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

wouldn’t have driven me back if they suspected anything,” I say.
    Yuri points out that we now have a guard to question in addition to the intrusive surveillance.
    “Fine, a live guard and surveillance is better than just surveillance,” Aleksio says. “But Viktor…” He’s angry. Upset. I chose Tanechka above everything.
    Shivers slide over me. “It’s her ,” I say.
    Yuri turns and meets my eyes. “But if she really thinks she’s a nun…”
    “I don’t care. It’s Tanechka. In time she’ll remember. She has to.”
    Yuri frowns. “She may not like what she remembers.”
    “She’s alive,” I say. “Everything is possible.”

Chapter Seven
    Tanechka
    N ikki and I are taken to a very nice home, a row house it’s called, in the city of Chicago. There’s an American, Tito, in charge. He’s big and burly; his short dark hair is nearly white on the tips.
    The halo of a killer.
    I don’t have my memories, but I know a killer when I see one. Like the man who took me out of that place—the man who seemed to know me. Another killer.
    These people are in a criminal gang, I think.
    I always worried that somebody would appear from my old life and endanger my sister nuns at the convent. I never imagined such a person would find me in an American brothel.
    I didn’t want him there. I didn’t need to be rescued. I promised my captive sisters I’d try to help them, that I wouldn’t abandon them. This man didn’t care. He took me away.
    “I have to go back,” I tell Tito yet again.
    “Wait for Viktor,” he says. “You can ask Viktor.”
    Cold comes over me. Viktor. The name on my chest. “Viktor?”
    “The man who took you out of there.”
    “I will not wait. I will not stay.” I make for the door.
    He blocks it. “Not likely, sister.” He points at a chair near the fireplace. “Sit.”
    I pull the ends of my head scarf tight under my chin and cross my arms, surveying the exits. I want nothing to do with these men who come to me from the life that gave me a body full of ugly scars.
    “Fine, stand,” he says.
    Nikki sits instead, swinging an arm over the back of the chair. “Anyone got a smoke?”
    “Act right and we’ll see,” Tito says.
    I turn away from the strange familiarity of this scene. People like this, a place like this.
    I don’t care to know them. I don’t want to know what I was.
    Mother Olga always said that God can forgive even the worst of sinners if they come to him with the right feeling in their heart, but what if I was a criminal, too? What if I’ve killed people? Even God has limits.
    Ever since I saw that precious light coming from that icon in the thicket, my life has been a journey back to the overflowing sweetness of that moment. I feel sure that remembering my old life will only move me further away from that sweetness. What if I’m not strong enough to resist it?
    Sometimes I feel that old life on the edges of my awareness, like a dangerous fog that might swallow up the brightness if I let it.
    I reach into my pocket, close my fingers around a corner of the icon.
    Tito has several other American men under his command—two inside here, more outside. This habit of counting men and assessing force, this too comes from that dark life. I do not want it.
    They ask us whether we want lunch. Nikki wants a burger.
    I’m not hungry.
    Again Tito asks me to sit. I ask for a phone.
    “I need you to sit.”
    I stand. It seems to make him nervous. I take up a pen and paper and write a phone number. It’s the cellphone for the convent in Ukraine. “Call and tell them I’m okay.”
    Tito takes it and pockets it.
    The door opens and a burly bald man comes in with bags. He smiles as soon as he sees me, so very happy. He addresses me in Russian—“It’s you. It’s really you.” He hands the paper bags he carries to Tito, not taking his eyes from me. “Tanechka—remember me?—Mischa?” He searches my eyes with a smile so huge and crooked it makes me feel fond of him.