Chapter Twenty-One Alina’s POV
Chapter Twenty-One
Alina’s POV
Mila rushed in with a flash drive, and we both stood up. I watched Konstantin as he practically yanked the flash drive out of her hands and went to his laptop on the sitting room table. I followed him and sat beside him while Mila took the next couch.
Our eyes were fixed on the screen as we looked at the different series of offshore transfers and coded emails.
“These are all from someone inside the manor to Morozov’s old network,” Mila explained.
One of the email addresses jumped out at me; I recognized it.
“I know that name. He was Vitya’s former driver. He occasionally drove me around New York to Vitya,” I disclosed.
It wasn’t until Konstantin turned to me, his eyes cold, that I realized how it looked.
I might know more than I thought.
This looks bad. Damning, even.
“You’re going to tell me all about this man,” he demanded.
I felt knots in my stomach. I was really under suspicion again.
“He’s Russian, I’m sure,” I started, and Mila nodded.
“Dark hair, always in casuals. He was the only one Vitya trusted to bring me whenever we were meeting at his place—well, that was what he said then. Later, I no longer saw him, so I asked Vitya. He told me that he was helping him with some underground work.”
“That’s all I know,” I remarked, facing Konstantin.
“Uh, I’ll run the digital fingerprints now,” Mila said, rising to her feet.
The silence between Konstantin and me, within the thirty seconds it took Mila to fetch her laptop from the adjacent office, was heavy. I looked straight ahead while his eyes remained on his laptop screen.
She took her seat again and was typing away in seconds.
“The leak is from within the Lobanov charities. Someone inside the manor right now is a primary player in the leak. That much is clear,” she declared.
The weight of Konstantin’s suspicious gaze on me pricked my skin. It made my heart heavy.
“Not necessarily in this place. Just…within the building. It could be anyone. They could be anywhere,” Mila added, her speech rushed.
She could apparently feel his suspicion and was trying to ease the tension. Of course, she was just being a reasonable person who assumed every marriage was a real partnership.
I stood up, unable to bear it any longer. Wordlessly, I went up the stairs.
I covered myself with the covers the instant I got to my bed.
I was sad about what things looked like.
I hated that I found someone I knew in the information shared with us.
I was annoyed with myself for not thinking hard enough when Konstantin kept asking me to tell him every single thing I knew about Vitya’s network.
He told me every tiny detail mattered, for crying out loud. He did.
But I was angry at him, too. More than angry.
How could he switch on me just like that?
We had just agreed to work together, to stand together in all of this, and then just one tiny oversight from me was all it took to put me back in a suspect position?
So much for becoming friends.
I tossed and turned for a while before pulling the covers back and deciding to just relax.
I felt like going back downstairs to yell at him that I wasn’t the enemy he was looking for.
I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself if he thought I’d ever want to be his friend after treating me this way because of one suspicion.
But I didn’t. Because I didn’t want to see his face. I didn’t want to see the confusion in his expression about what to believe. I didn’t want to hear him tell me that he was torn and he didn’t mean to act like that.
But even more scary was the possibility that I would offer to prove myself to him. That I would plead with him to believe me.
I remained in my bedroom until Hans brought me lunch.
“Where is Konstantin?” I inquired, trying to sound as casual as possible.
“Oh, the boss is out. He left a few hours ago,” he said.
“Okay.”
Immediately after eating, I stepped out.
My heart dropped when I saw the two guards on either side of my door.
He ordered them.
Things are back to the way they were, great!
But, as much as I tried to be nonchalant about it, I couldn’t hide the fact that I was hurt.
I felt like I had been pushed out of a house I once lived in.
Like I had just come upon a stark reminder of the fact that I was a stranger.
I came here because of circumstances. The same circumstances might be responsible for sending me out.
“Hey, Mrs. Lobanov,” Mila greeted from the sitting room.
“Alina, please,” I corrected tiredly.
“I don’t think Mr. Konstantin would agree to that,” she pointed out, chuckling.
I took the couch beside hers.
“I think things got awkward,” she remarked.
“You bet,” I replied, sarcasm clear in my tone.
“I’m sorry I put it that way. I really didn’t know there was some underlying matter,” she apologized.
“Oh, no. It has nothing to do with you, Mila,” I clarified. “So…this Vitya Morozov guy is someone I used to date.”
“Oh…”
“Yeah,” I uttered, nodding. “So, until the driver guy's discovery, I had insisted I didn’t know anything about his deals. And I really didn’t. He never told me those things. But I just didn’t know something as little as one of his drivers could be important.”
“I understand,” she answered. “For all it’s worth, though, I think you should know that his reaction was by default. As you said, it wasn’t just about you.”
I chuckled.
“Really, Alina,” she persisted. “Men like him find it hard to branch off the road of what should be done. You know what they were born into.”
“Trust is non-negotiable,” I said, shaking my head from side to side.
“I think he trusts you,” she disclosed. “You didn’t see him when you left; I did. Just…give it time.”
“It’s not like I have somewhere to be,” I answered, shrugging. “We really should catch up. When you’re done with your work here, obviously.”
She nodded in affirmation. “If I were to imagine we’d meet again, I would have said that would be in Russia,” she revealed, grinning.
“Right. I would have thought the same thing. And you’re an accountant now, you always said you wanted to be a doctor.”
She laughed. “It only took a few preliminary courses to cure me of that idea. I love working with numbers. No more, no less.”
“Well, that’s wonderful.”
Mila soon had to go back into the office, and I went back upstairs, where I had dinner.
The smell of dust and gunpowder filled the air as I ran towards the front of the warehouse. People were running away from the building, but I kept going in the opposite direction. The closer I got to the building, the louder the sounds got.
When I finally got to the front of the building, I saw different bodies on the floor, most of them in pools of their blood. Fear gripped me, but I took more steps to the metal doors of the entrance.
“Siroc!” I shouted, the chaos around me swallowing my voice.
I yelled even louder. “Siroc!”
Men were falling around me, and I couldn’t tell where exactly the shots were coming from. I took another step further, and that was when I saw him.
Siroc was leaning against the wall just inside the warehouse, holding his bleeding shoulder with his other hand.
“Oh God. What can I do? Can you move? We should run,” I rushed.
He shook his sweat-covered head. “No, Alina. Get out of here now.”
“What? You’re asking me to leave you here. Have you gone insane?”
“Please,” he pleaded through pants. “I can’t let them kill you.”
He shoved me forward, and my body collided with another body. I saw the gun in his other hand before I looked up at his face. He looked down at me, too, his blue eyes clueless.
Konstantin.
“Go!” Siroc insisted just before he slid down the wall and stopped moving.
I woke up shaking. The dream felt so real, like it was a scene I was in just now.
Siroc is pushing me towards Konstantin?
What the hell?!