 34. No more wondering about his history, no more wondering whether he’s faking his stupor. No more.
Yet an hour later I’m sitting at his bedside, studying his eyes.
He stares at the ceiling with his hellfire beauty. He feels…unusually alert.
His blood pressure is going to be up this time, I just know it. I fit the cuff around his arm. I get it crooked and redo it. “Calm and steady,” I say, kind of to both of us.
I watch the numbers stabilize. Too high. This is the kind of number I’d need to report.
“Fuck!”
I have this feeling that if I report it, Zara will come and get a normal reading like the past two times, and it will be another demerit. I could enter a fake number, but what if something is really wrong? It’s a huge load of toxic chemicals they’re giving this guy.
“I’m going to try this again in a minute. We’ll pause and rest.”
I take a deep breath, modeling restfulness. I glance over at the backs of two orderlies’ heads through the window that looks out into the hall. On their phones.
“Yup.” I turn back to 34. I study the proud line of his nose, the curve of his cheekbone. He’s beautiful in a stormy way, a statue hewn in hell, hair black as night. Short downy beard. He has a very Mediterranean look—as though he has Italian or Greek or maybe Middle Eastern heritage. I shouldn’t think he’s hot. He’s in his early twenties and I’m almost thirty. I’m his nurse. He’s supposedly criminally insane. Or is he?
“I would give anything for your story,” I say. “And seriously—no name? No hist
ory? It’s like putting a lit sign over your door saying, ‘We’re hiding something about this guy.’”
He keeps up his blank stare, eyes the color of fire. Occasional blink. He doesn’t look aware, but he feels aware.
And what if he is? But if he was sane and aware, the boredom and immobility would drive anybody out of their mind. I rest a gloved hand on his arm, so solid under my fingers.
“We’re going to go again. We’re going to sit here, and then do the BP again. I could do the blood draw first. But I’m not going to poke your arm and then squeeze it with the cuff like an asshole. Unless I did it on the other side. Hmmm. What do you think?”
I decide it’s not a bad idea. I move the chair to the other side of him and do the draw. He doesn’t react to the prick at all. I fill the tiny vial and drop it into the marked tube.
One thing down. I take a centering breath, filling my lungs with the antiseptic smell.
“Okay.” I set my hand on the bed next to his muscular arm. It’s ironic that my presence seems to shoot his BP. I find his presence calming.
Another deep breath. “We’re okay. And you know what? The kitten is okay. And I’m not there.”
I scratch my finger back and forth on the sheet, so cheap and coarse I can feel the grain through the glove. Sometimes this thing happens where I forget about it momentarily, but then I get this feeling of dread, and then I think, What bad thing am I forgetting? And then I remember the kitten.
“It’s okay. I fucking saved it, right? But in my mind, it’s still in trouble. Trapped there.”
I sigh.
“It could be worse. I could be talking to a whiskey bottle, right? I know what you’re thinking. Many kittens die in the world. Why did that one kitten take me down? Yeah, that is definitely the question of the day. You hit it right on the nose, 34. Nobody asked me, but that’s what they all wonder. It’s like death or cancer or something. Nobody wants to ask. They think you want to forget. They don’t know you’re still in it. Really, I don’t want to talk about it.”
Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Page 4