Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
MILA
I woke up to the sensation of water being tossed in my face. I started coughing and sat up. I was in the backseat under a blanket. The door was open, and Sergei was standing next to the car.
“Sit up.”
I struggled to do as he asked. My head was pounding like crazy.
I winced. “My head.”
“You’re dehydrated. Drink.” He shoved a water bottle at me.
Was it a good sign that he was trying to keep me alive?
Did that mean he wasn’t going to immediately kill me?
I drank half the bottle and then paused to breathe.
We were sitting at a rest stop off the highway.
It was dark and deserted, empty of other vehicles.
Dark, rolling clouds crossed the sky and there was a cold wind.
I shivered. Across the parking lot was a washroom with a single yellow light that barely illuminated the dark doors. Large moths fluttered around the light.
“Where are we?”
To my surprise, he answered me. “About two hours south of Seattle.”
I froze in shock. Not only were we hours away from home, but he had somehow illegally crossed the border with me, into the United States. How would Axel even find me?
The thought almost made me crumple.
No one was coming to save me. My uncle and aunt, Axel, my guards, anyone who knew anything about me was currently in jail. No one even knew I was missing. Giselle was the only person who’d known about me, and she was dead.
I focused on Sergei, trying to orient myself. “What time is it?”
He opened the door wider. “It’s almost ten. Get in the front seat.”
My legs were like rubber, but I clutched that water bottle and shakily moved to the front seat. He slammed the door shut and then got in beside me.
“Can I use the washroom?” I asked belatedly.
“We’ll be stopping soon for the night. You can go then.”
I didn’t want to know what would happen to me when we were alone in a hotel room. The thought terrified me. Maybe I could scream and get the attention of the desk clerk. I used my hands to move along the front seat in the dark, hoping to find some sort of weapon.
I thought about Giselle, and how Sergei had literally snuffed the life out of her. I knew that was my fate, too, even though my brain couldn’t process it.
I’m going to die.
Admonishing words tumbled out of me before I could stop them. “You didn’t have to kill her.”
“Of course I had to kill her. She was an undercover agent.”
“Giselle? She was undercover?” I blinked while I digested that.
I thought of all the times Giselle had worked alongside Axel.
Was she the reason he had gotten arrested today?
Was she the reason that everyone had been taken into custody?
I had heard them discuss business. She had actively worked to help Axel at all those dinners. “I find that hard to believe.”
Sergei seemed relaxed behind the wheel and showed a surprising interest in the conversation. “She was a Canadian cop.”
How was that even possible? Then I remembered how she’d just walked into the police station and retrieved me without incident. What if he was telling the truth? She had worked closely with Axel. Was she the reason he was behind bars now?
“Is that why we all got arrested? Was she behind all that?”
His expression was almost triumphant. “You really don’t know, do you?”
None of this conversation was making sense, but I needed to reassure him that I didn’t know this information so I didn’t suffer the same fate as Giselle. “No, I didn’t know that. I had no clue.”
That made him laugh. “I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about Axel being an undercover cop.”
The ringing in my ears was real, but that might have been from all the blood rushing to my head. Immediately, my entire head, including my ears, felt hot and the world now sounded muffled.
Axel is an undercover cop?
Not possible.
Even though I didn’t believe him, his statement sent shock waves through me. I stared blankly through the windshield in denial.
It wasn’t true. Sergei was messing with me. That was the only logical response. Robotic words came out of my mouth. “Why would you even say that?”
He laughed, his eyes fixed on my face.
“What is so funny?”
He shook his head. “Knowing that you didn’t know amuses me.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said hotly.
That made him laugh harder. “You not knowing you were married to a cop is what makes it funny.”
I was doing mental gymnastics trying to understand what angle Sergei was working. He’d obviously gone a bit mad. “I saw Axel with my own eyes. He worked for my uncle.”
Sergei, as he drove, reached over me and opened the glove box. He pulled out a pack of about ten pages stapled together. “I broke into Giselle’s apartment and found those files. Found out about Axel, her boss, figured out who her boyfriend is and who she is working for.”
He tossed it on my lap and then handed me a pen light.
Instead of looking at the file, I squinted at him. “You broke into her apartment?”
“Good thing I did too.” He didn’t seem concerned about his own illegal actions.
I was still trying to connect all the dots. “Is that why you were in my house the day I saw you at the top of the stairs?”
“You weren’t supposed to see me. I was trying to find dirt on Axel before I knew he was a cop.” He pointed at the files in my lap. “Come on, start reading.”
The white light momentarily blinded me. When I opened the photocopied pages, I didn’t understand, at first, what I was looking at. In the corner was a photo of Axel. It was a younger photo of him, with short hair and a uniform.
I scanned the rest of the sheet. It was a standardized personnel sheet that included his rank, badge number, division, date of hire, birthday and status.
Everything was written in Russian, and I struggled to understand some of the words, but it was clearly a copy of an official document.
The only thing different was his name. On these documents his name was Alexei Mikhailov.
“He might have been a cop at one point, but he was definitely doing work for my uncle.” My voice sounded less sure than I wanted it to. “He probably left this job a long time ago.”
“Look at the last page. It’s his undercover assignment.”
I flipped to the last page and read the documentation that transferred him to a new department. It looked suspiciously like Sergei was telling me the truth, but I didn’t believe it could be possible. “If this was real, I would have known. I was married to him.”
I clicked off the light, calmly put the papers back into the glove box and handed him his pen.
I knew on some level that I was clinging to denial, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. My brain didn’t stretch that far. At least not in this moment.
Sergei took one look at my face and laughed again. “This is too good. You really didn’t know.”
How had all of this started with Axel?
He had found me on the train when no one else did.
He hadn’t protested when my uncle suggested marriage.
He worked around the clock in Vancouver, and he had resisted crossing lines and getting physical with me.
I had thought he was a hardened criminal who softened toward me over time.
If this was true and he was actually undercover? It changed everything.
About me.
About him.
About our marriage.
I couldn’t reconcile my mafia husband with a police officer who had infiltrated my family to have them all sent to prison.
Nothing made sense.
I also couldn’t reconcile the protective side of Axel. How he’d worked tirelessly to bring Bandit back into my life. Or how he’d worked to protect me from Sergei and everyone else.
If he was a cop, did they know? Was he in jail right now? “Was he arrested?”
“He was part of the raids, taking down the men who worked for him.”
That made me pause. Where were Oleg and Anton? Were they also in jail? What happened to the security guard dogs?
“Axel’s not in jail?”
Sergei laughed again, enjoying himself too much. “No.”
I let that truth wash over me. I had been taken from my house early in the morning, and if Axel actually was a cop, he had not only let me be arrested and forced to sit in that jail cell all day, but, worse, he hadn’t even tried to help Bandit.
Who had been left, scared and alone, in the closet for the entire day.
The whole time I thought Axel was in jail like the rest of us.
None of this made sense. Axel knew better than anyone that I had nothing to do with his business, but he’d allowed me to be arrested.
Worse, he’d allowed Giselle to pick me up from jail and deliver me to Sergei.
“If Giselle is a cop, why’d she help you?”
“I took her boyfriend and told her I’d free him if she helped me.”
“But you killed her.”
“Him too,” he shrugged. “Long before she came to get you.”
I sat there, feeling a wave of shock as that dark truth settled over me.
Axel didn’t care about me or Bandit. He’d let so many bad things happen to both of us today. “My husband was undercover?”
It was a truth so big I needed to digest it in pieces.
I needed to rewrite my entire marriage with him.
Every memory and moment seemed to mean something different, knowing he was an undercover cop.
Sergei’s voice was conversational now. “You people are all the same. You want to know what your biggest downfall was in all of this?”
“What?” My voice sounded wooden.
“You trusted Axel. You believed in the fairy tales, and that brought you to your own downfall.”
I felt raw. Stripped and broken. I thought I had convinced myself that I was on my own when I thought Axel was in jail.
But knowing that Axel had betrayed me was the moment that I understood just how alone I was. Hopelessness washed over me. The end of my life was speeding toward me, only hours away, and it looked more than bleak. “I didn’t know that about him.”
“That’s what makes it funny.” Sergei turned on the radio. “I’m in a good mood now.”
My throat felt like dry chalk, but I managed to speak. “If you’re going to kill me, I’d rather you just get it over with.”