21. Viktor
VIKTOR
After Carina gave birth to her daughter, Isabel, Maksim was understandably busier. He wasn’t off, officially, since protecting the Bratva was a job that never slept. But we all picked up the slack of what he had been working on the most.
That included looking into who had placed a hit on Adrik—and Wren—as well as the general defense against all that Gregori planned.
It was shitty timing that he was less available to help us when we received the heads up of a coordinated law enforcement operation and sting being plotted against us.
Wren was most effective in warning us of the incoming “attack”, and I hoped that this was going to be one more example of how she was with us, one more demonstration of how ludicrous it was for anyone to ever think she could be a spy.
“Between the DEA and the state patrols, they will be setting up blocks here and here.” Wren pointed to a map that she was referencing in Adrik’s office.
The screen on her laptop was shown for the rest of us to see.
“They’ve already been paid, per the transactions we found, and their goal is to stop the runners moving toward the San Fran area.
” She faced us and crossed her arms as we all digested the news.
“Tomorrow?” Adrik asked, double-checking.
She nodded. “They’ve discussed the sting at length and there’s no question about the timing.”
“How the hell do they know that we’re planning that run tomorrow?” Lev asked. “We’ve changed the date several times. The handoff site has changed how many times now?”
“That’s what I want to know as well,” Adrik said.
If you’re trying to insinuate she’s been feeding them intel… I narrowed my eyes at my older brother.
Alexei must have been watching me. “Calm down,” he drawled, looking at me. “No one’s implying Wren is telling them anything.”
She volleyed her gaze between me and Adrik.
“No.” Adrik shook his head. “I’m not implying that.” He heaved out a sigh. “We would know if you were since you’ve been here or at Viktor’s, and all outgoing messages and calls are tracked.”
“That’s not a vote of confidence,” I growled.
Wren put her hand on my shoulder to shut me up.
“But that’s a natural question to leap to.
I wondered that myself because from what Elena has said, the plans for this specific delivery of…
” She cleared her throat. “This specific delivery for a particular product has been changed often. I haven’t been looking at anything else in the system about plans that are upcoming.
But I did notice a lot of messages and traffic about this sting.
And when I realized that they are coordinating such a large and collaborative operation with multiple agencies, I knew that they couldn’t be guessing or relying on speculation.
Someone had to be giving information to someone.
So, I looked a little deeper and I saw that one person had been touched with multiple points of contact recently. ”
She clicked to another screen, showing the smarmy, smiling face of Rico Johnson.
“Seriously?” Adrik rolled his eyes.
“He’s been in contact with all the aforementioned heads in this operation,” Wren said, rifling through the emails and messages she’d hacked. With all the codes and aliases used, only she, as a former insider and agent, would be able to decipher them quickly.
“That moron has been a pain in the ass…” Adrik shook his head and looked off to the side.
“All of them are pains in the ass to you,” I reminded him.
He gave me a side eye only an older brother could.
Since our father’s illness and Adrik’s realization that he’d need to step in as an interim Pakhan, he struggled with the necessity of having to deal with politicians, would-be politicians, and other societal bigwigs.
Rico Johnson had been particularly pushy and nosy and all-around a frustrating presence for him to deal with.
As such, he’d kept him at arm’s reach, both to protect the Bratva from any other interest getting too close and because he lacked the patience for schmoozing with people who only wanted something from us with nothing but empty promises in return.
“He has been increasing his requests for meetings,” Adrik said.
“And you’ve been dismissing them all,” Alexei reminded him. “You pass it on to one of the superintendents or supervisors to deal with.”
“And if they don’t want to deal with him, they pass his meeting requests on to secretarial staff so he can be ignored for longer,” Adrik said.
“Maybe somewhere along those lines of dismissing him,” Wren said, “he’s had a chance to get intel.
” She furrowed her brow, showing us more on the screen.
“Because from what I can tell, he’s planting something to track what I’m looking at.
At best, he’s positioned himself as a partial insider to feed Smithson and his cronies details about what I’m looking into. ”
I glanced at her. “We need to have Trojan on top of this.”
She nodded. “He already is. We had a team meeting about it this morning.”
Team meeting.
I hid a smile. It was too serious of a discussion to smile and be proud of her. But I had to wonder if she heard herself. If she was aware of how far she’d come to seeing herself not as a guest or captive on some forced “stay” but as one of us.
“What if we used this to our advantage?” Alexei asked, raising his brows.
“How?” Wren frowned at him. “I mean, you are, aren’t you?
” She glanced at Adrik. “You’ll pull the runners and halt the delivery plans so they can’t stop anyone on the road at the blocks, won’t you?
They’re not talking about merely stopping your men and arresting them.
” She went back to an email sent from Smithson to a highway patrol supervisor.
“They intend to kill them. Quote, Use all force necessary to end them, quote. They’re planning to use this supposedly routine stop on the road as an excuse to kill them. ”
Adrik narrowed his eyes, fuming all over again. “Of course, we’re stopping this run. We’ll use this to our advantage and prevent that from going down at all.”
Alexei sat up and cleared his throat. “What I meant is I wonder if we could use this to our advantage in other ways.” Once we were all facing him, he continued.
“If Rico Johnson’s too close for comfort and able to figure out that we’ve essentially hired Wren as an informant, then why can’t we use that? To turn the tables on them.”
“How?” Wren frowned.
He shrugged. “Slip some intel that Rico could take to Smithson. Maybe it would trick him into getting caught. Or it would dupe him into contacting whatever intermediary there is between Smithson and Gregori. I don’t know.
Something. If we want to be one step ahead of all of them and prevent them from getting further ahead to plan something we can’t stop, then why not? ”
“No.” I didn’t mean to growl it like that, but I was not a fan of this idea at all. “No. No one is ‘using’ Wren for anything.”
“I’m not suggesting we send her out and use her as bait,” Alexei argued. “I’m saying—”
“No,” I repeated sternly. My possessiveness over her wasn’t going to be ignored. Fuck him for wanting to use her or let her be a pawn. If anything they schemed would expose her to more danger, they could forget it about it right the fuck now.
“But she could be bait,” Adrik said, looking at Wren, then me. “She has the unique position between both sides—”
“I’m not sure I would agree with that,” Wren said calmly.
“They know I’m working here. They know that I’ve been here with you now.
I’ve been spotted with Viktor, so that’s a given.
Rico Johnson’s ability to get intel is a stronger avenue to explore.
Because if you’re thinking about my being bait or any incentive to lure Smithson to where you could get him, I doubt that would work.
I’ve already been fired. They’re labeling me as the enemy.
I’m on a wanted list. I don’t think there’s any chance they’ll be happy to hear from me at all, and they wouldn’t trust my reaching out now. ”
I nodded, in full agreement with all she said. “Exactly.”
“It’s something to consider.” Adrik held up his hands, likely assuming I was ready to shoot any ideas about using Wren down. “Perhaps not as bait, but something else we can figure out.”
We’ll see about that.
The rest of the meeting covered how to break up the plans for the delivery. When all those law enforcement agencies had their men and women get into place for the sting, they’d be wasting their time and go home a failure.
That night, though, after Wren and I had dinner and headed up to my—our—room, I struggled again with the idea that my brothers or cousins could want to use her.
They were more agreeable with seeing her as one of us.
They had to. If Adrik didn’t trust her a little bit, he never would have let her work for us or investigate anything.
I had a strong hunch he was letting Elena be something like a supervisor over Wren, and he trusted his wife completely.
That being said, I couldn’t believe that my brother would want to propose anything that would threaten the woman I had brought into my home. The woman I was addicted to and already so fiercely possessive and protective over.
I couldn’t imagine taking any chance of losing her. If she were to agree to be an agent for us—not at the computer and behind the screen like she was so skilled at, but in the field—I would worry the entire time and struggle with hoping she wouldn’t be hurt.
Or captured.
Or killed.
Her life was in my hands. It had been since the night that I kidnapped her off the street when she looked like an accomplice to the hit placed on Adrik.
That responsibility had morphed over the last month and a half, though. She wasn’t a captive to lock up tightly. She wasn’t a ward or obligation to provide for.
Wren was the intelligent woman I wanted to keep with me forever. As mine. Not for her to work for us. Not because I captured her at the scene of a hit being taken out on my brother.
Just as mine.
My woman to fuck and love.
To see her first thing every morning and to fall asleep with her in my arms.
To see her… as the mother of my children.
Fuck.
I scrubbed my hand over my face.
I couldn’t tell if it was because I was an uncle times two now, with Luka and then Isabel joining the family as the next generations of the Bratva, but it was having a damned profound impact on me.
It was too damn easy to see it happening.
Wren with her belly swollen as she carried our son or daughter.
Wren with that sexy fucking glow of being a happy mother, smiling down at our child.
Wren wearing my ring and correcting people that she wasn’t Miss Green but Mrs. Viktor Volkov, my wife.
As I walked behind her into our room, I wondered how I could initiate a conversation about that.
If she could look past how we had met and see me as someone to grow old with.
If she could see me as more than someone to fuck in the heat of the moment.
If she could… convince me that her loyalties would lie with me and my family instead of the liars and cheats she used to work for.