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

“She ate when you starved. Laughed when you cried. Kept safe while you hid. But I think that’s not what came through.”

  “Maybe I was jacking off,” I say.

  He smiles. “You are good at that.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “You are good at answering a question with a question. That’s what you did just now. Like a fighter. Slipping the hit.”

  I look away. He’s right, of course. I spent long hours watching her, wondering how she was faring. If she’d found other friends.

  I would try to remember what it was like to feel safe. To have people who care for me. I owe everything to Konstantin, but we weren’t like a family. More like gunsmith and gun.

  A call comes in. The investigator has tracked down the old Worland director to a yoga class. “I’ll have him within the hour,” he says.

  Viktor is back at his gun cleaning, A-1 mobster that he is.

  I pull out the parmesan. Then I get an idea for another angle to pursue. I call Tito. “That accountant old man Nikolla used—Ligne. Go back at him. Act like we got something new. Try to shake him that way.”

  “We decided Ligne knows nothing,” Viktor says once I get off the phone. “He was kept in the dark.”

  “Just something new to try. We have these few hours.”

  Viktor holds part of the action to the light. He tends to channel his passion into weaponry, just like Konstantin. He fucks women now and then, but he’s really about the guns. “You really think the old accountant holds something back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t want to show the movie to the old man,” he observes.

  I let the chopping fill the silence.

  “Don’t let the breaking game break you, brother.”

  She’s lying in a deck chair when I go out there with the plates. Book in her lap, face to the sun.

  She looks good, but not as good as when she was sucking my dick in that hotel room, eyes cloudy with lust above blotches of mascara.

  The Russians are invisible around the perimeter now, but she knows they’re there. Growing up, Mira and I were always aware of our bodyguards. We bonded over our hatred of being watched. We had fun slipping them, like it was a game. Mira would be laughing and running, same as me.

  I set two plates down on the table and pull out a chair. “Come on,” I growl.

  “Any word about my dad?”

  “Not awake yet. Come on.”

  She looks out at the forest perimeter. “Any leads on who can give us the key to the code?”

  “Our guy’s in pursuit. He tracked him to a yoga class.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  “Doesn’t mean he has the code. We might still go with plan B.”

  She frowns. Not a fan of plan B. “Dad told you everything he could. He wouldn’t gamble me.”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her she’s letting her optimism keep her stupid. Such a Mira thing to do, believing in him like that. Believing in the goodness in people. A luxury she got, growing up in peace like she did.

  Part of me wants to take it away from her.

  A bigger part of me wants her to keep it, I guess, because I just yank her chair out another noisy inch.

  She gets up. Comes over and eyes the food. “You gonna shove this in my mouth, too?”

  I smile. Just a smile and she goes red. She knows I’m remembering. Thinking about a replay. The hotness of that scene runs thick between us.

  “Sit the fuck down,” I growl.

  She sits.

  She stiffens when I touch her glossy ponytail, impossibly smooth. All those pictures. The smiling girl in the perfect life. I pull her ponytail aside and touch the spot at the back of her neck. Soft and secret. Sensitive. It’s a good spot. A spot I love. “Maybe I will shove it in your mouth,” I say. “I bet you’d enjoy that.”

  Red floods her cheeks and the back of her neck.

  “Hard and fast and mean. How’s that sound? Because you liked it fucked up.”

  She turns up to look at me. “I did kind of like it fucked up,” she confesses. “I don’t know what to think about that.”

  My heart pounds. Only Mira would come at me with an honest confession. Most people hold their shields down tight, but not Mira. She lifts them. She shows you her heart.

  You can never have her. I repeat Viktor’s words like a mantra. You can never have her. Never have her.

  “I’ll be honest, part of me is just a little horrified I was into it, but I was so into it. In normal life, I’d be mad if a guy was so tyranical with me. But in sex? I loved when you…” she lowers her voice… “when you grabbed the back of my head and…you know, shoved into my face? I never thought I’d like that kind of thing. But it was hot, don’t you think?”

  I stare down at her, breathless. I saw fucking stars, that’s what I think. I want to do it again, that’s what I think. I’m supposed to be focusing on Kiro, not thinking about dragging her into the bedroom.

  “It was so dirty and forbidden. I felt like we went somewhere, or just were weirdly connected in this new way and—”

  I close my fist around the ponytail and twist.

  Her lips part. Her eyes have caramel-colored flecks in the sunshine. Like shards of beer glass.

  I want her so bad, I might go up in flames. This is a dangerous game, and not just for her.

  “A connection?” I growl. “Wake up. I fucked your face and took a movie of it.”

  “Yeah, I remember that part.”

  “So don’t make it into some encounter of sensual exploration. I think all those fumes from shoe glue went to your head or something.” I give her hair a twist and let it go.

  She frowns and puts her napkin in her lap and picks up her fork. She pivots it on the end tine, making a little arc. “Oh, Aleksio.”

  “Oh, Aleksio? Really? That’s what you want to say to me right now?”

  “You always were so serious.” She whispers it, and I’m thinking about that hotel couch again.

  She likes it rough, she just told me as much. It’s bad that she told me, because now all I can think about is her lips on my cock. Or what it would feel like to hold her down and be inside her.

  She’d like it. I’d definitely like it.

  Kiro’s out there in danger and every mobster in Chicago wants to kill me and I’m obsessed with fucking Mira. Like we found this thing in common, like drug addicts trapped at a boring party, realizing we could maybe sneak off.

  Maybe it’s because of the pressure that I’m thinking all this.

  “Shut up and eat, or I’ll feed your meal to the dogs.” I take my seat across from her. “And don’t play with your silverware,” I growl.

  She stops with the fork and presses it into the side of the frittata.

  Tito and Viktor ate theirs with their hands, but she has perfect manners in everything. I remind myself she’s Aldo’s spoiled daughter, with her smiles and her safe life.

  Maybe we have some connection, but it won’t matter if Kiro’s life is on the line. I’ll do what I have to.

  I always do what I have to. No woman will change that. Not even Mira.

  She takes a small bite.

  I should look down, but it’s too late. I’m watching her. I’m holding my breath.

  Contrary to what you might think, when somebody first tastes something they find delicious, you’ll rarely see a blissful look on their face; it’s more like stunned horror. I don’t know why people go with stunned horror when they taste something delicious, but they always do.

  So when I see her getting that stunned-horror look, I’m stupidly gratified. I lower my gaze like I don’t care, but my heart is a freaking jackhammer.

  “Oh my God,” she says. “Who made this?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? We kidnapped Wolfgang Puck, too. Got him back there cooking up a storm. I’m gonna buttfuck him with a baseball bat later.”

  She snorts. “Come on, Aleksio, be serious.”

  I don’
t answer. I shouldn’t be trying to give her good things. I should be doing the opposite, that’s the whole point here.

  She takes another bite. This time her eyes drift closed.

  “Oh wow. Does this have hazelnuts?”

  “What are you, a reporter for Gourmet Magazine?”

  “It’s delicious.”

  I look down at my plate with my heart soaring because I made her feel good. Stupid. It’ll just make hurting her harder.

  Don’t let the breaking game break you, Viktor said.

  Chapter Eight

  Mira

  He’s not that sweet boy anymore—I know that. He’s no longer my friend. But he held me as I cried—that was real.

  The way he told me about his burn felt like a secret just for me.

  And the way we felt together—sexually—I’ve never experienced anything like it.

  I shouldn’t care about him. He’s the last man I should feel anything for.

  I refuse to believe he’ll cut off my finger.

  God, he can’t—the shock of seeing my finger could kill Dad—for real. Aleksio doesn’t know it, and I can’t tell him, but Dad gets violently ill at the sight of blood. And that’s the kind of shock that’s dangerous to his heart.

  Nobody knows about Dad’s aversion to blood. It’s a secret he guards even from his closest associates. A secret he asked Mom and me never to divulge.

  A mafioso can’t have an aversion to blood—no way. It makes him look weak in the world of the Albanian clans, and it’s especially bad for the supposedly fierce leader of the vicious Black Lion clan.

  My guess is that he’s been around blood plenty of times in his life, but that he never looks directly at it—he pretends. That’s how he hides it. But if he opens a box with my bloody finger in it? The shock would be too much for his heart. The shock would kill him.

  But the film clip could kill him, too.

  No—we’ll find the key code. It’s out there somewhere. Their guy tracked down the director already.

  Nobody can see that clip.

  Except maybe me. What would it be like to watch us like that?

  I flash on the way he looked down at me when I had him in my mouth.

  He looked down at me like I was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. Like we were connected in this crazy, wrong way. Aleksio, sitting over me in all his brutal glory, my sweet friend Aleksio grown into a dangerous man.

  Moving up Aleksio’s legs felt wrong and good. I liked that I had no choice. It made it hotter.

  How twisted is that?

  All my life I’ve been trying to get out from under the thumb of men like him, and suddenly I’m crawling up his legs, begging to be used. But that’s the thing about having no choice—you do it no matter what. You do it if you hate it, and you do it if it’s a twisted thing you find out that you enjoy.

  It took me by surprise when he grabbed my hair, taking control so violently. My whole body came to attention. His cock tasted of man and secrets and everything forbidden.

  All I wanted was for him to push me harder, and he did.

  God, the way he talked to me. The names. The intensity of his breath. The way we spun out of control.

  His roughness a forbidden gift. Aleksio always went too far. The roughness felt…familiar.

  I know you, I thought.

  And then he turned it into something ugly with the camera and the gun.

  I sigh and twirl my fork.

  He doesn’t have his suit jacket on; just a loose tie over his white button-down shirt. All that white in contrast with his chocolaty hair that’s a little too long. He went on a run earlier, and he apparently shaved after; his cheeks are smooth and clear, making him look deceptively innocent. Angelic.

  “We’re showing it to him as soon as he wakes up.”

  “It’ll kill him.”

  He stabs his fork into the greens. “You should pray we find the key, then.”

  “It’s just a matter of time.”

  He cuts a bit of frittata and holds it up, examining it. “How does a spoiled princess who does international shopping as an extreme sport know about anatomization keys or whatever?”

  My pulse races.

  Aleksio is exactly the kind of person we don’t want knowing about my real life.

  I shrug. “Are you telling me you never picked up any useless information in life?”

  If he realizes I’m answering a question with a question, he doesn’t show it.

  I take another bite of the best meal I’ve eaten all year, not that Aleksio seems to care.

  Little Vik comes out. Whatever he has to say, it’s bad.

  Aleksio sees it, too. “What?”

  He shakes his head.

  Aleksio stands and pulls his brother away. I sense trouble, chaos. Doors slam inside the house. Guys moving out.

  I stare at Aleksio’s phone, still on the table. His phone.

  I look from Aleksio and Viktor to the phone and back to Aleksio. I could grab it and delete the video—this is my chance. He may have backed it up, but I have a feeling he didn’t, considering how busy he’s been.

  He’ll be angry. And it’s a gamble, but I don’t believe Aleksio will take my finger in the end.

  I won’t believe it.

  I snatch the phone. I find the file, hit delete, confirm delete. Just like that it’s gone. I set it back down and pick up my fork.

  Aleksio comes back and grabs his phone and suit jacket. He swings it on and fixes his shirt cuffs.

  Blood whooshes in my ears. I hope I made the right choice. “What’s going on?”

  “Ligne is dead.”

  My jaw drops. “Frankie? Frankie Ligne?”

  Aleksio nods.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Most certainly dead, yes,” Viktor says.

  “He’s just a sweet old man. Why would you—”

  “We didn’t kill him,” Viktor spits.

  “Who?”

  “Bloody Lazarus,” he growls.

  “Why would Lazarus kill somebody from his own organization? My father’s confidant…”

  Viktor gives me a jaded look. Like, really? Two of the Russians come out, all suited up and holstered.

  It can’t be true. “Lazarus wouldn’t kill Ligne. They’re on the same side.”

  “Take it up with the witnesses Viktor rounded up,” Aleksio says. “In other news, we got the key to 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 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

  The area around Worland is quiet on a Sunday afternoon. 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.

  I move alongside him. Tito and Yuri go up opposite.

  We are all on edge.

  Hitting this place a second time, it’s madness. We hide in the dark out of the afternoon sun, like vampires.

  “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 get Kiro 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 mafiya. 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 English grammar quickly, easily. Everybody was amazed.

  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 in America, that I spent my first twenty months here—not until Aleksio came to our garage and told me about Aldo Nikolla, who killed our parents and stole our lives.