18. Wren
WREN
The next day when I reported to “work” with Elena, Adrik called me aside and showed me the email that he’d received.
I could only shake my head. “I’m not a spy.”
“That’s what Viktor seems to think,” he replied.
“That’s what you should think too.”
He folded his hands together on his desk and raised his brows. “Why? Because you want to swear your loyalty to my Bratva?”
“I would prefer to consider myself an independent operator of law and order.” Saying that was risky enough, but it was the most honest reply I could give him.
“I’m not running back to the agency. I can’t when there have been two attempts on my life that could have very well been ordered by my superior.
A superior I’m actively investigating and unraveling a web of bribes and fraudulent accounts for. ”
“I’ve never cared for Smithson.”
I almost smirked. “If not him, Rico Johnson. I was under the preliminary impression that I’d be expected to work on a case involving him since I came from a background of investigating fraud in Oregon. But I didn’t anticipate investigating him from your perspective.”
He shrugged. “Whatever gets the job done, right?”
The Volkovs weren’t quick to call themselves allies of Rico Johnson, but they had been open to speaking with him.
I was getting more of the sense that they entertained meetups with him at all for the sake of keeping their finger on the pulse of everything else that was going on.
That distance was clear in all they did.
The Volkov empire was large and vast, bringing in significant wealth through many avenues of income.
I wished I could adopt Elena’s Puritan request to not know details because that was the most direct conflict for me to get through—knowing the Volkovs collected their revenue from drugs, weapons, and other illegal means of commerce.
I didn’t have access to those parts of their records, though, and I was grateful for that.
“Well, this job has become personal, if you don’t mind my saying that.” I crossed my arms and tried not to let the confusion, bitterness, and bewilderment get to me all over again.
“Having a hit placed on me isn’t fun.”
He scoffed. “You’re telling me,” he deadpanned.
“And having a second attempt on my life isn’t great, either,” I said.
If he wanted my commiseration about someone trying to kill him, I wouldn’t know what to say.
He was a Mafia boss with many enemies. It came with the territory of his title.
But, while I sat here with him… I couldn’t see him as only the interim Pakhan of a powerful crime family.
I knew him as the father of Luka. The husband of Elena. The brother of Viktor.
I sighed.
“We’ll be looking into Smithson’s activity,” he said.
I scoffed again. “Me too.”
That was what I went back to doing, searching and picking through all that I could from the Volkovs’ resources, and that was a lot.
I wrestled with guilt that I was looking into my former colleagues, but when I remembered that they were doing the wrong thing by accepting money from this mysterious network, it wasn’t hard to stick with the plan of snooping.
Whenever I wanted to question whether I was compromising my principles, I reminded myself that I was only doing the rest of the government a favor by rooting out this corruption.
All the while, as I came in to work with Elena at the computers, I discovered more and more uncomfortable truths.
In this day and age, it was far too easy to hide online activity and what went where and who said what.
But with Trojan’s skills as a hacker, I was getting deeper into trespassing in the communication that could matter to both the Volkovs and me.
They wanted to know who this Gregori was using to pay off the agents and cops around here.
And I wanted to know why Smithson would’ve set me up to be killed off.
“Jeez…”
Elena swiveled her chair, glancing at Luka in his portable crib in the corner before raising her brows at me. “Now what?”
“It’s just… so much.” I gestured at the computer and slumped in my chair.
“Smithson has taken in the bribe money most frequently, but the names of who has gotten bigger payouts from those flagged accounts are his superiors.” I rubbed my face as Lev and Mila entered the room.
“It makes me wonder how far up it goes.”
Lev sat in the chair that Igor usually used when he worked in here with us versus at his own office. “So.”
Mila stood next to him, arms crossed as she smiled at Luka sleeping in the crib.
I had yet to spend much time meeting Carina—and that wasn’t a goal that I wanted to consider when I knew in the back of my mind that I wasn’t here as some extended “stay” as a guest—but the few times I’d spotted Mila, she was quiet and deferred to Lev.
She seemed to trail him everywhere, and I was curious what their story was.
Not as curious as I was about what they’d found in checking out my apartment.
Adrik and Maksim had suggested they go see if there was any activity there.
Viktor wanted them to plant bugs, too, in case Smithson or someone else wanted to wait for me to show up there.
“So?” I raised my brows at him.
“Trashed,” he replied. “We lifted some prints and will check them, but the whole place was trashed.”
I sighed heavily. “How? I hadn’t even unpacked yet.”
“They handled that for you. Boxes opened, stuff everywhere, shit broken.”
I groaned.
It reiterated the fact that I’d become an involuntary person of interest, caught too close to whatever Smithson was ultimately up to. But it also emphasized how much safer I was with the Volkovs. With Viktor, who strode into the office now.
Lev summed up to his cousin what he and Mila found, and Viktor only shook his head. “Did you have anything valuable there?”
I groaned again. “I’m not a spy!” I was, actually, for them, looking into agents who had been bribed. But not the other way around.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Red. I meant anything valuable that you would need to replace. From your mom?”
I ignored the butterflies in my stomach that he cared about my not losing something from my mom. Like he could be compassionate enough that I not lose who I was and where I came from. I shook my head. “No. That stuff is in storage.”
The cousins shared a glance and I winced.
“We’ll go see about having that checked out,” Lev said, getting up and leaving with Mila.
“Alexei and I only stopped by to check in with Adrik. I need to go, but I’ll see you later.”
I nodded at him and watched him exit.
Luka started to fuss while Elena was on a call. She kept glancing back at him and I gave up, going to pick him up and give him the bottle of breastmilk Elena had waiting for him.
Maybe it was a little forward of me, but she was clearly busy and my God, how could anyone let a baby cry?
I fed him the bottle while I kept working on the other computer. When I felt her looking at me, I spun my chair to hand him over.
“Oh, no, no.” She turned her back slightly. “He’s happy where he is.”
I smiled. “Don’t jinx it,” I teased.
“You okay?”
I glanced at her, finding her watching me. Maybe it was because she was a mother now, but something about her was just so pure and maternal. Like she wanted to please everyone and would mother hen everyone until she thought they were cared for.
“Oh, yeah. He’s fine.”
“I didn’t mean holding him.”
“Oh.” I did another double-take at her still watching me. “Um. Yeah.”
She didn’t look convinced.
“Honestly, holding Luka is the distraction I need.” I smiled at him practically asleep again.
“Physical contact with someone—anyone—so I won’t spiral in how it probably doesn’t matter whether Viktor cares if my personal things that my mother left me are intact.
You know, like I don’t lose parts of myself.
” I huffed, facing the computer since it was easier than letting me mistake her as my shrink.
“Because that’s a lost cause. Or I am. I don’t even know… who I am anymore.”
Collaborating with the Mafia?
Maybe technically a kidnapped woman?
Also a target for my superior at the workplace that had been my dream job?
“I know how you feel,” she said kindly. “And it does take a while to adjust to being here. With them. Working for them.”
I nodded.
“But I can tell you exactly who you are, in case you ever forget.”
I shot her a side-eye.
“You are the person I feared the most.”
I furrowed my brow. “Literally? You didn’t… even know me before Viktor brought me here. I mean, before he kidnapped me.”
“Not you, specifically. But I was terrified for so long that some secret agent or cop would know that I was handling the books for a crime family when I was at my father’s firm.” She shook her head. “Someone exactly like you, a federal agent who investigated fraud.”
I smirked. “And look how… far you’ve come.”
“That’s true, though. My life has completely changed, but not for the worse.
” She shrugged. “I know everyone teases me about not wanting to know the details. But I know them. I always have, in a way. They do dangerous, illegal things, but so do the so-called good people out there. There will always be evil in the world, but at the end of the day, the Bratva isn’t some monster trying to take over the world and be violent for the hell of it.
They’re businessmen. Not necessarily in, um, proper markets, but they are businessmen who protect what is theirs. ”
The problem was that I could see that. I understood her perspective even with my background.
Would I rather take down a serial killer and rapist than a drug dealer at the corner?
Would I prefer to end the regime of a cult-like group who targeted children or to stop a single hooker from having a good night of clients? It was all relative, after all.
“And if you want my personal advice on what helps me sleep at night…” She raised her brows.
“Sure.”
“I like that I’m helping them stop the real evil ones out there, like Gregori who does seem to want to take over the world and be violent for the hell of it.”
I carefully shifted Luka back to his crib. “Everyone’s hell-bent on finding evidence of all that Gregori’s doing.”
She made a noise. “He’s got their attention, you can say that.”
“But who is he?” I sighed, rubbing a kink in my neck. “I haven’t heard of him or seen evidence of his money trails in the years that I worked in the fraud division.”
“He’s someone who has a vested interest in attacking the Bratva,” she explained.
“Even if he weren’t, he needs to be stopped.
Just skim through this folder and make your own judgment.
Those are all videos and photos taken from the crime scenes of hits and destruction we have evidence of him ordering. ”
She’d piqued my interest, but after an hour of browsing through the contents of the folder she’d sent me, I was sickened. Disgusted. Horrified.
“Mila was captured at that camp, by the way.”
I shook my head at her comment. Maybe that was why the woman was so quiet.
“Damn…” I blew out a deep breath, feeling like I was recharged and fully distracted from the fact that I’d almost been killed.
I told Viktor that I’d regret dying and not doing my best with the time that I had to make the world a better place. Seeing what Gregori was up to motivated me even more.
Assess. Ascertain. And act.
I was going to apply that alliterative slogan now as I dove right back into seeing what connections I could unearth about what this network was designed to do—and maybe I’d find out why the Volkov Bratva was the target of their ire.