Chapter 24
ROMAN
The place still smells like smoke when I arrive.
It’s not a theatrical sort of destruction—no flames pouring out of windows, no falling concrete, no roof caving in. This attack was quick, coordinated, and clean. The small office is blackened and ruined, the chemical bite of extinguishers lingering in the air.
The place was Volkov Ledger Services, an intentionally boring name for a very illegal operation. Payroll processing, compliance audits, and small-to-mid cap financial consulting. And, of course, a fair share of money laundering.
The message is clear. Whoever blew this place up wanted me to know that even my most innocuous operations were both known and targeted.
Thankfully, the attack happened after business hours, after all employees were gone. My men make sure no civilians get close enough. The neighborhood knows better than to snoop around my operations.
Two patrol cars sit down the block with their lights off.
A uniformed officer stands near the yellow line of police tape.
He’s young with a muscular build, practically shaking with nervous energy.
As he should be. After all, he’s on my payroll, paid more than he is with the CPD.
And I’m about to find out whether or not he’s earning his keep.
I step under the awning and assess the place from the front. The sign is hanging crooked. The glass door is ruined with spiderweb cracks but remains on its hinges. It could’ve been worse, but the surgical nature of the attack makes it clear this hit wasn’t an amateur operation.
Andrei appears at my shoulder, silent and lethal. His gaze sweeps the street, the roof lines, the reflections in the ruined glass.
“Two cameras were cut clean,” he says in Russian. “Someone knew where to look.”
I don’t answer. My eyes are on my payroll cop. I’m waiting for him to come over, to tell me what I want to know. I can sense he’s nervous, as if he’s about to walk to his execution.
Finally, he says something to his partner, then starts toward me. His gaze is down, his posture hunched. Good. He knows his place. Now let’s see if he has anything useful for me.
“Mr. Barinov,” he says. “You wanted an update.”
“Yes.”
He swallows hard as his eyes flick to Andrei, then back to me. “I did a little snooping around. My access level isn’t the highest, but it’s enough to get into the system.”
“On with it.”
“Yes. Right. Sorry. Anyway, I wasn’t able to find anything suggesting an active investigation on you. Nothing official, at least.”
I narrow my eyes. “Nothing official. What does that mean, exactly? Be very precise with your words, officer.”
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Meaning the department isn’t moving on you. Not right now, at least. Couldn’t find any warrants in progress, not even a surveillance order.”
Good news. So far.
“And unofficially?”
His lips form a thin line. He has something to tell me but isn’t looking forward to how I’m going to react.
“There’s been talk. Pressure.”
I say nothing, guiding him without words to continue, to fill in the blanks.
He lets out a worried rush of breath. “It’s Garin. One of his guys works as some kind of civilian consultant for the PD. Not really sure what he does, but rumor has it he’s around to guide interest.”
Meaning, to keep police attention away from where he doesn’t want it and on where he does. Like on me.
“He doesn’t wear a badge, like I said. But he’s very cozy with some of us who do. I heard he’s been asking questions, trying to get a unit to take a closer look at Barinov Holdings and that business plan you have going on.”
Of course he is. Outright killing me would be too risky, too destabilizing. But if he could kill me in the boardroom, his goal would still be accomplished.
“Which unit?”
“Sorry, but I’m really not sure. If something’s official, that means any low-level beat cop like me can access information. But you don’t need me to tell you that the CPD has other operations going on. Off-the-books stuff.”
“What about the intelligence division?”
He shrugs. “They’re involved in heavier shit. They could be planning an invasion of Canada and I wouldn’t know a damn thing about it.”
So, there may or may not be off-the-books operations into my affairs. Just because Garin’s pushing through his consultant doesn’t mean he’s managed to get the CPD’s interest.
On the other hand, the entire Intelligence Division could be investigating me and I wouldn’t know about it.
I wish I had a man inside that department.
I’ve tried, but it’s damn near impossible.
They don’t let just anyone into Intelligence.
Affiliations with criminal empires like mine are the first thing they sniff out.
The officer’s eyes light up as something else occurs to him.
“Wait! There’s a Detective Russo.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Max Russo?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. I heard rumors he’s taken a personal interest in your operations.”
This is useful.
“What else?”
He shakes his head. “That’s it. I swear. I wouldn’t hide anything else from—”
“Good.” I cut him off. “If you did, you’d be useless. For now, this is fine.”
His shoulders sag with relief like I’ve just granted him a last-minute stay of execution.
“Go back to the other officers before you begin to look suspicious,” I say.
“Yes, Mr. Barninov.”
He hurries off. I glance at Andrei before turning and stepping closer to the wrecked storefront, looking past the shattered windows into the interior. This operation was one of the quiet, inconspicuous ones. No guns, no drugs.
But it was touched. And it was touched precisely as if to say, “You think you can turn this into something clean? It’ll be destroyed before you get the chance.”
I clench my hands into hard fists, holding for a beat, then releasing. Fury courses through me. But such emotions won’t do me any good in the moment. Indeed, whoever did this is most likely hoping I let my anger get the best of me and do something foolish.
Not a chance.
Andrei watches me, waiting for orders.
“Garin wants me spooked,” I say quietly in Russian. “He wants to push me into making mistakes.”
“You think it was him?”
“No one else it could be. None of the small-time operations in this town would risk the blowback from such an attack.”
Not to mention, Garin is exceptionally skilled at getting to me, of doing it in such a way that it doesn’t look like it was him.
Elena appears in my mind’s eye. For a moment, I’m back to the day she was killed. I shake my head, returning to the present.
“He wants me nervous.”
“And he wants the banks nervous,” Andrei says. “Even if you can keep your operations in order, there’s still the risk in their eyes that something like this will happen to anyone affiliated with you.”
I say nothing, thinking it all over, because he’s right.
“Do you want to hit back?” Andrei asks.
If it were any other time but this goddamn month, the answer would be yes.
I’d put every man I could on tracking down who did this, then hit back twice as hard.
But I can’t. I think of the IPO, the scrutiny, the delicate arrangement that holds my future and Sasha’s together.
Nothing would sink my plans faster than being linked to an open attack.
“Not yet,” I say. “Nothing more than a quiet investigation for now.”
He nods, slipping his hands into his coat pockets. I’m not going to give the banks any excuse to pull back when I’m so goddamn close.
“We’ll find out who did it,” I say. “Then I’ll decide what to do with the information.”
My phone vibrates. I slip it out and see a message from Doran, one of my guards.
Sasha is back from tutoring. With Amalie now. Nothing else to report.
Good. I slip my phone back into my pocket and start walking toward the car, the image of the city burning in my mind’s eye.
It’s the least I’d do to keep those I care about safe.
“That’s our man,” Andrei says. “Never would’ve guessed he was a cop.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
My eyes are on Kyle Denning.
The first thing I notice about him is his gait. It’s not one you would expect from a cop, the sort that clocks them instantly as law enforcement even when they’re not in uniform—the head-on-a-swivel, squared-shoulders sort of posture.
No. His gait makes him seem more like a low-class thug than a member of CPD’s Intelligence Division. I imagine it’s all part of the undercover act.
I glance down at his academy graduation photo again.
He looks markedly different, but it’s him.
He’s athletic and tall enough to stand out in a crowd.
More like someone who could run five miles flat on a moment’s notice.
Lean strength. Shaggy blonde hair matching the stubble on his jaw.
Eyes gleaming with obvious intelligence.
Kyle is coming out of a brick building on the West Side. Nondescript, the sort of place CPD uses for clandestine meetings. He pauses at the steps, slips out a cigarette, and lights it. He winces as he smokes, as if it’s the first cigarette he’s ever had.
Strange. Or not. If he’s working undercover, smoking’s a good way to fit in, especially with how straight-and-narrow the typical cop is these days.
“You want to tail him?” Andrei asks.
“Yes. But very carefully. No doubt he’s trained to look out for tails.”
Kyle slips into a late-model sedan, the sort that would never attract attention, and pulls into traffic. We follow. Andrei tails with the practiced skill of someone who’s done this in Moscow, in Prague, in Chicago. It’s a different dance, but the rhythm is the same.
Kyle moves through traffic with restraint. Doesn’t speed, doesn’t run red lights. Doesn’t give anyone a single reason to notice him.
He’s good, which makes him dangerous.
We track him for twenty minutes. He stops at a nearby coffee shop, goes inside, stays five minutes, then leaves. A quick meet? Habit? No way to know.
“Keep going?”
“Keep going.”
We follow him into a residential neighborhood.
Small houses, middle-class. Part of me wants to break the tail before he notices, if he hasn’t already.
But I say nothing. I want to know who I’m dealing with.
I want to know if it’s just a coincidence that Amalie ended up in a job with me when she has a brother in CPD Intelligence.
Kyle pulls into a driveway and parks. Andrei eases into an open spot down the block, nestled among other cars. I watch as Kyle gets out, walks around to a side gate, and unlocks it. He then goes inside and out of sight.
I watch the house as if it might confess something if I stare hard enough.
“You want to call it off?” Andrei asks.
“I’ll tell you when I want to call it off. So far, he doesn’t know we’re here.”
“You sure?”
“He would be acting differently if he did. He’s cautious, but unaware of our presence.”
I keep my eyes on the house, but my mind returns to the other piece of the puzzle taking shape—Max Russo.
I don’t need a file on him to know what sort of man he is. No doubt he sees me as both a venue for professional advancement and a way to get to Amalie. First, he approaches me, then he approaches her. He’s looking at all possible angles, trying to figure out which is the softest entry point.
I sniffed ambition on him the second he approached me, a Bratva leader, in broad daylight. He’s got balls, I’ll give him that. And that’s to say nothing of him cornering Amalie the way he did. What would he have said to her if I hadn’t shown up? Would he have tried to turn her against me?
Time ticks by. I want to linger, to watch Kyle, to see if I can find out any more information. But I’m playing a dangerous game. If a member of CPD Intelligence spots me tailing him, that’d give him reason to turn the attention of the division on me.
That’s the last thing I need.
“Let’s go.”
Andrei pulls onto the street. I keep my eyes on the house just in case Kyle emerges. He doesn’t.
We’re soon headed toward downtown. My phone vibrates. I take it out and see another text from Doran. This time, a picture of Sasha and Amalie at the big table in the art room, painting something together. Their heads are down, their hands close to each other.
It’s calm. Domestic.
My chest tightens with emotion that surprises me.
I slip my phone back into my pocket and turn my attention to the road.
Garin, Russo, and perhaps Kyle Denning—three potential obstacles that stand in the way of getting this IPO off the ground. So many moving parts, so many ways it could all go wrong.
But if it goes right, my son’s future is secured.
“Man plans,” I say.
Andrei chuckles. He doesn’t need me to finish the sentence.