Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
AXEL
The sun was just coming up, casting warm pink and orange hues over the east side of the sky. The air was acrid with the scent of burnt rubble and smoldering piles of materials.
After our incident in the field, Grisha had immediately called in his cleanup crew.
In record time, they had removed all the bodies and vehicles from the grounds.
I was told they had also accounted for every single bullet and then disappeared without a trace before the morning light.
They had acted with such stealth that the dozens of firemen who were dealing with the fire hadn’t even noticed them coming or going.
Across the driveway, Grisha motioned for me to join him and his two cousins. They all wore the same grim expression.
Grisha looked me dead in the eye. “Thank you for protecting my family.”
This was the moment of recognition I had been trying to engineer for three years. I had worked tirelessly and crossed a multitude of morally gray lines to get here, so why didn’t I feel victorious? Instead, I felt something cold gnawing inside me.
“You know I’d guard your family with my life.”
That part I wasn’t lying about. Tonight, when we had come under attack, the lines between who was good and who was bad had blurred. My soldier training had taken over. When someone tried to kill someone I was assigned to protect, I didn’t think about the morality of eliminating the threat.
I just did it.
When I was a soldier.
When I was a cop.
And now, when I was undercover.
I had eliminated the threat in a brutally effective way, which put me in Grisha’s favor. Now he trusted me more. I had just moved one step closer to legally taking down his entire family, the same family I had protected tonight with violence that resulted in multiple deaths.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Grisha cleared his throat. “I knew I’d be able to count on you.”
I looked over at the smoking rubble. “What are we going to do about that?”
He spat on the ground. “War has been declared by the Volkov family. We didn’t start this fight, but we will end it.”
It was almost seven before I started walking back toward the house, but I stopped in my tracks when I saw Mila.
She was standing off to the side with a small quilt wrapped around her shoulders, looking like a disaster victim motionless in the debris.
All around her, men worked. They carried shovels, wrapped up hoses and backed up vehicles.
She stood there, completely out of place and unusually still, as she watched the activity around her.
It had been exactly twenty-four hours since we started the skeet shooting competition, and she had slept little and faced an insane amount of stress in that time. It didn’t make sense that she was still outside watching.
I walked up to her, but she didn’t look at me, even when I stopped right beside her.
“You should be sleeping. You’ve had a rough night.” My voice was gruff.
She stared straight ahead. “What was in these buildings that burned down?”
I looked at the wreckage that had once housed more than ninety million rubles’ worth of drugs, guns and black market supplies. “You shouldn’t ask me that.”
She took a deep breath. “I’ve lived here for the past four years, and I’ve never once questioned what was in these buildings. Night and day, trucks would come and go, backing into the buildings and then leaving four hours later. No one ever talked about it.” She looked at me. “And I never asked.”
“That’s for your own protection.”
She looked back at the ruins. “What about the men in the field? I saw three tow trucks go past the driveway, and I saw multiple lights in the field for hours.”
This time I didn’t look at her. “You shouldn’t ask me that either.”
“What happened to violence only as a last resort?”
I hesitated. “It was the last resort. First choice was to get past them. Second choice was to stay on the run and not engage. When they drove our vehicle into the ditch, it was my last resort to keep you and your aunt safe.”
“You shot them all.”
“They are the ones who chose violence, not me.”
She stared up at me until I looked back down at her. Her braid had come undone, and wisps fluttered around her face. She had a wary look in her eyes. “Going forward, you need to leave me alone.”
I recognized the look on her face. The last time she had worn it, she was staring at Sergei. “You know I can’t do that.”
“This,” she swept her hand in front of her, “this stupid pretend thing is over between us.”
When she tried to walk away, I reached out and grabbed her wrist. “You know we’re not done.”
“Let go of me,” she said in a cold voice.
I immediately dropped her wrist. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk later.”
Her eyes flashed with emotions, but she didn’t bother to argue. She just turned and walked away.
I watched her retreat, keeping my eyes on her until she made it to the back patio and disappeared safely inside the house.
I managed to get four hours of sleep before I had to connect with Yuri for an emergency meeting. I figured he wanted a debrief on what had just happened, but usually he waited for the storm to clear before he tried to connect.
I walked down the hallway. No one in the kitchen looked up when I walked through to the back.
I stopped short at the door when I saw a stunning woman sitting next to Yuri at the table. She was tall and voluptuous with long, straight blonde hair and a face that could have hit any runway.
“You lost?” I said without thinking.
She laughed warmly, immediately breaking the ice.
Yuri threw me a look. “Giselle, forgive my agent’s bad manners. This is Axel.”
She gave me a smile that was surprisingly open, and her French Canadian accent was soothing. “Pleased to meet you.”
I sat down on the hard wooden chair across from them. “And you are?”
Axel spoke for her. “Giselle is your equivalent in Vancouver. She’s been working undercover for the RCMP, trying to get the Volkov family behind bars.”
She took her turn. “Their operation based in Vancouver has been responsible for an increasingly violent conflict with Grisha’s men. From our perspective, it’s been a struggle to contain. The violence is going public, and it’s getting messy.”
I rubbed my face. “Expect it to get worse. Tonight Grisha’s family came under four different coordinated attacks from the Volkovs, one of which involved his wife and niece. Now he’s on a warpath, and the typical retaliation for an attack at this level is to escalate it beyond the initial attack.”
Giselle frowned as she thumbed through the files. “Mila holds a Canadian passport. She’s the one they are trying to marry off to Sergei, who will be moving to Vancouver to run Grisha’s chapter there?” She looked up at me. “Yuri mentioned you were dating her?”
I looked at Yuri, but he avoided my eyes. “I think dating is an exaggerated term in this situation.”
“Is there any chance you could go to Vancouver instead of Sergei?”
I looked at Yuri to see how he handled her attempt to change our mission, something we’d been working on for three long years.
To my surprise, he nodded in agreement.
I kept the incredulity off my face and shrugged with casual indifference. “Grisha pulls all the strings. I’m just one string.”
“Our organization in Canada could offer you full immunity and support if you married Mila and moved to Vancouver. We could use someone like you on the inside. I’d feed you intel about the Volkov family and we could work together to secure convictions against both families.”
“Married.” I cleared my throat, stuck on the word. The image of Mila standing in the middle of the chaos and avoiding my gaze like I was the monster haunted me. “We’re not dating. Grisha only thinks we’re together. I’m just a decoy she’s using to avoid marriage.”
“It would really help us out,” Yuri suggested in a calm tone, like I was being unreasonable.
My gaze swung to him. “What are you saying?”
“Headquarters thinks that if we work in tandem with the Canadians, we can cast a wider net, but in order for that to happen, we need you to be the one to take over in Vancouver.”
“Since when?”
“Since our intel indicated that we could do the most damage to this family from there.”
I looked over at Giselle.
She studied me back with an inquisitive gaze. “I’m hoping you can pull this off. Yuri said you could.”
My mind raced at the suggestion. From headquarters’ perspective, it made sense. I knew I wasn’t more than a chess piece in a much bigger game, but even as a seasoned undercover agent, marriage and moving to another country made me balk.
“What is your role in Vancouver?” My voice sounded calmer than I felt.
“I have proprietary software that helps coordinate shipping for multiple family organizations, including the Volkov family.”
“Grisha doesn’t use your software, does he?”
She shook her head. “No, but if you took over in Vancouver, it would give us a legitimate reason to be seen working together. People already expect to see me everywhere and I can make a lot of introductions.”
Yuri cut in. “We think that between her intel on their shipments and your restraint from escalating violence, we can cover a lot more ground.”
“What about all the work we’ve done here in Moscow?”
“We still have enough to convict, but we’re hoping to get a slam dunk if you can marry the niece and get to Vancouver.”
Marry the niece. On paper this plan made sense, but I was the one who had to leave this meeting and actually get married.
To Mila. Someone who had made it clear I belonged in the same category as Sergei. From her perspective, she probably didn’t see a difference.
The thought depressed me. “Tell me about the immunity.”
Giselle gave me a kind smile. “It’s the same type of immunity you have here. Any crimes committed while undercover in Canada, you’re protected.”
I thought about Mila, who’d stood in a field of burning rubble and told me to my face that I was bad news and that she wanted nothing to do with me. “What about Mila?”
Giselle and Yuri exchanged looks but she answered. “You’d be protected legally. Mila isn’t by default. Any immunity for her would have to be negotiated after the fact, and it would depend on what she knows.”
“I’m Russian. When I commit crimes on Canadian soil, I have immunity. Mila’s Canadian and has nothing to do with the business, yet she’s the one who could be prosecuted?”
Giselle had the grace to look embarrassed. “I promise I’ll look into securing immunity for her.”
I thought about how Mila had tried to run away from this mess and I had been the one to find her in that train station and drag her back. The guilt felt heavy on my chest.
I hated people who played hardball, but this was one hill I was willing to die on. I didn’t question it too closely, but I also wouldn’t budge on this. “It’s a requirement for me that she be guaranteed full immunity.”
She gave a short nod. “I understand. I’m going to need some time chasing this up the pole, but I’ll make it happen.”
I ignored Yuri’s bewildered expression. “I need to go.”
She stood up to shake my hand. “I hope we get to work together. We really could use some help taking down these families.”
Her handshake was firm. I still hadn’t processed what they were asking me to do. “Keep me posted.”
The shove came out of nowhere, throwing me slightly off balance before I twisted to face whoever was coming at me.
Sergei’s thick face loomed before mine.
“I know what you’re up to,” he snarled, pointing at my chest.
Was my cover blown? I instinctively defaulted to aggression. “What the hell, Sergei?”
If I saw any sign that he knew about my meeting with Yuri, I’d need to manage that breach. That could prove difficult, considering we were standing on a public street.
He blinked, unprovoked by my tone. “I’ve got issues with you trying to mess with my opportunity to go to Vancouver.”
I tried to hide my relief when I realized he was only here to hash out his grievance about my infringement on his territory and not because of my double life.
I decided to taunt him to keep him focused on that, not on my activities in this neighborhood. “Talk to Grisha. He’s the one who gave me his blessing with Mila this weekend.”
Sergei couldn’t hide his confusion. “That’s bullshit. They were in Zavidovo for the family weekend.”
“Which I was invited to as Mila’s guest.” I knew this would burn because he had been assigned to stay home and watch over the property. Something he had failed to do.
He stared at me without emotion. There wasn’t a flicker of rage or hurt behind those eyes.
Just a cold, calculated stare. “You think Grisha has given you his approval. Everyone is convinced they are good with Grisha, right up to the point when I have my weapon on their temple. They never believe me when I tell them that Grisha has turned on them. They don’t know that he lies better than the rest of us. ”
I refused to let him bait me. “I guess that’s why he put Mila and me in the same hotel room.”
This time I saw hatred in his eyes. A dark, hot flash of something dangerous. Something predatory. “She was promised to me just like Vancouver was and I don’t let men take what belongs to me.”
“Take it up with Grisha.” And without looking back, I walked off.
I didn’t want to marry Mila, nor did I want to replace Sergei in Canada.
In fact, I had been looking forward to Sergei leaving Russia and giving me the opportunity to get closer to Grisha.
I understood that it would be catastrophic if Sergei took over in Vancouver.
Grisha used him like a relentless hammer that beat everyone into submission.
I could only imagine the level of violence that would break out if Sergei were given free rein to retaliate against the Volkov family, but the alternative was for me to somehow replace him.
I didn’t want to do it. I had no desire to try to convince Mila to marry me and I wasn’t interested in moving to Canada.
I was tired. The thought of starting over in a new city seemed overwhelming at the moment.
My phone rang.
It was Grisha. He started to speak without preamble. “You’re being summoned for dinner. It’s a small family tonight, with just my cousins and a few other folks.”
“That sounds great.”
He paused, in a dramatic fashion. “Because Mila is in love with you and she doesn’t want to marry Sergei, I’ve been toying with the idea of sending you to Vancouver. Do you think that’s something you can manage?”
Grisha was handing me the keys to his inner circle at the same moment Mila was threatening to blow everything up. “I can handle Vancouver.”
“How did I know you would say that? But the real question is, can you keep my niece in line?”
“Mila is another story.”
He chuckled softly, then spoke. “Tell her that her choice is between you and Sergei, but either way she’s getting married.”