A Great Prince: A Royal Bad Boy Romance (5 page)

“I’m
what!”
King Nikolas shouted, leaping off his throne.

János Kovács smiled. “Niko, calm down. It’s only a marriage of convenience. Your life won’t change. Well, not much.”

Nikolas scowled. “Have you ever met her? She’s the coldest ice princess ever. It would be like making love to a… frozen lamppost. You know that game kids play, where they lick the lamppost and their tongues stick to it? That would be my cock if I stuck it in her. I’d never get it out.”

Kovács laughed indulgently, but Nikolas saw that there was no smile in his eyes. János was his old boss, his old patron, from the days when he was just a kid on the street.

And István Szabó wasn’t smiling at all. The oligarch was the most powerful man in the country.

Well, after me,
Nikolas told himself. But István wasn’t a man who was used to being defied, even by kings. And the look on Szabó’s face told Nikolas that he had no choice.

But I’m the king now,
Nikolas thought, yet some part of him knew this was going to happen. They were going to leave him no choice. Had already left him no choice.

Everything that happened the last few years had led to this moment, he could see now. They’d handed him a crown, and he’d forgotten the fundamental lesson of his childhood: that there was a price to be paid for everything.

After World War II, Burgenland had been occupied by both the Americans and the Russians, each taking control of half the country. And, like Germany, when all was said and done, Burgenland was split into two nations: capitalist Burgenland and communist Danubia. One country prospered, and the other did not.

Danubia had an ancient Austro-Hungarian aristocracy, and the Communists were ruthless in their “liquidation” of nobility on their side of the border. Every member of the noble families in the new Soviet puppet state either died or fled…

Save one family.

Nikolas’ grandfather was Duke Zsigmond, a near relation of the last Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. It was a family that had survived tyrants from Napoleon to Hitler, and it would survive the Communists, too, if it could.

His grandfather did what he knew he had to do – play the idiot, the weak-minded aristocrat, a fool who could be used as a Communist propaganda tool to show the world the inbred degeneracy of the ruling class.

And keeping him and his family alive “proved” that they didn’t kill aristocrats if they “submitted to reeducation.” They were given an apartment in a dreary housing block, and the former Duke was trotted out from time to time for self-criticism sessions and denunciations of his former wicked ways as a decadent class enemy.

The duke’s son Imre was given a job as a porter in a hotel where tourists from East Germany and Hungary could stay on state-sponsored vacations, snicker and take photographs of the decadent aristocrat in his new uniform.

The regime had another humiliation in store as well. They forced Imre to marry a gypsy girl, a Roma, the most despised ethnic minority in the country.

When the Berlin Wall fell, the Communists fell, and there was no use for the court fool any more. And the family disappeared from sight, just another Eastern European family struggling to survive amid the wreckage of the former Soviet Empire.

But Imre had the last laugh on the Communists. He’d fallen in love with that Roma girl. They’d sworn not to have a child, to avoid placing an innocent at the mercy of their tormentors. But after the fall of the regime, they knew it was time. And when their son was born in 1991, he named him Nikolas – after the last of the Romanov Czars.

After that, a series of ineffectual governments rose and fell, real power was consolidated in the hands of the oligarchs. Former Communist apparatchiks had seized the state industries for themselves and become billionaires… while other criminals, the
gengzters
— drug runners, extortionists, Internet scammers, and identity thieves — thrived.

When Niko was fifteen, his parents died in quick succession, his father of a heart attack and his mother of heartbreak. Niko was tall and strong and poor and angry. He’d grown up fighting, his family name a joke ingrained into Danubian culture. His peers’ parents still mocked his grandfather as a clown, and they in turn mocked Niko as the grandson of a clown.

So Niko left home, left his history behind, and squatted in an abandoned apartment, stealing electricity via extension cord from a neighbor who didn’t dare object when the tall, strong boy with murder in his eyes demanded it.

He performed manual labor to earn money for food, the kind of work that could be done by a man without papers, a man without a name, or a name he didn’t want to share.

He made friends with young men as rootless as he was, who gave even less of a shit about the old days, the old hatreds, men in whose eyes Niko was just another hard case like themselves.

They all had nicknames, and his own was “Prince Niko,” of course, a mocking but affectionate reference to his ancestry. His best friend was “Erik the Marksman,” who had grown up on a farm, shooting wild game, until the oligarchs had seized his family’s land for the minerals beneath it.

They all labored on the new buildings shooting up in Szombathely, hotels and fine apartments for the new aristocracy. That was where János Kovács found him, and made him a gangster.

Niko was expected to kick back some of his wages to the thug who ran the job site, who in turn kicked back to János. And one day, he’d had enough.

“No,” he said to the thug, Lajos. “Go fuck yourself.”

Lajos was thick, in body and in brain. It took him a minute to realize he was being defied by this punk kid. Like most men of violence, he’d been raised in violence, had learned that a crack on the head was the way people spoke and were spoken to. He reached out to grab this kid.

“Listen, you Roma trash…”

Niko brushed Lajos’ arm aside, and fired a palm strike at his nose, breaking it. Lajos was stunned, more by the impudence than anything else, but before he could hit back, Niko followed up with an elbow strike to his chin, knocking him to the ground.

Growing up as the subject of ridicule, Niko had learned one thing quickly – that he was good at fighting. While the kids around him did ridiculous imitations of
The Matrix,
Nico sought out men who could really fight: street brawlers, enforcers, mixed martial artists.

Lajos got up and pointed a finger at him. “You’re dead,” he announced.

“Try it,” Niko replied defiantly.

Erik sidled up to him. “You need a gun?”

“No,” Nikolas said. “I’m good.”

That night János came knocking on the door of the apartment.

Niko saw him and nodded. “I’m ready.” He’d grown up with death, murder, chaos. He’d always known how he’d die.

János laughed. He clapped Niko on the shoulder. “My boy, you have it all wrong. I’m here to give you a job.”

So Niko became a
gengzter.
The Danubian economy boomed for the same reason as its next door neighbor, Hungary: the massive housing bubble. People borrowed money at low interest in Swiss francs, and buildings went up like crazy.

And of course the oligarchs and the
gengzters
profited. Shoddy materials were used in sweetheart deals, and Niko worked long days and longer nights, visiting job sites as an “enforcer” for János’ crew. He’d either collect the kickbacks, or enforce the lesson on what happened to those who didn’t kick back. Erik the Marksman came with him into the syndicate, his accuracy with a rifle now used for other purposes.

Nikolas partied hard, too, the money flowing like a faucet someone had forgotten to turn off. Coke and girls, top-shelf liquor and card games, deluxe suites in Ibiza and Monaco… He was only sixteen when he signed up, not old enough for anything he did to be legal, but money bought an exception to every law.

Szombathely wasn’t a big city, and the other gang members knew who he was, who his family had been, soon enough. The nickname his friends had given him spread, and the story behind it. Soon nobody called him anything but “Prince Niko.”

It was mocking, but affectionate, and… something else. The
gengzters
were lawless sinners, but also deeply religious, nationalistic, patriotic, and sentimental for the bygone
days of strong leaders. They were men from a culture that held grudges for centuries, who would attack a random person from a country that had offended their own in the fifteenth century, and call it justice.

Then the bubble burst in 2008 all across the world. Danubians who had taken out mortgages pegged to the value of Swiss franc, a “safe” currency whose value soared while their own currency collapsed, suddenly realized they’d have to repay in Swiss francs as well.

The Danubian government had never been a completely liberal, Westernized government, but it had blundered along without doing too much damage to the country.

For two years after the economic collapse, one government followed another, and inflation went through the roof. By 2010, all was chaos, and rioters in the streets raged against the bankers; the red flags of the old regime, and the even older flags of the Empire, were being waved in the streets.

With the corrupt army in their pockets, the oligarchs moved to seize power; the gengzters did privately what the army couldn’t do publicly to suppress dissent. Which included detaining or disappearing any of the political dissenters who might stop them.

And that was how Nikolas Almásy met Karl Lengyel.

The basement was a former wine cellar, musty and moldy. A Communist apparatchik had seized a noble’s collection after the war, and the whole collection had been smashed by angry rioters when the Communists fell. The earth was thick with the smell of old red wine, soaked in deep like old blood.

This was where the
gengzters
had taken Karl Lengyel, leader of the opposition. When Niko was assigned to guard duty, he found the old man tied to a chair.

“This one,” said the
gengzter
whom Niko was relieving. “They ought to kill him. Fucking atheist fag-loving Western scum.”

Niko grunted and nodded. All the patriotism, nationalism, the Orthodox religiosity that made the other
gengzters
weep and tear their hair… it meant shit to him. What had the nation done for him? Raised his grandfather up to a Duke, then threw him down again, made Niko’s father a hotel porter, sent Niko hungry and alone onto the streets to survive. Monarchy, Communism, Democracy… He spat.

Fuck all that. He had no hate for this old man. He was just another body, and guarding him was just another work detail.

There was a lone light bulb in the basement, swinging from the ceiling over the old man’s head. Niko easily picked him up, chair and all, and put him in a dark corner. Then he moved his own chair under the bulb and pulled out the book he always brought with him for these long nights. He’d learned that lesson a long time ago – the other men could sit and stare into space, in a thoughtless trance, but his mind was too restless. He’d turned out to have a gift for languages, picking them up quickly by ear.

This was an old man, tied up, his only allies a bunch of weakling protestors, not some rival criminal whose men might come bursting through the doors, so Niko knew that it was safe to sit and read to pass the time.

“What are you reading?” Karl asked him.

Niko held up the book to show the cover of
Goldfinger.

“Hmm. Interesting choice,” he murmured to himself in English.

Niko looked at him. “What,” he responded in the same language. “Are you surprised that I can read? Never mind read English?”

“Yes to both.”

Niko smirked and returned to his book.

A few minutes later, Karl cleared his throat. “Can I have a drink of water, please?”

Niko put the book down and got a bottle of water. He opened it and held it to the man’s lips, letting him sip.

“Thank you. Do you know what’s going on out there?”

“A revolution.”

“A counterrevolution. Turning the clock backward.”

“Back before the economy you and yours created? Back before everyone went broke thanks to the capitalists you let ruin us?”

Karl flinched. “I was not…” He sighed. “Yes, I suppose after all this, even a restored monarchy might look better.”

Niko laughed. “A monarchy? There hasn’t been a monarchy here since World War II.”

Karl paused. “You don’t know what they have in store for you, do you?”

“Me? A bullet to the head someday, I suppose. Same as any other man in my line of work.”

“Right. Amazing. You really don’t know.”

Niko put his book down. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Well, let’s use the Socratic method, shall we? What’s happening to the government right now?”

“It’s falling.”

“And it will be replaced by…?”

“Same as always. The rich, the powerful.”

“No more elections?”

“What for?” Niko laughed.

“Right. Because what are the people out there clamoring for?”

Niko thought about it. “Order. Safety. No more westerners calling our bills due and bankrupting us.”

“What kind of flags did you see being waved?”

“Old ones.”

“The double eagle?”

Niko thought about it, and remembered seeing some of the men having that tattooed on their bodies, the relic of the old Austrian Empire.

“Yes.”

Karl nodded. “They’re going to use you. They’re going to put a crown on your head.”

Niko bent over laughing. “You’re crazy, old man.” He shook his head and picked his book up.

Karl paused. “Do you know what keeps governments in power?”

“Guns.”

“No. Legitimacy keeps governments in power. The consent of the governed.”

“Oh,” Niko said, his anger flaring. “So we ‘consented’ to be overrun by the Russians after the war?”

“Good point. But, what did they do afterward? Did they say, ‘Hungary, Romania, Poland, Danubia, these are all now provinces of Russia?’ No. They set up puppet governments.”

“Why? If you conquered the country, you conquered it, why pretend otherwise?”

“It has to at least appear like the people want them there. And what happens when the governed don’t consent anymore?”

“What’s happening out there, right now.”

“Yes, Nikolas Almásy.”

Niko shifted, uneasy. How did this man know his full name? Did he really think that…

“So what’s this crown bullshit? What are you talking about?”

“Before World War II, Burgenland was one country, under a monarch. A beloved monarch, a Resistance fighter, a good one, unlike their current one. So, what would give this country’s government the same legitimacy as Burgenland’s?”

“A king? What’s that got do to with me? I’m a street rat, a
gengzter,
half Roma…”

Karl smiled. “You are the last of the Almásy. The closest remaining relative of the Holy Roman Emperor in this country.”

“How do you know that?”

Karl laughed. “Why do you think I’m imprisoned? Because I know this. Because I, and people like me, are resisting this.”

“Then why am I here, of all people, guarding you?”

Karl thought about it. “The nationalist, religious answer would be, the Hand of God, moving in mysterious ways. The secular liberal answer would be, someone fucked up.”

Niko laughed. He looked at Karl, hard. He picked him back up, chair and all, and put him under the light bulb so he could see the man’s face. Niko hadn’t survived all these years without learning how to read a man’s face, to see the truth or the lie when he spoke.

“Let’s say you’re right. Some moron wants to make me king of Danubia. Then what?”

Karl turned towards the door. Niko heard the heavy footsteps coming down the stairs.

Karl spoke hastily. “Then what happens is up to you. Remember that they need you. Name your own terms. Don’t let them make you king in name only. They will put the reins of power in your hands, on paper, but then they’ll make all the decisions. But remember, nothing can happen if you don’t sign that paper…”

The door burst open, and Niko’s boss János and his goons rushed towards Karl. “Time to go,” János said.

“No,” Niko said, putting himself between his boss and Karl.

“Niko,” János said softly. “Don’t make me kill you.”

“You won’t,” Niko said. “You need me.”

“Ah,” János sighed. “He told you. I’m too late.” He turned to one of his men. “You chose Niko for this duty? Really?”

The goon stretched his hands out in a helpless gesture. “I didn’t know, boss, he was the first guy I saw…”

János was fast. His gun was out and the bullet was in the goon’s head before anyone knew it. The body dropped to the floor, dead before it hit.

Niko didn’t flinch. It wasn’t the first man he’d seen killed. He opened his flip phone, his eyes steady on János and his gun as he punched in the number of the oligarch who really ran things.

“István. Niko. I know what’s up. And I will play. But I have terms. Yes, he’s here, to kill Karl Lengyel. First of all, that’s not going to happen. I need him. We can use him for…”

Niko turned and grinned at Karl. “For legitimacy.”