Mafia Romance

by Aleatha Romig, Skye Warren, Annika Martin, Natasha Knight, Kaye Blue, Michelle St. James, Renee Rose, Parker S. Huntington, Alexis Abbott, Willow Winters

  “Don’t you see? If my dad sent you away, it was to protect you! People always believed her crazy predictions.”

  Aleksio gets another text.

  “Look at me!”

  He won’t.

  “You were like a brother to me…” With a thundering heart I picture the way he slid his finger into his mouth. The hot, dark things it put into my mind.

  Not like a brother.

  A lock of hair falls over his forehead as he does more phone stuff.

  I swallow past the dryness in my mouth. “And now you’re trashing your own family’s house? It’s your house now that you’re back. You’re alive. You’re fabulously wealthy. People will want to know you’re back!”

  He snorts with bitter amusement. “You think I should’ve just walked in here? Maybe with a fruit basket?”

  The ice in his heart chills me. Aleksio.

  We had a secret fort in the yard that last summer. We’d sit in it and draw while our moms drank and our dads ran their crime empire together. Back then we didn’t understand our wealth was built on a mountain of blood and violence—not consciously, anyway. But I think we felt the poison. Aleksio would draw robot cars. I would draw horses. Maybe we were both imagining escape.

  Our link is still there. It has to be. “You’re not going to kill me, Aleksio.”

  A muscle in his jaw fires.

  “I know who you really are. I know your beautiful heart.”

  “Not a theory you wanna test.”

  “Maybe it’s not a theory you want to test.”

  He looks at me straight on. So cold. “People change, Mira, and sometimes they lose their fucking soul.”

  The honesty of his words hits me. Being around juvenile court means I’ve seen firsthand the way innocent kids can be robbed of hope, made into monsters. Predators. But there’s always some sliver of humanity in them left. I have to believe that to do what I do.

  We were nine when I watched Aleksio’s little casket get lowered into the ground. Not too late to turn a kid dark.

  I can’t believe he’ll kill me—I refuse to believe it. But what about Dad? Whether he finds Kiro or not, he won’t have a choice—not after the way he treated him today. You don’t take shots at Aldo Nikolla and his daughter unless you’re willing to go all the way.

  I examine his sooty lashes. His dark brows. So familiar.

  He eyes our mansion, like he hates the mansion itself. The muscle guys melt off to the sides, to the cars. He can’t possibly think Dad had any involvement in what the Valcheks did. And what’s up with Little Vik—Viktor? The Russian accent, the barbarian attitude.

  “If Dad had anything to do with sending your brothers away, it was to save their lives. Don’t be dense, Aleksio—think about this. Everyone knows it was a Valchek hit.”

  He says nothing.

  I suck in a breath. “Leksio D, Leksio D, slowest runner you’ll ever see.” I don’t know why I say it. A stupid taunt from the cobwebs of my memory.

  His glare is cold as steel. “You need to concentrate on not pissing me off, and you definitely need to stop acting like I’m the boy you remember.”

  A familiar roar sounds from behind me. I spin around.

  Viktor and some other scary guy pull up in Dad’s pearl-green Maserati convertible.

  From behind me, Aleksio says, “You especially need to be careful with Viktor. He wasn’t raised right.”

  Somebody comes up and puts a duffel into Aleksio’s hand.

  Aleksio takes my shoulder and pushes me toward the car.

  “Did you get my coffee mug?” I ask.

  Aleksio turns to the guy. The guy nods.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “You think I got it to be nice, Kitten?” He yanks open the back door and shoves me in, then crowds in next to me. “You should never let your enemies know what you care about.”

  I buckle my seatbelt. “You’re not my enemy.”

  He reaches out and pushes my hair off my forehead, tucking it behind my ear. “I’m the most dangerous enemy you’ll ever have because every time you look at me, you see somebody good. Every time you look at me, you fool yourself about what I really am.”

  My pulse races. The boy I knew never felt dangerous like this.

  “What are you, then?”

  Aleksio says nothing as Viktor pulls out. He turns to watch our house as we head down the long, stately drive.

  Technically his house, now that he’s back from the dead. There’s something strange about the way he keeps his eyes fixed there. Then he takes out his phone and pulls up some kind of app. “You ready?” he asks.

  “For what?” I ask.

  He nods at the house. “Watch.”

  I twist around. “What am I watching?”

  He pushes a button on his phone. There’s a loud pop from inside of the house, and then two more, and then a roar and a flash. Instinctively I duck as the place goes up in a flaming fireball—several of them. Heat blasts my face even as far away as we are. I touch my hair to make sure it’s not ablaze as flames rage through. Nearby treetops catch fire, too.

  “What have you done?” I whisper, horrified. Our beautiful mansion. Destroyed.

  “Is that a rhetorical question?” he asks.

  “Our home.”

  “Not anymore.” There’s a note of warning in the way he says it. Not anymore. Don’t push him.

  I’m too stunned to answer.

  He holds out his hand. “Purse.” I hand it over, and he goes through it. He throws out my phone and my mace, then hands the purse back to me.

  Life as I know it burns behind us.

  Aleksio puts on a pair of aviator shades, cutting himself off from me there in the windy back seat, dark freckle on his right cheekbone like a tiny dark jewel. He’s right next to me, but a million miles away, his curls like dusky flags, slapping in the wind and sun.

  I shouldn’t want him to look at me again. I shouldn’t want to see his eyes, to feel that intensity. He’s no longer that boy I knew, seeing impossible things in the clouds—I understand that, now.

  We head south on the highway, and I press him about my father. He’ll tell me only that he’s alive, and that they’re planning on keeping him that way.

  For now. He doesn’t have to add that part. We both know it’s there.

  Dad.

  Dad promised me that he’d gone legit over the past decade, but I’m not stupid. If he’s legit, it’s only as part of a relationship with guys like Bloody Lazarus, who runs the bad stuff now. Less stress for Dad’s heart.

  The wind presses his dark suit to his chest, outlining his muscles, seeming almost to caress them. Now and then he texts.

  We’re heading for Chicago, right into the center of Dad’s operations. Right where Lazarus probably is.

  The miles fly by.

  Just over the Illinois line we pull off at a gas station attached to a trucker store, a lone outpost at the center of weedy fields. I think about my chances of making a break for it. No way would Aleksio have muscle in this area, ready to step out of the weeds.

  Or would he? He’s twenty-eight now. He’s been off building his army—that’s what you do when you’re readying to go up against a man like my father.

  They all get out. I get out, too, just checking how far my leash extends. Viktor starts filling up the car. Aleksio gives the other guy money and writes a list of things he wants from the market inside.

  Tito, they call him. Tito wears a winter-type hat over his hair, which would be jet black if it weren’t bleached at the tips.

  I slip over to a square pillar that holds up the ceiling over the pumps.

  Aleksio comes around to where I am, sunglasses propped up on his head. They may as well be down for all that I can read his eyes. “Going somewhere?”

  I back up. Hit the pillar.

  “What is it, Kitten?” he asks.

  “I told you not to call me that.”

  He tilts his head. “I’ll call you what I want.”

&nbs

p; “I want an update on Dad,” I say.

  “I want to know what you’re thinking.”

  Anger flares in my chest. He can’t even give me an update on Dad? “You want to know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking that you turned out to be a real bastard, Aleksio. It’s sad.”

  There’s a hint of humor on his face as he searches my eyes.

  “Am I amusing you?”

  “I wouldn’t say you amuse me, Mira.”

  I can’t help but feel like he’s looking right through me, reading my secrets like the pages of a magazine. I flatten myself against the cement pillar, wanting, needing to escape his gaze.

  “What, then?” I ask.

  “You have to ask? That blog shit? Mira Mira? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  I plant a finger on his chest. “Step back.”

  He grabs my finger. “You’re not in charge.”

  “Ow.”

  He tightens his grip. He bends it.

  I get the feeling he’s testing himself, seeing how far he’ll go. I want to tell him he won’t do it, that this isn’t him. But what if it is? “Don’t,” I whisper.

  “Don’t what?”

  “I’ll scream for help.”

  “You could do that,” he says. “You could probably make a run for it here. I don’t know what kind of runner you are these days. Not fast enough to get away from me, but you could make trouble if you got the right person on your side, couldn’t you?”

  My pulse races as he lets go of my finger and matches his palm to mine, knits his fingers into mine.

  So strangely intimate. Like lovers. “Are you thinking about it, Mira?”

  Yes.

  “You could even get the cops involved and tell them the story. They hold you while they call around. The feds get involved at that point.”

  There’s a shadow of a smile in his eyes as he examines our clasped hands. Our hands knit together are a perversion of what we are.

  It shouldn’t feel exciting.

  “But you can’t be sure which cops are mine, can you?” he says. “And you gotta think, how concerned are the authorities going to be about some bastard attacking enemy number one’s family? A lot of them would be team bastard.”

  My heart sinks. Of course he’s right. The cops who aren’t on Dad’s payroll would probably be amused. They’d help—in the way that cops “help” when they’d rather not help.

  I have to get away. Save myself.

  A man and a woman come out of the gas station with giant sodas. They smile, and Aleksio breaks out a beautiful smile that’s like the sun. He’s breathtaking.

  It shakes me to see it, but I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. People were always galvanized by him, even back when he was nine. He was never the star runner or the star ball player or anything, but the kids always wanted to be on his team.

  These two coming out of the gas station don’t even see me. They would never notice I’m here against my will; all they see is an impossibly beautiful man in a suit at a gas station in the middle of nowhere.

  “They look like a nice couple,” he says softly, pressing the back of my hand to the rough concrete pillar. “How much would it suck if things got hot? If all of these nice people die because you got stupid?”

  I hate how intensely aware of him I am. I feel him all around me—on my skin. But he’s acting like a predator—of course I’d be aware of him. The prey is always aware of the predator.

  Another car pulls up. A capable-looking man wearing a T-shirt with a firefighter insignia gets out. That’s close to a cop. Sort of.

  I gasp as Aleksio cups my right cheek, staring into my eyes.

  “You’re not playing fair,” I say.

  “Really? That’s your complaint here? I’m not playing fair?”

  “One of them.” His hand on my cheek feels electric.

  He studies my eyes. He thinks I’m fucking with him. “And you don’t want to try anything. Not with this guy, either. He’d get involved, and it wouldn’t go well for anyone.”

  I regard my old friend with a steady gaze. Like I don’t care. Like I’m not scared. “Seriously, Aleksio, you can’t just kidnap the most powerful man in Chicago. And his daughter.”

  He smiles. Kidnapping us is exactly what he’s done, of course. His smile creates a sparkly sensation that goes clear to my core. It’s messed up that I think he’s hot. I push him, and he steps back, smiling like we’re just playing.

  There’s a clunk over by the car. Gas gun settling back in its place. The clang of the little door to the gas tank.

  “Aleksio.” Viktor.

  The other guy, Tito, comes out with a white plastic bag.

  Aleksio takes my hand and leads me to the car like a lover, opening the door for me, so chivalrous. Unless you feel how tightly he grips. “Ladies first.”

  I get in.

  We take off, and Aleksio grabs the bag. He passes around waters and candy. He gives me a bottle, a small baggie of English toffee, and panties.

  I hold the stuff, stunned.

  “Sorry, Kitten. Made in China was the best designer label they had.”

  He thinks I’m surprised by the panties, but it’s the chocolate-covered toffee that gets me. English toffee is my favorite. Always has been. It’s a treat I never let myself have these days, because if I start eating it, I’ll never stop.

  Did he remember?

  He turns to stare out at the cornfields. “Go ahead.”

  “Thanks,” I say. The panties are the cheap synthetic three-for-the-price-of-one kind attached by a plastic thingy that goes through a cardboard square. I yank them apart and put one of the pairs on, shimmying them up under my skirt. I feel the heat of his gaze on my skin.

  I look over. I catch him watching and a wave of lust goes through me. I tell myself he’s a monster now. I tell myself he shouldn’t turn me on.

  He’s everything I was trying to get away from.

  With a bored expression, he tears into his Snickers bar.

  I pick at the string on the toffee. It’s the kind of candy you’d find in the sad little “fancy” section of a rural gas station. “Why’d you pick this?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “You had him buy me English toffee.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  Did he remember or not? I break off a corner, chew it indifferently. I need to get my mind around the fact that I’m in actual danger. I need to be smart. To get away.

  I ask a few times where we’re going, what we’re doing, but Aleksio only talks when he feels like it. He’s back to surly silence.

  People change, and sometimes they lose their fucking soul, he said. Maybe that’s the best he can do, warn me who he is now.

  We drive through Chicago, through areas my father controls—or controlled. I’m not really sure about his status now.

  But if Bloody Lazarus has found out what happened, there’s going to be trouble. That I know.

  It’s Saturday afternoon. No rush hour. Aleksio’s making phone calls. Marshaling troops.

  We pull up in a garbage-strewn alley on the poor end of a business district where a lot of charities operate. The buildings on either side are nondescript office buildings, not old enough to be cool but not new enough to be nice. One of the white vans from the house pulls in behind us. A few guys with assault weapons come out, some of them Russian, some Albanian-American.

  I’m alone in the car for a second, and then Aleksio’s back with handcuffs. He cuffs me to the door. The brush of his knuckles sends electricity rippling over my skin. I raise my gaze to his, fighting the sensation.

  “We’ll be a few minutes.” He pauses, then continues, “You still have a chance to get out of this alive. Don’t blow it by hitting the horn or something.”

  “Okay,” I breathe.

  He regards me strangely, like he felt it, too, then he turns away with a grunt.

  The pack of them are at a shadowy side door. An alarm beeps and stops, and then they’re inside. Except for Tito, who remains outside, guarding.

  I lean all the way over, trying to check where I am, see whether anybody is around to signal. I catch sight of a small metal plate over the door. Worland.

  That’s the place my father told them about. Worland Agency, he said.

  Moving fast—they didn’t even case the place. This tells me they think Kiro’s in danger. Obviously. Why else take a risk like they did today?

  And what happens to me if they can’t find him? Worse—what if he turns up dead?

  Chapter Five

  Aleksio

  The adoption agency smells like new carpet and Lysol. There are two rows of cubicles surrounded by meeting rooms and a shitload of file drawers and computers.

  The guys are flinging open drawers and pulling the lids off file boxes, packing up everything that could lead to Kiro.

  Kiro is vulnerable as hell right now.

  He probably has no idea of his true identity. He could be a guy working in a suburban carwash or college kid sitting in Accounting 101. No idea what’s coming at him. And if anybody figures out what we’re up to, there are some heavy hitters coming for him.

  It’s a miracle Aldo Nikolla and Lazarus didn’t kill him or Viktor that bloody night, considering the prophecy. My guess is that Nikolla didn’t have the balls to kill two tiny kids. He thought he could lose them. Thought they’d stay lost.

  And we thought we had time.

  Tito and the rest of my crew knew I’d found Viktor. We tried to keep it a secret, but we recently found out the whole of the Russian mafiya has been gossiping about how I came from America to find Viktor. How I embraced him and told him he is my brother. How I asked him to help get vengeance and find Kiro.

  Fucking gangster grapevine.

  The guys are taking every file and every shred of paper related to the year our family ended. A few of them are downloading the computer files. We’ll take the laptops, too. I help stack the boxes at the door. I get updates from the guys watching across the street. So far, so good.

  Worland is a charity that has a pregnancy counseling and adoption arm—I vetted it on the way over. It’s the kind of place people bring babies they don’t want, no questions asked—that’s one of the things on their home page. And apparently it’s also the kind of place a guy sends a baby he wants lost.

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