His Mafia Prince
Chapter 277: Big Risks for Big Rewards

Chapter 277: Big Risks for Big Rewards

{SASHA}

I wander around the crowd’s side, keeping Tyler and the Irish agent in view. The agent hasn’t picked up Tyler again, judging by his pushing past people. He’s chasing down plague doctors, but there are a lot of them.

I head for the staircase to the east. Once I get up to the mezzanine, I plan to walk right around it to the western side, and Magda’s room, to speak to her guards. But my passage is abruptly barred by a very large man in a well-cut frock coat. "Excuse me, sir," he says in very polite Italian, "I’m going to have to ask you to leave."

He puts a hand on my shoulder.

I smile and respond in his language. "If you want to keep your fingers, you should remove them from my person."

The hand withdraws, although the man does not. I recognize him as one of Magda’s bodyguards. His white porcelain half-mask leaves his mouth visible, and I watch it pull into a sneer. "Get out of here."

"I don’t think so," I say softly, and move past him. He grabs me by the arm, and that’s the last mistake he makes. I move toward him instead of away, pressing him back into a dark corner behind a statue of Venus. While we move, I put my hand over his, bending his middle finger back until it snaps, and use my other palm to smother his scream of pain.

I shove him up against the wall and lean in to his ear. "I did warn you. Now, I suspect the woman for whom you work would not like a scene, so..." Slowly, I take my hand from his mouth and release his fingers.

He doesn’t cry out or call for help.

He does let out a stream of profanity in a soft whisper as he nurses his fingers with his good hand, staring at me with death in his eyes.

"All I want is one private conversation with her," I tell him.

"You won’t be leaving here alive," he snarls back.

I sigh, glancing over my shoulder to locate the Irish agent again. He’s looking around the room, the white mask moving back and forth quickly. "Listen," I say. "I was like you, once. Just a low-level soldier, trying to make good. You and I could be friends. Your mistress will reward you once she hears what I have to say."

"Fuck you," he says in English.

"I’m afraid you’re not my type. So stop flirting," I say, dropping all amusement from my voice, "and listen to me." I pull off his mask so I can see his face properly. "There’s an assassin here tonight, and he’s after Magda."

He begins to speak, but then pauses. Thinks.

"He’s wearing a bauta costume," I supply helpfully. The guy cranes over my shoulder, glancing suspiciously back at me while scanning the ballroom.

"There are a hundred bauta here tonight," he mutters.

"Escort me up to the balcony and I’ll point him out to you," I offer.

The guard gives me a skeptical look from beneath his pain-drawn brows.

I lean in and drop my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "You could make a name for yourself tonight. Be the hero. Or I can take the assassin out myself, and leave you to explain to Magda why I had to do your job for you." I nod up toward the mezzanine level, where the rest of her guards are standing, some looking over the railings at the party below. "Why not prove yourself to them?"

I’ve pushed the right button. "I’ll take you upstairs," he grunts. "You point him out. But if this is some trick, you should know I have a new blade that needs blooding."

I grin at that. "Deal."

There are so many plague doctors in the crowd that once the Irish agent lost sight of Tyler, it was hard for him to distinguish between the lookalikes. From the mezzanine balcony, it’s easy to see him moving this way and that, glancing back toward where he last saw me, and only getting pushier.

He treads on the toes of a bosomy, corseted Columbina, rudely shoves past a pink-haired Harlequin dressed in white and fuchsia silks, and seizes another plague doctor by the shoulder, whirling them around.

It’s not Tyler, and this particular plague doctor, who pulls off his mask to reveal himself as an aging English rock star, makes quite a fuss about the disrespectful grabbing. The bauta backs off immediately, his cloak opening around him as he whirls around.

"Motherfucker," my new friend breathes. "He has a gun."

I’m so glad he noticed. It would have been irritating to have to point that out to him as well.

The Irish agent backs off, looking around the room again, and then up. We lock eyes behind our masks. He knows I’ve made him, but he begins to force his way through the crowd toward the western staircase, the one closest to his side of the room—and closest to Magda’s private room.

The Irish agent is not stupid; it’s reasonable for him to assume that Tyler will make his way back to me, sooner or later. Or perhaps he’s just cutting his losses with Tyler for the night, going for the kill rather than the capture: if he can’t grab Tyler, he’ll settle for slitting my throat.

But to the thug standing next to me, it only looks like one thing. The assassin is coming for Magda. He lifts his wrist to his mouth, speaking rapidly into it, code I don’t know but still understand. The guards on the other side of the balcony swarm like bees, barking questions, orders, calling to each other, and I take the opportunity to slip back down the eastern staircase and merge back into the people.

I’m tall enough that I can keep eyes on the bauta-costumed agent, and it’s not long before he realizes I’m no longer upstairs. His attention is caught by the group of guards on the mezzanine pointing his way, and he hesitates, judging his chances. He begins to back away, turning to the entrance, but stops when he sees me heading toward him.

His eyes burn straight into mine. He wants to kill me.

Wants it badly enough that he’ll squander a few minutes of his escape time to do it.

I back off, feigning caution. What I’m really doing is choosing our place of engagement. But the Irish agent takes the bait, following me under the cover of the mezzanine just as several of Magda’s guards reach the ballroom floor and begin fanning out. The rest of them stay up on the balcony, guarding the private room, but when I move closer to the wall, deeper into the shadows, I’m out of their line of sight.

I round a corner into a small alcove showcasing a chaise longue, and behind me I hear hurried footsteps, picking up the pace. I turn and wait. The bauta appears, a gleaming knife in his hand, a matching glint of hatred in his eyes.

But to his right, there’s a flash of pink and white. A flamingo-haired Harlequin steps into view, pulling off his mask. "Hey, bozo," he says in a broad American accent. "It’s me you want, isn’t it?"

The moment of hesitation, of the knife swaying away from me toward a new target, is all I need. I close the few yards between us, dodge behind the Irish agent as he turns, and grab his head.

One quiet snap and it’s over.

I support the lifeless body down onto the chaise longue and, after checking the pockets for any identification—none—and making one small addition of my own, I arrange the deceased agent as though he were a passed-out partygoer who’s had one too many cocktails.

I glance up at Tyler, who’s keeping watch.

"Ten seconds to company," he says. He runs a hand through his newly-pink hair and gives me a grin before slipping back on the small silk mask that matches his Harlequin costume. "Should I go change back into Birdman?" he asks. "I left the cloak and mask over on the other side, stuffed in a big vase."

My heart is still hammering from the adrenaline—not from worry for myself, but for Tyler. It was a dangerous game we played tonight, big risk for big reward, and there were moments where I had to battle my own need to rush straight for him, protect him.

"No," I say. "Stay as you are." I couldn’t bear to see him cover up again, not now that he’s returned to the pink hair. He changed it just this afternoon, at the last minute, on my suggestion.

Our ten seconds are up. Magda’s guards are swarming, pushing Tyler aside, grabbing hold of me, leaning over the bauta-masked corpse. One of them pats him down, finds the knife, and then—

"Shit," he breathes, pulling out a photograph from the inner pocket of the agent’s tunic. He shows it to another guard, the one who must be their leader, judging by the deferential air shown to him. They mutter together, and the one phrase I overhear is Magda.

"You did this?" The lead guard turns to me, gesturing at the body.

I shrug off the two guards holding me and straighten my costume. I will neither confirm nor deny the accusation, but the leader is no fool. He knows me.

But before he can interrogate me further, we’re interrupted by the guard whose middle finger I broke. In quiet Italian, he murmurs into the leader’s ear, too hushed for me to hear, but I can tell I am the topic of conversation by the way the lead guard watches my face as he listens.

A moment later, the leader nods, steps closer to me, and begins to say something, but pauses to press a finger against the small speaker in his ear. He listens, frowning at the floor, then looks up at me again. "Magda has asked to speak with you."

"You’ll handle this?" I ask, indicating the chaise longue with a tilt of my head. The lead guard gives one short nod. "Well, then," I say. "Let’s not keep the lady waiting."

As we are escorted away by two of the guards, Tyler looks down at his black boots. They matched the plague doctor outfit well, but are decidedly out of place with his Harlequin costume. He gives one glance back over his shoulder at our dead enemy.

"Guy should’ve paid more attention to my shoes," he murmurs with satisfaction.

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