12. Wren
WREN
Ibit my lip as Viktor handed the baby to Adrik.
“Continue my stay?” I asked, trying not to seethe.
He worded it like this was a vacation. Like I was a guest, not someone he kidnapped. His refusal to consider that he’d pulled me out of my life and plunked me into his aggravated me all over again.
“I’m not a guest. You kidnapped me.”
He shrugged. “You say potato, I say potahto.”
Elena snorted a laugh and Adrik didn’t change from his glower, which seemed at odds with him holding his son.
My mouth hung open.
“However, before you lecture about how ‘wrong’ that was and how it’s ‘against the law’, check yourself.” He pointed at the screens that had been used to show me all the evidence of how corrupt the agency was. “Because that shit is ‘wrong’ and ‘against the law’.”
“I think that’s enough air quotes,” Adrik deadpanned.
“But it’s true.” Viktor set his hands on his hips. “If part of your whining about my not letting you go is based on some high-horsed opinion of your being better than us with some crap about self-righteousness, spare me.”
“I am not corrupt.” I shook my head, appalled.
“Just because I was hired by them doesn’t implicitly make me an accomplice to their being bribed or bought off.
” Letting my synapses click fast, I narrowed my eyes.
“Wait. Is that why you’re keeping me here?
You think I’m being bribed?” I huffed a laugh.
“Because you’ll have no evidence of that. ”
“Then maybe in the meantime, you can enlighten us, as an insider at that agency, as to who is. And whose bank accounts are funding them.” He arched a brow, looking way too smug for my liking.
I didn’t like him right now. And I didn’t like a damn thing that I was seeing here. All that Elena had shown me sickened me.
“So you’re keeping me here to use me to look into what they’re doing?” I shook my head, not to reject his order or suggestion but in stupefied disbelief.
A month ago, I’d been looking forward to the transfer. To having a job where I could be active in the field as an agent, not stuck in an office doing lower-scale work. I was supposed to relocate and learn this new environment. To see how I could do my part in taking down criminals.
Now, I was forced to give that all up and be a guest-slash-prisoner to help them with their efforts of staying at the top of the crime family food web?
“Are you okay with that kind of corruption going on?” he asked.
I furrowed my brow. “Of course not. The law is the law. Right and wrong don’t mix. But it’s not my call to determine whether it’s right or wrong for any agents to be accepting bribes. I don’t have the power to do anything about it.”
“We do.” Adrik didn’t gloat or smile about it.
“So that’s it. You want to use me to get them?”
Viktor set his foot on an empty chair and leaned over, resting his elbow on it as he loomed next to me. Over me. “Consider your options, Red.” With a wink that seemed more threatening and mocking than sexy or playful, he straightened and backed up a step.
“Viktor.” Adrik tilted his head toward the door, indicating for him to step out with him.
He walked out, leaving me with Elena. Trojan, the name they used to reference the hacker from who knew where, had already logged out of the video call.
I sat there, stuck in place and tense.
Aware of Elena sitting next to me, still, I blinked and tried to get over the swirling questions in my mind. I waited for the knots in my stomach to unravel. But they wouldn’t. I’d seen too much to dismiss all this.
“Sorry.” I glanced at the brunette. “I know you said you’re tired and you didn’t want this to take a long time…”
She shrugged. “I’m too awake now.”
I nodded, unable to face her.
“It’s not like I intended to keep you for this long.”
“I don’t think you have intended to have a part in any of this.”
I looked at her. “I haven’t.” I stressed it as directly as I could. None of these Volkovs could understand that detail. “I didn’t plan on being at that club where those shots were taken. I didn’t count on being captured. Or kept here and played with and—”
“Played with?” She raised her brows.
Shit.
That wasn’t supposed to come out. While it was different to be in a woman’s company for a change, I wasn’t drifting into the nonsensical illusion that she could be on my side or support me just because of any sense of sisterhood.
She was the Volkov Bratva’s queen, loyal to Adrik.
While she was more quiet-mannered and soft-spoken than I thought a Mafia wife might be, I had no delusion of where her loyalties were.
“Played with by Viktor and his mind games and not explaining why I have to be captive if I have no answers to give him about anything he wants to know, and if he doesn’t want me dead…” I shrugged.
“Mmm.” She typed and pulled up some more windows on her monitor. “Viktor can be… witty with what he says.”
He could be devastatingly wicked with his mouth in other ways, too. His fingers as well.
“But he must have some hope that you could provide answers to us.” She licked her lips.
“I don’t like to know the details. I wasn’t born and raised in this world.
” She glanced at me as she typed. “I had a ‘normal’ life too, but since I met Adrik and have been a part of this family… I see how they can’t bridge the gap between their world and the rest of society.
Having you here isn’t making sense to any of them. ”
I dropped my head in my hands. “Then why not let me go?” I asked incredulously.
“Maybe because if they did, the logical assumption is that you’d tell your agency about being kidnapped and therefore cause more issues with the law enforcement.”
I opened and closed my mouth. “I wouldn’t. I know that’s a sticking point. But I don’t have anything to gain by telling them I was kidnapped.”
“Because it’s not so bad, right?” She gave me a side eye.
“It’s still wrong,” I protested.
She nodded. “As a principle, yes. It is wrong to be kidnapped and held against your will.”
She said she hadn’t been born and raised in the world of crime families. “Were you kidnapped?”
“I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about you.”
“Ah.” I nodded. “So you were.”
She swiveled to face me. “How I came to be in this family wasn’t glamorous. But when I arrived, I was expected to be here. No one was waiting for me to leave this family or their organization. Can you say the same for yourself?”
She had me there. “As far as I’ve been told, the agency isn’t looking for me. I’m not inclined to believe that. Yet.”
She shrugged and yawned, still tired despite her claim of being too awake now. “But you can believe this?” Pointing to another video of Rico Johnson and Smithson talking to a couple of Cartel men piqued my attention. One handed over a case that was no doubt full of money.
“I can believe that corruption can happen anywhere.” I sighed heavily. “I’m just… dismayed it has to happen here. Where I’m supposed to have a career.”
“I don’t think it’s endemic to this region,” she cautioned, resuming her presentation of all the payments she had been tracking.
While she pointed out the multiple transactions of money that were loosely hidden as campaign donations, gifts, and other ambiguous deposits, she demonstrated how widespread the fraud happened within my agency. Not only mine, but others too.
I could do nothing but sit there and witness this elaborate uncovering of evidence.
Receipts never lied, and they all worked as a collective suggestion that the corruption within several federal-level task forces could be tied to a bigger source.
A single source, but she didn’t give many names.
I doubted she’d feel like she had the privilege to divest any actual names or details.
The longer I stayed in her office and absorbed all that she showed me, the pool of dread in my stomach worsened. I was sick to my stomach that the colleagues I was supposed to work alongside and trust were not as faithful and truthful to our agency’s purpose.
“I know this kind of corruption can happen,” I repeated with a wince. I wasn’t na?ve. People could be tempted by a loophole or a dangling carrot of any amount of money. “But when I took this transfer, I hadn’t realized it would be so… prevalent.”
“Money makes the world go round, and that’s not a cliché thing I’m saying because I’m in the accounting industry. It is prevalent in this area. Part of why that is could be due to the Bratva.” She didn’t look at me as she continued to search for more to show me.
“How so?” I frowned. “Because the Volkovs aren’t above accepting or granting bribes either?”
“Because recently, there has been a concerted effort to undermine the Bratva. And the specific enemy we are most focused on has proven that he is not above using the law to attack us.”
“And Viktor expects me to help with this?” I shook my head.
“Even though I’m an agent? Even though I’ve committed my career so far to fighting crime, not being a participant in it?
” Before she could remind me that no one was impervious to breaking the law, I sighed.
“Yes, I realize that my colleagues’ accepting bribes is a crime as well.
But there is a procedure and protocol for that.
I could take the intel to the top and let my superiors address it, to let the proper channels handle seeing justice be done. ”
She raised a brow. “Isn’t Smithson your superior?”
I cringed. “Yes, but…”
But nothing. If he was involved in all this, his superior could be too.
And another above him. No matter how shocked I was to see all this evidence of bribes, it didn’t escape my notice of how widespread it was.
How webbed and interconnected it all could be, preventing it from being a clean-cut case to solve.
Luka’s cries sounded from the hallway and Elena sighed. She shut down the computer as Adrik and Viktor returned. “Yes, Master,” she muttered, jokingly but with love as she took her baby.
“Seen enough for now?” Viktor asked me.
I stood. He offered me his hand but I resolutely ignored it. I ignored his question too. I hadn’t seen enough, actually, because deep in my heart, I wanted to dig and probe and investigate to know exactly who was behind all this corruption within my reach.
My need to do the right thing would never change. But as I followed Viktor through the mansion and back to his car, I felt terribly conflicted about how my views of what was right or wrong had already changed.
What am I doing here?
Why does this have to happen to me?
I hadn’t asked for that stakeout assignment, and I hadn’t ever considered how it could have gone so wrong to change my life like this. Or to modify it so much that I debated the reason I was being held with the Volkovs.
Because a little part of me was ready to commit. I wasn’t wholly offended by Viktor’s question about whether I could offer ideas for how to identify the root of corruption in the agency here.
As I got into the car and stared out the window on the drive back to his house, I struggled with being able to tell whether I was even supposed to be a captive anymore if I was considering turning against the corrupt interests of my coworkers.
I wasn’t at all sure what to think or believe anymore.