32. Mila
MILA
Adrik said he wanted a team formed to strike out against Yusef Antonov as quickly as possible.
Lev was in charge of setting it up, and he didn’t stall or delay. There wasn’t a single second to spare in finding the people he wanted to dispatch to the docks where Yusef Antonov seemed to be hiding.
Since the night that I snuck into that compound halfway between the Las Vegas desert and the coastline, Gregori’s right-hand man, his lieutenant with the target on his back, had been spotted with the tracker that I’d placed on a vehicle.
When I slipped past a few cars and slapped small trackers under their carriages, I hadn’t known who’d drive them or if it would matter.
On the mission, sneaking in, I had wanted to accomplish as much as I could.
That meant leaving trackers wherever I could.
It just so happened that one of the SUVs had been taken by a man who assisted Yusef often, and that was how the Volkovs could have the ready-made access to his movements.
“What if they spot you?” Lev asked when we spent another long day and night of studying the routes and the plan. He’d chosen Eli and Pyotr as the assassins to assist us. A few more Bratva men would be coming along as backup too.
I glanced up at the question that singled me out. We’d been discussing the gear we’d all be wearing. Head coverings would assist us in sneaking in undetected, but Lev still had his worries.
He wasn’t necessarily a worrywart. He was a control freak, though, and that included his tendency to overthink and stress over every detail and contingency. As if he could control them all to make sure we’d be successful.
“Me?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Only me?” I asked.
He nodded again, not backing off from the question.
“You were one of the last to infiltrate their compound.” By saying I was one of the last, he was referring to the reports that had come in after that fateful night I’d been captured.
A nearby gang had chosen the following day to attack that location, and it helped to more or less cover the tracks of my activity that night.
The men Lev and the soldiers killed were excused as casualties of that gang coming in.
“All right…” I agreed. “I was, but we’ve confirmed that the surveillance at the fence had been killed. All those exterior cameras were powered off when Nikolai had someone tamper with the lines.”
“I know,” he replied, “but there’s still a chance someone who was at that compound could see you at the docks and your cover would be blown.
” Instead of using it as another reason he didn’t want me to be near danger and not come, he turned to Eli and Pyotr and the others.
“If there is any indication she’s compromised, we retreat. ”
Hearing him vouch for me was another stamp on how convinced I wanted to let myself be that I mattered to him.
Seeing him “allow” me to be included on this hit was also another piece of evidence that he wasn’t going to try to shackle me and exclude me from action.
I didn’t know how to be idle. I didn’t know how to be a kept woman or to lack a job. Being on the run, out in the field, was what I’d been conditioned to do, and I appreciated that I was still able to participate. Especially with knowing that Lev would be with me every step of the way.
Just like the previous mission, the time both dragged and raced by. Before I could fully realize it, it was time to move out. We’d spent our days rehearsing and strategizing and we’d ended every night with passionate sex in bed.
Too soon, it was time to move out.
And I was ready. I was impatient to get this thing in motion.
We’d gone over the maps. I’d memorized the aerial layout of the docks we were heading to. As a team, we’d practiced placement and pored over the blueprints and building diagrams.
All of us were trained.
We had an aggressive timeline for planning this strike, but we weren’t rushed and taking a sloppy approach.
Before I knew it, it was time to start the long drive west and get into position in the dockside area where Yusef Antonov was supposed to be hiding.
If he was out on the boat that he was reputedly staying on sometimes, we’d need to adjust to reach him there, but the collective hope was that he’d be in the three-storied industrial building near the large warehouses where he was overseeing shipments of arms and drugs from overseas.
Lev was in full “boss” mode as we got into the vehicles and left.
I was too, concentrating on pulling off another stealthy intrusion into enemy territory.
The apprehension that filled me was a “good” energy, that nervousness that keyed me up to be alert and super aware of my surroundings.
I’d felt it many times when I was a slave for the Cartels, but now, as I left with Lev and the other Bratva men, I didn’t feel the dread.
The gut-churning anxiety. That soul-deep worry that I’d always have to be on and survive all of the most gruesome and worst odds.
But I didn’t.
I rode along as a passenger, calm and prepared.
Unlike those times with the Cartels, I knew exactly what I was getting into. There was no guesswork about what was expected of me with vague demands and flimsy instructions.
The Volkovs were the pros. Professionals with strategy and well-endowed with resources.
This wasn’t a rough, bumpy ride in a crappy truck with no suspension, bouncing along the terrain.
I was comfortable in an air-conditioned SUV, feeling more like an agent than a smuggler.
And I couldn’t lie and admit that I wasn’t looking forward to proving, again, that I was part of the team.
We reached the location where we’d leave the vehicles, and just like we’d rehearsed, we approached the buildings.
“Check.”
Lev’s voice came in clearly through the comms unit in my earpiece. Similar to the one we’d used before, I knew that I could be tracked through it. Instead of that being an oversight, it was a security, a tether that should anything go wrong, I would be able to be found and retrieved.
Another soldier stayed back near the vehicles, both to guard them and to operate as an alert for backup.
We all reported in with the numbers we were assigned.
In the shadows of the night, we acquainted ourselves with our positions.
Because there were two other buildings adjacent to the one we hoped to find Yusef Antonov in, the other men would fan and spread out to search the area.
Equipped with cameras on us, and the live recording inputting our feed to a database back at Adrik’s house, we were capturing all that we saw.
Lev dipped his chin at me, armed and ready with his gun in his hands.
Signaled to move forward, I crouched and ran up along the utility alley of the three-storied structure that was our target.
Together, almost in a game of tag with the darkness, we crept in and entered the building.
Once more, I paused. I was the scout for Lev, his eyes and ears to get in faster.
But I was relatively unarmed, too. I would be trained later to use weapons, but for now, I was relying on Lev’s protection.
A taser was strapped within the cuff of my sleeve, but against a gun or knife, I’d be screwed.
I lifted my hand to move my fingers at my side, indicating with a practiced gesture that I was heading toward the stairwell. He nodded and waited for me to proceed.
You can do this.
You will do this.
He’s right there.
We’re going to get in and get out—
I stopped, freezing as I recognized the telltale light of a sensor down an intersecting hallway. It wasn’t the way we’d planned to get through the building, but now that I saw it…
I tilted my head toward it. It was the best I could do in terms of asking Lev if we should check it out without speaking, but he didn’t follow.
“Something’s down that way,” I mouthed.
He shook his head, still scoping out the place as we paused.
“If it’s protected, something is hidden that way,” I argued. My gut instinct was never wrong. I felt that I needed to check out what was kept and protected that way.
He shook his head again.
Another soldier was coming in the rear, backing us both up.
“I’ll go look quickly,” I said, ready to risk myself to secure critical intelligence. This mission had a two-fold goal. Kill Yusef Antonov and get whatever intel we could.
He shook his head again.
I held up the taser, reminding him that I wasn’t unprotected like last time.
The soldier came up and pointed up the stairs, then held out two fingers.
Two guards.
Two soon-to-be dead bodies.
“Go,” I mouthed. We were in. We were in as much as we could be. So long as no one was watching this hallway, we could pull off the two-birds-with-one-stone aspect of this. They could go take out Yusef Antonov and I would act as the spy.
Lev furrowed his brow, his uneasy glare telling me that he wasn’t happy about this impulsive change of plans, but he didn’t push it.
Because he cared.
Because he cared enough to trust me and know that I could handle this myself.
He tipped his chin once to give me the clearance to go ahead, and he went up with the other soldier.
I crept down the hall, letting the darkness surround me. My eyes adjusted, and I avoided triggering any alarm. The beaded rays of light were easy to see, and I didn’t try anything stupid.
You can do this.
You are doing this.
I kept half of my attention on listening for any sounds of commotion up above, where Lev and the other soldier were heading to kill Yusef Antonov. The other half of my focus was locked into making my way through this corridor without being detected.
No one waited for me.
It was just the lit-up sensors that guarded this way.
Sweat slid down to pool at the small of my back. I breathed steadily despite the instinct to pant.
The suspense of sneaking in this far—alone—had my fight-or-flight activated, but I kept my cool.
Not panicking.
I’m not.
I won’t.
You can do this.
Get in there, grab whatever you can. And go.
I licked my lips as I reached a door that was left ajar.
Do it.
Go in there.
Do it for Lev.
Do it for the family.
For the Bratva.
I envisioned the moment that this would be over. When I could hand over whatever I found and further prove to myself and to him that this was where my loyalty would always lie. With the Volkovs. With Lev.
Beyond any shadow of doubt, they would know that I was with them, ready to fight for them.
Ready to spy and do any clandestine mission for them.
Because as I stepped into the office, I knew that this was not a sign of how I was owned and expected to behave. This was my mechanism of fighting for the man I loved.
Love.
Honor.
Respect and the freedom to belong.
I rode the elation of accepting those truths as I stepped through the office.
No one was in here, and I didn’t waste a second to start recording all that lay out on the table.
Maps. Correspondence. The more that I scoured through the piles on the desk, all of them lying out haphazardly that made me realize this was more of a makeshift meeting room than a real office, I wondered if there was another administrative space where more intel could be waiting for me.
I glanced at the computer screen, narrowing my eyes.
A countdown had begun on the screen.
Someone had logged out only a minute ago.
I frowned as my heart thudded faster.
We’d come at this hour of the late night and early morning because of the spies’ reports that Yusef Antonov usually retired this far into the night.
He wasn’t supposed to be up and moving around.
But he was.
He’d just left this office-like space.
I jerked my head up, straining to hear for movement upstairs.
He could be anywhere in this building, able to ambush Lev.
Oh, shit.
I darted out the door, taser at the ready, to alert the man I loved that the target was on the move.