Chapter 8
Tony
Five people knew where we were going. Someone put a rifle on her window anyway.
Boris and I sit in his office at the Kozlov compound, reviewing security protocols while Sasha sleeps back at the safehouse. It’s two in the morning, but neither of us is tired. We’re too busy trying to figure out which member of Dmitri’s organization is a traitor.
“Walk me through it again,” Boris prompts in heavily accented English. He prefers Russian, but I need to make sure I understand every detail. “Who knew about the apartment visit?”
“You. Me. Sasha. The two drivers.” I count them off on my fingers. “That’s five people.”
“The drivers have been with us for years. Both vetted by Dmitri.” Boris pulls up personnel files on his computer. “Yuri and Pyotr. Clean records. No suspicious activity. No unexplained income.”
“Years of clean service makes the best mole. Nobody looks twice.”
“True, but they’ve also had no recent contact with outside organizations. No unusual phone calls. No meetings with unknown individuals.”
“What about family? Someone could be using leverage.”
“Yuri’s mother lives in St. Petersburg. Healthy. No problems. Pyotr is divorced, no children, no close relationships.” Boris closes the files. “I will have them followed anyway. See if anything surfaces.”
“Who else has access to scheduling information? Someone who might see movement plans without being directly involved?”
Boris frowns. “Operations staff. The accountant handles expense reports for security details. He would see locations and dates.” He waves a hand dismissively. “But Ivan has been with the family for fifteen years. Dmitri trusts him.”
“Fifteen years is a long time to build a cover.”
“It is also a long time to prove loyalty.” Boris shakes his head. “Ivan is not your man. Look elsewhere.”
I file the name away. Ivan the accountant. The ones they dismiss too fast are the ones who bleed you out.
“What about you?”
Boris looks at me with eyes that have seen too much violence to be surprised by the question. “You think I am the mole?”
“I think everyone’s a suspect until they’re not.”
“Good. You are learning.” He opens another file. “I coordinated security. I cleared the building. I also sent the men to watch the perimeter, but they reported nothing suspicious until the shooting started.”
“And neither of them saw two shooters enter the building across the street?”
“They say no. I will question them again. More thoroughly.”
I know what “more thoroughly” means in Boris’ world, but I don’t object.
Someone tried to kill Sasha, and I want answers more than I want to preserve anyone’s comfort.
If Boris doesn’t get results, I’ll conduct my own interviews.
I have methods that make “more thoroughly” look like a polite conversation.
“That still leaves me and Sasha as suspects,” I point out. “And Sasha wouldn’t put a hit out on herself.”
“And Sasha would not betray her family by putting one out on you without talking to her brothers.”
“And me?”
Boris stares at me for a long moment. “You, I do not trust. But Dmitri says to give you access, so I give you access. If you are the mole, I will know eventually. And then I will kill you.”
“Fair enough.” I respect the honesty. In his position, I’d say the same thing. I’d also follow through without hesitation.
He slides a thumb drive across the desk. “Security footage from Sasha’s street. Every camera within three blocks. Find something useful.”
I pocket the drive and stand. “I’ll let you know what I find.”
“Tony.” Boris stops me at the door. “Sasha is like a daughter to me. I taught her to shoot. I taught her to see threats. I taught her to survive in this world.” His voice goes cold. “If you are using her, I will make your death very slow.”
“Understood.” I meet his eyes without flinching. He means every word, and under different circumstances, I’d admire that. Right now, it just reminds me that I’m surrounded by people who would kill me without a second thought if they knew the truth.
I leave his office and drive back to the safehouse, mentally working through possibilities. The list of suspects is short, but someone knew our plans. Someone with access to information that doesn’t show up in personnel files.
Back at the apartment, I plug in the thumb drive and review the footage. Hours of surveillance from multiple angles, all time-stamped and organized by camera location.
At 14:07, a black sedan parks half a block from Sasha’s building. The driver stays in the vehicle. At 14:19, the driver makes a phone call. At 14:23, two men in dark jackets arrive carrying duffel bags.
Professional execution. And someone told them when to be there.
I make notes on everyone who appears in frame. A woman with a stroller. An old man walking his dog. A delivery truck that parks for ninety seconds.
Nothing obviously suspicious, which makes everything suspicious.
My phone vibrates on the desk. Adrian.
I stare at his name for a moment before answering. My fingers itch to reach through the phone and wrap around his throat. “It’s late.”
“Then I’ll be brief. I hear there was an incident at Sasha’s apartment today.” He doesn’t sound concerned; he sounds satisfied. “I trust she’s unharmed?”
“She’s fine.”
“Good. She needs to stay intact until you’re done. Broken girls don’t suffer the same. Tell me, did you gather any useful intelligence during your visit?”
My jaw clenches.
He knows.
Somehow, he knows we were together and what we were about to do when the shooting started. Which means someone in Dmitri’s orbit is talking. In real time. To Adrian.
“I’m working on it,” I reply carefully.
“Work faster. You have four weeks left on our contract. I expect detailed updates, or we’ll discuss breach penalties.”
The line goes dead.
I take a deep breath and set the phone down slowly, because I want to hurl it against the wall.
Adrian thinks he’s untouchable. He thinks money and contracts make him safe.
But I’ve killed men with more protection than he has.
I know exactly how I’d do it. Where I’d find him, how I’d get past his security, and which bones I’d break first to make sure he felt each second of what was coming.
The fantasy is vivid enough to taste.
I pull up a new document. If Adrian wants intelligence, I’ll give him intelligence. Just not the accurate kind.
I spend the next hour crafting a detailed report about Kozlov financial operations that’s mostly fiction. Bank accounts that don’t exist. Shell companies with fake addresses. Transaction patterns I’ve invented.
The trick is making it believable enough for Adrian to act on. If he uses this information and it leads nowhere, I’ll know the intelligence came from me. If future attacks target these fake locations or fake accounts, I’ll have established a pattern.
It’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing nothing.
I hit send and return to the security footage.
At 3 a.m., I hear footsteps behind me.
Sasha appears in the doorway wearing sleep shorts and an oversized T-shirt, her hair down and messy. The shirt rides up as she stretches, showing off the faintest hint of bare stomach, but that’s all it takes to make my cock twitch behind my zipper. She’s carrying two mugs of coffee.
“Can’t sleep?” she asks.
“Apparently not.”
“Me either.” She crosses the room and hands me one of the mugs before sitting beside me on the couch. “What are you watching?”
“Security footage from your street. Trying to figure out who knew we’d be there.”
“And?”
“I have a short list of suspects and not enough evidence.”
Sasha sips her coffee and eyes the screen. “Show me what you’ve found.”
I walk her through the footage. The sedan. The phone call. The shooters arriving when we did.
“Someone tipped them off,” she agrees. “Someone who knew our schedule.”
I pull up my notes. “Only five people knew we were going to your apartment. Me, you, Boris, and the two drivers who cleared the place before we went in.”
“Go back to the sedan.” She gestures toward the screen.
I rewind.
“There.” She points at the timestamp. “14:19. The driver makes a phone call from the sedan. Now jump to when our SUV arrives.”
I do.
“14:36,” she notes. “Seventeen minutes between that call and us pulling up. But look—the two shooters enter the building at 14:23. That’s only four minutes after the call.”
“So, the call wasn’t to alert them we were coming. They were already in position.”
“Exactly. Which means someone told them earlier. Someone who knew our schedule before we left the safehouse.” Sasha takes the laptop from me, her fingers grazing my knuckles. I don’t miss the way she lets the contact linger a beat too long. “Let me see the full footage.”
She scrubs through the timeline, stops, rewinds, and then stops again.
“There.” She points at a man entering the building at 13:22. “Dark jacket. Duffel bag. Watch his eyes. He’s scanning windows and rooftops.”
I lean closer. Her scent hits me; something clean and soft that has no business being this distracting. I shake my head and take a closer look.
She’s right. The man’s body language screams training. “How did I miss that?”
“You were looking for them arriving together. They came separately to avoid suspicion.” She keeps scrubbing. “Here’s the second one. 13:46. Same jacket, same bag, same behavior.”
“So, they were in position almost an hour before we arrived. Someone gave them advance notice.”
“Pyotr and Yuri didn’t know where we were headed until we told them, just before we left. It couldn’t have been them. And I’m telling you, it wasn’t Boris.”
“You’re good at this.”
“My brothers made sure of it. Dmitri started teaching me threat assessment when I was twelve. Alexei taught me to spot surveillance when I was fourteen.” She hands the laptop back. “They said if I was going to be a Kozlov, I needed to know how to stay alive.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“It is.” She picks up her coffee. “Looking at every stranger as a potential threat. Analyzing every conversation for hidden meanings. Never feeling completely safe anywhere.” She glances at me. “Do you ever feel that way? Like you can’t turn it off?”
“Every day.”
“Is that from the military?”
“Mostly.” I take a drink of coffee. “There was a mission that went wrong a few years ago. People died who shouldn’t have. I couldn’t prevent it.”
“What happened?”
“Bad intelligence. Wrong location. By the time we realized it, it was too late.” I stare at the laptop screen. “I left after that. Couldn’t trust my judgment anymore.”
Sasha doesn’t push for details. She just sits there with her shoulder pressed against mine. “My brothers blame themselves for things they couldn’t control, too. It’s exhausting watching them carry that weight.”
“You carry it, too. I can see it.”
“Maybe. But at least I know I’m not alone in it.” She sets down her coffee. “That’s the difference between London and here. In London, I was safe but alone. Here, I’m never safe, but I’m not alone.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“I’m still figuring that out.”
We work through the rest of the footage. She catches details I missed—a car that circles the block twice, a man who appears on three different cameras within ten minutes, and a woman who watches the building for too long before moving on.
After a while, Sasha’s head drifts to my shoulder. Her breathing slows—soft, even.
I keep the laptop on my knees and stay perfectly still, like I’m holding a loaded weapon that’ll fire if I move.
I try to remember the last time I let anyone this close.
The answer doesn’t come easily, because I’ve spent three years avoiding this feeling. Attachment leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to people dying.
But sitting here with Sasha’s weight against my shoulder, listening to her breathe, I realize I’m already past the point of professional detachment.
I’m where Adrian wants me to be, emotionally invested and compromised.
The difference is that I won’t let that investment destroy her.
Even if keeping her safe means destroying everything else.