11. Viktor
VIKTOR
Iwas approaching this all wrong.
Keeping Wren as a “prisoner” but refusing to treat her like one. If she was a captive who posed a threat to the Bratva, she’d be in that holding cell or I would let Markus and Rueben torture answers out of her.
Living with Wren and seeing her as an “enemy” but counting on having her wrapped around my dick wasn’t going so well, either.
The more she acclimated to seeing my brothers and cousins and didn’t harden with an angry glare suggested that this gray area of her supposed imprisonment was confusing her, too.
What really opened my eyes was how she had come for me.
She protested.
She resisted.
But she caved. Because beneath all the labels that wedged a moral divide between us, she was a woman. A passionate, scared, defensive, and stubborn woman. And potentially an honest one.
If she didn’t know anything about Adrik’s assassination attempt, fine. The fact that she had only just transferred to the department was something that we had tracked and verified with Trojan hacking into all that he could.
If she was convinced that someone was aiming to shoot her at that same event, it was past time for me to twist my perspective.
Someone wanted Adrik dead. Clearly. That threat wasn’t going to disappear.
Someone supposedly wanted Wren dead that night too. Maybe. That threat had yet to be verified since she was the only one who claimed that a second shot had been taken.
However, with my brand of math, that meant someone wanted both of them dead. That they were both targets to eliminate, and in that vein of thinking, I tried out the theory that she had to have some value for someone to want to kill her.
Whatever that reason was could very well matter to us.
Seducing her wasn’t going to open her eyes to some critical piece of information that she was holding. It would only cement how strong the bond was between us, this raw magnetism that had her caving under my kisses and me going to the shower to jerk off while she dozed.
I paced in the foyer, waiting for her to come down like I’d requested.
My phone buzzed, and I checked it.
Adrik: You want me to have Elena show Wren what now?
Viktor: You’ll see.
Last night as I lay in bed and stared at Wren sleeping on the couch, it hit me that I could adjust my approach entirely. Feed her a little intel. Show her how rampant the corruption was. And maybe she’d realize that her cooperation with us would outweigh her concerns about siding with the enemy.
I texted him then, in the middle of the night, to have Elena be ready in the morning to show Wren some things on her computer. Trojan would dial in too, via a video call, since he worked out of state as only a remote employee.
Adrik had been up in the middle of the night due to Luka not sleeping. He agreed for me to bring Wren over, but he wasn’t clear on my reasoning yet.
I’d had a federal agent within my reach for over a week now and I was only slacking if I didn’t test what she could know with the evidence I’d show her.
I had to have some barometer of how she would react to the possibility of corruption as a motive for why she could be taken out.
And only then would I feel more confident to feed her some more information.
Like the fact that we were seeking answers about Gregori.
She came down the stairs, her brow furrowed as she watched. I expected her to be tense and awkward around me after I’d made her come, but that shit wasn’t going to last. We’d proven to each other on that sofa how good it could be when we weren’t only enemies.
Her glasses rested on her nose, and I embraced the visceral punch in the gut that came when I took in how gorgeous she was. Her red hair covered her shoulders, left down, and as she came down the steps, the long waves caught the light and glimmered like copper.
“Before anyone can be preoccupied again,” I said.
She held up a hand. “That kind of preoccupation won’t be happening again.”
“Hmm.” So you say. I eyed her up and down as she joined me in front of the door. “Before anyone can be preoccupied again, I have something to show you.”
She hesitated, watching me warily. I imagined she was clueless for what to say since I’d made her come, but her lack of trust in me remained consistent. “Something good or something bad?”
“I’ll let you be the judge of that.” I gestured for her to follow me as I reached for the door knob.
She didn’t move, frowning at the void that waited for her to pass through. Staring outside, she seemed rooted in place. “You’re letting me go.”
I heaved out an impatient breath and grabbed her hand. “No.” Holding her hand, I led her to my car and opened the passenger door.
Once more, she paused and eyed me warily.
“Don’t tell me the only way I can transport you is by knocking you out and carrying you.”
She narrowed her eyes and got in.
I drove her to Adrik’s house, the Volkov mansion that I bet tons of federal agents would want to have an invite to.
But now that I was seeing her less as an agent and the obvious enemy and more as a woman I wanted to make come again, I dismissed how strange it might seem for her to show up as a guest.
My guest.
And hopefully in about an hour, my informant.
Adrik opened the door and raised his brows at Wren walking in with me. She had yet to lose that what in the fuck is going on? look. Her cautious, bewildered expression stayed put on her face and he glanced at me.
“It’s not booby-trapped here,” I teased her.
She slid a scowl my way as she continued inside like she expected to be re-kidnapped all over again. “Don’t expect me to know what to think or how to act when you’re escorting me into the lair of a Mafia boss,” she quipped.
“You are a rookie,” I joked.
Cue another glare from her.
“Elena’s upstairs,” Adrik said, gesturing for us to follow him through the house.
Wren didn’t speak up. She walked with me and roved her gaze, taking it all in. Once we were in the office that Elena had claimed as her primary workspace, she glanced up at us and yawned.
“Rough night?” I asked, offering to hold Luka as he slept on her chest, propped up in a cradling position that looked like it’d wreck her upper back.
She nodded and handed over her son to me. “Yes, so please don’t mind if I ask that you keep this request on the short side so I can nap.”
I rocked Luka and nodded. “Can you please show Wren the transactions and payments you’ve discovered of the bribes we’ve been tracking?”
As our main bookkeeper and the investigative genius that she was, she knew exactly what I was talking about.
For the last couple of months, she’d been highlighting payments that came from Gregori’s shell companies.
He moved a lot of money for his network, but she was singling out certain ones that alluded to payments to federal agents and cops.
Thanks to Mila and Lev, we had more aliases of which officers and agents and government administrators were being targeted by Gregori to put pressure on us, but it wasn’t a clear system of locking in who owned those accounts.
Most of the money was put into untraceable deposits.
We couldn’t be sure who was who from the law enforcement side.
But maybe Wren could fill that in for us.
“Is that the USCEV server?” Wren asked. She pushed her glasses up to see the screen and gawked.
“Yes.” Elena raised her brows and yawned again.
“You have access…” Wren shook her head and shut up, clearly stunned that Elena could help herself to a nationwide banking server.
For the next hour, Elena flagged and pointed out ample evidence of payments made to accounts that likely belonged to Smithson and others at her agency.
Trojan piped up too, and Elena switched to another monitor so he could show his feed as he walked us through the surveillance footage of Smithson and other cops meeting with suspected Mafia associates that Gregori likely had on his payroll.
Many of them were Cartel and gang members, but we were keeping our eyes on a few contractors connected to smaller Bratvas in the region.
“What’s your impression of all this, Red?” I asked, so used to the weight of Luka sleeping in my arms that I almost forgot he was there.
She glanced at me, then lowered her gaze to the infant. Then she cleared her throat and shook her head slightly. “My impression?”
“Yeah.”
“My impression is that you seem to think I can have something to offer to all of this. To explain it.” She gestured at the computer monitors. “I don’t. I… I really don’t. I started my career in a department that investigated fraud. So I’m aware that corruption like this exists. But…”
Adrik and I shared a glance, almost like we were bracing for her to protest that this wasn’t what it looked like.
“But I don’t know. I don’t know these agents or the people who could have these accounts.
I don’t know who is who in the local law enforcement.
I just transferred to my first field job.
” She furrowed her brow, looking off to the side.
It was clear that she was unsettled about the evidence that I was showing her, all these facts that implied she might not be on the “good” side of anything.
“Is this why you’re keeping me hostage?” she asked, looking at me, then Adrik, and back at me.
“So I can verify that bribes are happening?” She straightened in her chair.
“I know it happens. While anything can be doctored and manipulated in images and video, I can tell these are from reputable sources.” She again gestured her hand at the computers.
“If you’re waiting for me to be shocked, I’m not.
If you’re looking at me as a source for investigating this further, you’re out of luck.
I still don’t know anything. And unless you tell me what you are seeking, I can’t offer any ideas on how to solve your problems.”
“Are you willing to?” I asked.
She frowned again. “Willing to what?”
“Are you willing to offer ideas?” I answered. “Will you be willing to work with me while you continue your stay with us?”