15. Viktor
VIKTOR
“Do you often hire temporary contractors?” Wren asked as we left the club.
“Not for what we want you to look into for us.” Holding her hand felt too good. Her slender fingers fit with mine so naturally. The word temporary didn’t fit in my thoughts of her.
She hadn’t been hired in any traditional sense of the word. I had taken her. Kidnapped her. But in the process of figuring out what I should do with her, killing her hadn’t come to mind. Hurting her didn’t, either. Nor did releasing her.
It wouldn’t be an overnight shift to get her to lose the idea of this being temporary, though. I’d need to make sure she saw no need to go back to her former life.
If there was even a place for her in her former life.
What became abundantly clear over the next week of her being at my house and working at the mansion with Elena and Trojan was that she had a place with us.
It was never an easy or simple concept of finding where money went and who was hiding it, but she was working with us to uncover exactly who was bribing who. And if it could be related to Gregori.
Of course, her ethics were challenged. I knew that she struggled with participating in anything that a Mafia family would want.
But she did. She was at the computer, looking at the fraud, searching for the evidence, and trying to do what she could do to help us get more answers about the threats that we faced.
It helped that she had experience with doing this before—only on the other side of the law.
By the time the third week of her “stay” ended, I couldn’t imagine not having her around. When I picked her up from the mansion at the end of that third week, I took her out to another restaurant, but she told me more updates about what she was looking into.
“Trojan tried to set me up with hacking access to the internal messaging program that they use. My logins are not valid, which would have made this easier.” She frowned. “I’m not sure that they were ever actually fully activated. I was only there for one day before I went on that stakeout.”
“But it is another avenue to explore, right?”
“Yes, it will be. Getting into the emails would be another route to getting information, but there are so many apps and programs where you have encrypted and automatically deleted and untraceable communication, too.”
Of course there was. But I didn’t expect her to pull off any magic trick. Except for the ones in bed.
It didn’t escape my notice that she never asked about anyone looking for her. No family members could be hunting her down, but her workplace was another thing.
Does she suspect that she was put on that stakeout just to be a scapegoat?
It had to have crossed her mind that she was used as a person to be shot in place of Smithson that night.
In the limbo of being forced to work for me, and be in the company of my Mafia family, maybe she just did not want to talk about it.
Such that if she didn’t have a place in her “normal world” where good and bad existed as clear-cut, black-and-white pieces for everyone to follow, she would have to admit that she had no place anywhere.
Which wasn’t true at all.
You could stay with me.
I admired her profile as we walked back toward the car waiting for us.
If she could prove to all of us that she was loyal to the Bratva and would never consider going back to her former workplace and resume working against us, I would be the next one in line to bring a woman into our inner circle.
Adrik started it when he took Elena.
Maksim was second when he was arranged to marry Carina.
Lev had just married Mila, buying her as a slave before he could realize she was much more.
Was it my turn now?
I felt stupid to even think about this when there were so many other things that I had to focus on instead. Like my long-lost uncle coming back from the dead. Like making sure my brothers would stay protected.
Stupid it may be, but I couldn’t stop it. Walking hand-in-hand with Wren felt natural. Having her next to me, sleeping in my bed with me, felt right.
What didn’t feel right at all was the burst of air that came at us suddenly.
It rushed at us with the force of a large object coming into us.
The guard to my right, who was closest to the road, was thrown back.
He flew across the sidewalk, and that was all it took for me to spin and wrap my arms around Wren.
The blur of a black car crossed up onto the curb, aiming for us.
Adrenaline charged through me as I clutched Wren in my arms and pulled her in the opposite direction, out of the way of the car coming up to bump into a building.
People screamed. Pedestrians started jumping out of the way.
And a small mob-like crowd started to dart away from the vehicle that was aiming to strike at us.
Wren tensed in my arms. Her hair smacked in my face, temporarily blocking my view.
But I could feel her. She was here. She was a solid weight in my arms, out of the path of danger.
Already, we were retaliating. The guards who came with us were shooting at the car as it sped away.
Dropping back down off the curb, its tires on the road squealing away and smacking into a couple of other cars that were stuck in the congested traffic, the perpetrator escaped.
“Go.”
I directed the order to one of the guards who ran forward to start pursuing whoever had tried to run us over.
The other guard stayed with us, ushering me into the car with Wren. Her eyes were open wide, those green pools full of shock and caution.
But she didn’t take this as an opportunity to run away. She didn’t see this as an advantageous moment to escape me. Surprised and caught off-guard, she was almost docile, sitting in the backseat as the doors were closed on us.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded as the car took off, shaken but strong. “Yeah, I’m okay. I didn’t hit anything.”
I studied her closely as I called this in to my brothers.
Maksim answered instead of Adrik, but that wasn’t anything to be alarmed about. I told him how a car had just tried to ram into us, and he assured me that he would dispatch men to this area. We would have other people looking into the surveillance to try to figure out who had done that.
“Do you think that was Smithson?”
I regarded Wren with all seriousness as our car sped back toward my house. Back toward safety.
“If that car was aiming for me, that was another hit on my life.”
Maybe it was a little cocky of her to assume that she was at target, but I had a hard time wanting to disagree.
We still didn’t have conclusive evidence that a second shot had been fired at her or in her direction that night that I had kidnapped her, but if that was true, then she was more exposed to being targeted than I currently was.
She shook her head, sending her red hair tumbling slightly. “Nobody else knows me. I haven’t been here for long enough for anyone to know who I am or that I’m an agent. Smithson is the only one who comes to mind. He knew that I was at that stakeout.”
Before I could say anything else, we pulled into the driveway at my house. I didn’t get out and I didn’t rush her. If she wanted to speak and share her thoughts, though, I would listen.
“Do you think they know I’m here? Do you think the agency is aware that I am working with you?”
Shaking her head again, she seemed more troubled about her situation.
“I have a strong feeling that they must have concluded that you were taken.” I rubbed my hand over my beard, contemplating what to tell her next.
“If Smithson ordered another hit on you, that would be my first conclusion, though. That he knows that you’re working with us and doesn’t want that to happen.”
With a nod, she reached for the door handle to open the door.
I entered the house with her, keeping my hand on a small of her back even though nobody could be targeting her on my property.
She was safe here. And it was that realization that convinced me that I had to double down my efforts of keeping her here.
She was safe under my protection. But being out in the public was a danger.
Her association with my family increased my responsibility over her. If I hadn’t kidnapped her and kept her here, she wouldn’t be as much of a target. But considering the opposite wasn’t something I was prepared to do.
Let her go?
Was that the only other option, let her go? And have her be more exposed to threats away from my protection?
Not happening.
I saw her into the house but didn’t stay myself. “Paul will assist you with anything that you might need. I am going to speak with my brothers, and I will be back soon.”
She was already walking into our room. She barely nodded to acknowledge me. She didn’t look over her shoulder, but she did swipe her hand in a dismissive flick.
I hated to leave from here so soon after an external threat had emerged against her. But I needed to speak with my brothers and understand what was going on.
Both of my older brothers were at the mansion, waiting for me as I strode into Adrik’s office.
“What the hell was that all about?”
The Bratva men had to have found something by now. If the guard who had been with us had failed to track down the car as it made a getaway, someone should be able to get into the surveillance cameras on the Strip and tell us something.
“It’s about Smithson,” Adrik said.
He didn’t look pleased about it, and he turned his phone around for me to view it. A small screen with his email application was clear. It didn’t take me long to skim through it.
I’ve heard a rumor that you have one of my own. If you want to keep my agent and await charges of kidnapping her, just bear in mind that she could be there as my top field spy.
Smithson hadn’t signed it, but it came from his email address.
I looked up at them.
“He knows we have her.”
Adrik nodded.
“He knows we have her,” Maksim said, “and he is insinuating that she is still here as a spy for him.”
I shook my head, immediately dismissing that.
The idea that Wren could be here only as a spy…
“I don’t believe that.” I paced in his office. “I don’t believe that for one fucking second.”
“But there is always a risk,” Maksim said.
He held up his hands after I shot him a furious glare.
“I am not saying that just because she is an agent. But because she is an outsider. An enemy. I had to deal with that debate myself. When Carina was arranged to marry me, I had to struggle against the idea that she could be a spy for Arturo and for the Cartel.”
“Fine. I get that. But Carina was fully embedded in the Cartel. She had been there for a long time so she could have had an order to spy when she came here. Wren just got here. She hasn’t been an agent for Smithson or anyone in this area for long enough to be used as a spy.”
All those times that she insisted that she didn’t know anything added up to that basic fact. She didn’t know anything, not about Smithson or any other agent.
“Are you getting in too deep with her?” Adrik asked.
“You asked me to give this time. You asked me to let you handle this how you saw fit, to see if we could get any information out of her. So far, it sounds like she’s cooperating with Elena.
But in the meantime, are you getting in over your head with her?
Are you too close to even consider the possibility that she could be a spy? ”
I rubbed my face, not wanting to answer that. Yes, I was getting too close to her. She was in my bed. She was getting under my skin, but that didn’t mean that my judgment of her was faulty.
“She is not spying for the agency.”
I stated it as clearly as I could, and I would repeat it as many times as they wanted me to.
But I would stand by the fact that she was not spying for the agency.
“It’s taken her a long time to agree to work for us,” he reminded me.
“Because she feels like she needs to do what she thinks is right. And I can respect that. Because the more that she works on this case and looks into connections to Gregori bribing everyone, she will understand that we are right in this war.”
Adrik lowered his gaze, looking tired but not in the mood to tell me to get rid of her. “Keep me in the loop.” He glanced up at me. “Keep me updated, and we will have been looking into whoever ordered that hit on the street.”
That was as good as I would get for now.
They still had their doubts.
But I didn’t. She wasn’t going to be a double agent and hurt the family.
I left to go find her, needing to confirm to her that she didn’t have to worry for her life when she was with me.