His Mafia Prince

{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.