Chapter 4
four
There’s a rush of commotion as the five of us jump from our seats, spinning to face the intruder, guns drawn. The heavy steel door to the bunker hangs wide open, the coded alarm blinking in a wash of colors I’ve never seen it cycle through before.
“I can’t believe this shit,” Mark, the unwanted intruder, says in awe as he takes in the vastness of the room, his eyes wide with wonder. “This is like some Justice League shit right here, man. I’m talking some real Bruce Wayne’s Bat—”
“Finish that sentence,” Maksim growls, cocking the hammer of his gun for effect, “and you’re a dead man.”
Niko and Leon snicker. It takes every ounce of training I have not to bark out a laugh myself. I keep telling him this is the Batcave.
Now’s not the time to rub it in the burly Russian’s face, though. I’ll save that for later. Mark being here is a serious breach of security.
“Okay, man, calm down.” Mark grins at my enforcer before turning his gaze to me. Maksim growls again, but at least he shoves his gun back into its holster. The others follow suit.
“How the hell did you—”
“I swear to all that is holy, Mark—”
Jesus. What the hell is happening here? Roman barrels into the room, red-faced and out of breath like he just ran a marathon.
“Chill, man.” Mark smirks at Matthias’s cousin. “Cardio’s good for your heart.”
“If they don’t kill you, you little shit,” Roman pants, leaning against one of the chairs by the table, “I sure as hell will for making me run like that.”
Mark opens his mouth to snap back, but I get there first.
“What the hell are you doing here, Mark?” I shake my head. “Scratch that. How the hell did you even find this place? Let alone gain access?”
The little hacker fuck grins at me, teeth and everything, mischief sparking in his eyes.
“It wasn’t all that hard,” he admits with a shrug, like finding a secret bunker in the woods is the easiest thing in the world.
“This is the worst well-kept secret on campus. Everyone knows there’s something out here.
Some think it’s your hideout. Others think you’re coming out here to have wild Roman orgies together. ”
Well, that’s a piece of information I could’ve lived without.
“Orgies?” Nikolai pins him with a glare, his voice a thunderous boom. “They think we’re out here fucking each other?”
Leon chuckles. Of course he finds this amusing. We all know how he views sexuality.
“Well, some of the girls do.” Mark winks at him. “To be fair, they’ve been reading a lot of romance books lately. I’m sure the men don’t think that. Probably…Maybe.”
“Fuck me,” Niko growls as he drops into his chair, guzzling the rest of his beer like it’s water.
“Apparently one or more of them are.”
The idiot is digging himself a hole. A giant one. Niko might be the eldest, but he’s also the most volatile when provoked. Even more than Maksim sometimes. Maksim’s rage is like standing in front of a freight train with its whistle screaming. You see it coming.
Niko’s rage sneaks up on you from behind. Unpredictable. And I hate cleaning up the aftermath.
“How’d you get in?” Leon, mercifully, steers us back to the real problem. “Those doors are coded.”
Mark smirks and holds up a small device in his hand. It’s barely the size of a credit card and looks like he cobbled it together from spare parts without bothering to refine it.
“It’s a decryption device. Works twice as fast as the old 16-byte model and is wireless. Don’t have to hook it up to the door. The range is sweet too.”
“Fucking hell,” I mutter, draining what’s left of my whiskey. I already know I’ll need a refill. Or three. “Told Matthias we should’ve gone with thumbprint or retinal scan entry.”
“So you broke in here. Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Mark tilts his head curiously.
“If it was, would I be asking?” I snap back, pouring another generous helping of whiskey.
“I have a way to get Matthias out of jail.”
“And you didn’t think to come to us before?” I grill. He shrugs, his go-to move when he doesn’t know how to word something.
The kid’s brilliant. Top marks, IQ off the charts. A technical and mechanical prodigy. But like so many others, he’s another kid the system failed. They didn’t care that he could build something that could topple governments. They only cared if he could sit quietly and color inside the lines.
“I didn’t really have a solution until a few hours ago,” he admits sheepishly. “Also, I need a few assurances first.”
My brows rise. The only people who ask for assurances are the ones who’ve done something wrong.
“And what would those assurances be?”
Mark swallows hard, trembling. “One, you can’t kill me when you find out exactly what happened, and two…I need you to help safeguard my mother and sister.”
The implication is clear. Mark betrayed us. But the way he’s standing, the way he’s pleading—it wasn’t willingly. Not by a long shot.
Still, Matthias doesn’t tolerate betrayal.
I, however, am not Matthias. And right now, I’m Pakhan.
“Sit down and tell us what happened,” I snap. He needs to understand that, while I’m not going to put a bullet in his head, he’ll still pay consequences. I can’t be his mentor in this. Not now.
The boy nods furiously, fear written all over him, but behind it, I catch respect. A weaker man would’ve killed him already. But I’m not weak. Not anymore.
I drop back into my chair, tumbler freshly filled and face him head-on. I already know I’m going to need more alcohol before this is over. He’s twitching like a live wire.
“Okay,” Mark breathes, bouncing slightly, psyching himself up. “What do you want to know?”
“Start from the beginning,” I order, rough and sharp.
“That would be about a week before you tracked me down.”
Maksim whistles, eyebrows climbing. A fucking week before? Khristos.
“A man showed up at my door and identified himself as Jonathon Archer. FBI.”
Niko growls, Leon stiffens. Shit. He’s been working with the same agent who arrested Matthias. This isn’t going to end well.
“Wait,” Mark blurts, sensing the sudden shift in the room. The tension is thick enough to cut with a blunt knife. “I had nothing to do with Matthias’s arrest. Neither did Ava. When he came to my door, he only wanted two things. He wanted to know where she was and…”
“You told us you didn’t know her location.” Dima’s eyes narrow. “That’s why you led us to Maleah.”
Mark flinches at the sound of her name.
“You knew her location all along, didn’t you?” Maksim snarls. Mark doesn’t even need to answer. The guilt is scrawled across his face in neon letters.
“Why the fuck would you give us Maleah if you knew where she was all along?”
“Look—” Mark tries, but Maksim’s rage won’t be silenced. Not on this subject. Not after what he saw.
“No,” he roars, his voice shaking the walls. “You saw what they did to her. She was sold, and you what? Saved your own skin while hers was bloodied and bruised by those—”
“Ava never told us!” Mark screams, chest heaving as he bolts to his feet, eyes wet.
“She never told us the full extent of what Elias did to her or what he was capable of.
No one knew. Not even Libby. We thought maybe he smacked her around sometimes.
We all knew he locked her up like some kind of leper, but none of us knew how far his reach went or how sick his mind was.
“Archer threatened me, all right?” Mark pushes a hand through his messy hair, pacing.
“He said he’d send my mom to prison for her old drug charges.
She’s been sober for over ten years. I couldn’t let my sister go into foster care.
So, I told him where Ava was. And he said when the time came, I was supposed to give you Maleah’s name. ”
“We didn’t actually track you down, did we?” I ask, calm as I can manage, trying to cut through the suffocating air. “You led us to you.”
Mark nods miserably. “He told me you’d come for me,” he says, voice small, eyes red. “When I asked why I had to give you Maleah’s name, he told me not to worry about it. That she’d be safe. I had no idea what Elias would… I still can’t…”
Words fail him. Words fail all of us. This goes deeper than any of us thought.
“What was the second thing he wanted?” Niko demands.
“He wanted me to clean up a video and decrypt some files,” Mark says, sinking back into his chair. “Then, I was supposed to give the SD card to Ava and have her deliver it to him.”
We’ve been wondering how Ava ended up with that SD card. Did she plan the whole charade when she ran from the penthouse? Or was it coincidence?
“So, you gave Ava the evidence of Matthias killing Elias.” I make it a statement, because what the fuck else could it be?
Mark shakes his head, firm. “No. That card had nothing to do with Matthias’s arrest. Trust me.”
Leon scoffs but keeps his mouth shut.
“When I asked why it had to be Matthias who took me, Archer said the only way I could access the files was inside the Bratva database,” Mark explains.
“When I asked how he’d know when Ava had the SD card and how she’d get it to him, he didn’t answer.
Just shrugged. Said it didn’t matter how—only that it had to be her. ”
The pieces start to click together, one by one, until a picture forms. Ava hasn’t betrayed Matthias.
Not in the way he thinks, anyway. She’s been trying to protect her friend and his family.
It isn’t much of a leap to believe she was coerced into working with this agent long before she ever came back to Seattle.
“What was on the drive?” I ask, my curiosity sharp.
Mark smirks. “Let me show you.”
One second his hands are empty, the next he’s palming his cell phone and hijacking the main display system. The screens light up with dark, grainy footage I recognize instantly.
Fuck.
“I was barely able to clean it up.” Mark wrinkles his nose. “It’s old. Late eighties, early nineties. Plus, it’s Russian, which means the quality was even shittier than if it had been made in America.” He glances at us sheepishly. “No offense.”
Before I can snap at him, he presses play.