Dark Mafia Prince: A Dangerous Royals romance by Annika Martin Page B

of the old daycare. Smiling cartoon animals half-peeled off in the distance beyond a wasteland of rubble and trash.
    “Ugh.”
    “I like it. It’s sweet. Something nice in all this decrepitude.”
    My face goes hot. Mira Nikolla with her dresses and parties on the boat and sunny smiles. “That’s because you never look at them,” I say. “If you stare at them too long, happy baby animal cartoons start to look maniacal. Don’t you see it? You look at them too long, and all you see is death.”
    I can feel her eyes on me. “That’s nice,” she says. “You ruin cartoon baby animals for me? Thanks. Is there anything else you’d like to ruin?”
    I’m glad she’s annoyed, because I said too much, and I would hate if she gave me sympathy on top of everything else. I take her cuffed hands and turn them over, ignoring the zing of electricity between us. I inspect her fingers and spot a jagged scar on the pinky. “This is a very distinctive scar,” I say. “We’ll start with this one. Or maybe the one with the ring.”
    She goes white and tries to take her hand back, but I don’t let her. “What?”
    “Send it to your father.”
    “You can’t.” She tries to pull her hand away.
    “This is a very recognizable ring. You think he’d recognize it?”
    “You wouldn’t.”
    “If we find Kiro, we won’t have to.”
    She looks over at the files. “If I help you find Kiro, will you let my father and me go?”
    “If your help gets us Kiro,” I say, “we’ll let you go.”
    “What about my father?”
    “Let’s put it this way—a lot of people are going to start hunting Kiro. And if somebody gets to Kiro first and manages to kill him? And your father was holding out? If you love him, you don’t want to know what we’ll do to him then.”
    “Unlock me.”
    I unlock her cuffs, trying to handle her as an enemy, but the feel of her skin sends a white-hot flash of desire through me.
    She rubs her wrists and motions for a box. I slide it over. She pulls out a folder and opens it, studying the papers inside. She pulls one out. “These parts that are blacked out? That’s done as part of a process known as de-identification. These files are de-identified. Anonymized.” She stuffs it back in and riffles though.
    How the hell does the spoiled mafia princess know this?
    She examines a paper. “I don’t know what Illinois law was twenty years ago, but there would’ve been protocols in place to make it hard for people like you to trace these kinds of things. And that’s how they did it. They still do stuff like this today, but with computers. They make it so you could never identify families and children from just the files. There’s a probably a key to the code offsite, or maybe on a computer. Some trustworthy person holds it. You need both pieces—the key to the code and the file—if you’re going to read it.”
    “Like a fucking armored car?” Tito asks. “Like that? Where you need the two keys?”
    “Exactly,” she says.
    “Who would have the key to the code?” I ask.
    “I don’t know. Somebody who worked there at the time. Somebody who needed to access the files. Probably not the lowliest person, but probably not the highest, either.”
    “We don’t have time to find people who worked there two decades ago,” I say.
    “Hmm.” She twists her lips, and in a flash I’m back with her in the shade of the fort, watching her draw her horses, lips twisting this way and that. Concentrating.
    “I have a man,” Viktor says. “His father was a KGB code breaker. He could get his father to look at this.”
    I turn immediately to Mira, to see what she’ll say. Her lips quirk. “A KGB code breaker, you say.” She tips her head. “Well…if that’s all you got…”
    Viktor scowls. “They are masters at code breaking, the KGB—”
    “She’s kidding,” I say. “Let’s do it. Quick.”
    She smiles at me, and I come to my senses and look away. Our connection is too alive suddenly, and it