22. Andrie
Andrie
There wasn’t a name in the world that instilled as much fear into me as that name. Irina Petrov. As far as I was concerned, she was the devil incarnate.
I saw Jolene watching me, a sympathetic look on her face. Josie looked as if she were mentally thinking of ways to kill someone, and even Junie was staring at me.
“How do you know her?”
“S-she was the one who …” I trailed off, unable to say anything more. But I didn’t need to.
“Irina’s a lieutenant for her father. She runs the entire skin trade for the Bratva in Russia. The gang’s drug trafficking interests might bring in more money, but she’s by far more feared,” Vik stated, a coldness to his voice I didn’t often hear.
“Why would she want the list?” Lessia asked, causing me to jump. I hadn’t realized she’d come into the room. Or maybe she’d already been there. “Foreign operatives wouldn’t be something she’d care about. Not unless they were knocking at her doorstep.”
“She doesn’t want it. Not for herself, anyway,” Junie explained.
“But from what I can gather, despite all the power she holds in Russia, she still feels slighted when it comes to respect by other players in that world. She wants a seat at the big table, and she knows the man to get her there would want it.” The meaningful glances between Juniper and Matteo told me whoever the man was, he was on their radar.
“Please tell me this is enough to finally move on the bitch,” Vik growled.
Xander, who’d been quiet, shook his head. “She’s mine, brother.”
Fear jolted through me at the thought of Xander, freshly extracted from that world, going back into it and being anywhere near that woman.
“Sorry, boys, but this one’s coming to me.
” I shivered at Lessia’s tone, completely void of emotion.
As an assassin, Lessia Accardi was the best. Not only at getting the job done so cleanly she might as well have never been there, but in her execution—quite literally.
Out of all the men and women I worked with, she was also so well-adjusted and able to compartmentalize it was almost scary.
I’d never known anyone who could so easily put aside various parts of themselves only to pull them back out when needed.
At home with her family, Lessia was loving, warm, and a powerhouse.
As an assassin, she was cold, calculating almost to a fault, and without an ounce of emotion.
I’d asked her once if it bothered her to do what she did.
To end a life. She’d tilted her head as if she’d never thought about it before.
“No. Because I’m not ending a human life.
I’m killing monsters. The men and women I eradicate gave up their souls in their quest for money or power.
I’m simply allowing their body to catch up to the rest of them.
Do I respect life? Absolutely. But in the way a hunter manages their game of choice.
I want the population to flourish. In order to do that, I have to remove the diseased.
These people are no different. Only instead of a virus, they’ve been infected with their own beliefs and ideologies that they themselves are above humanity. ”
Blinking back to the present, I noticed Matteo didn’t exactly look happy, but the resigned weariness told the room that Lessia was right.
“You’re not trained for this, to start. But you’re also too emotionally involved,” she told Vik.
“And you aren’t?” Vik challenged, crossing his arms as he glared at Lessia.
“Not as much as you are,” she said, looking more amused than anything. “Besides, I’ll call a favor in if I have to.”
“How the hell do you have any favors left?” Grimm wanted to know. “I would have thought asking Matteo to take that shot would wipe everything clean.”
“It did.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “But I also facilitated G and Ava. And Zeke,” she added.
“And that’s enough to re-balance the scales?” he asked skeptically.
Lessia raised a perfectly manicured brow. “And reconciled G with her sister. I figure that tips it over the edge.”
“Hey, now,” I heard myself protest, amazed to hear the slightly teasing tone in my voice. “If anyone should get something for that one, it should be me. Plus, you’ve had me on call for the others as well. Kassie, Royce, and Boone. Does that mean you owe me?”
Grimm chuckled, but Lessia’s expression didn’t change.
“No, that’s why I got you him,” she pointed at Xander.
“And all of you”—she directed her finger to Vik and me before I could comment—“are why each and every one of you is staying put,” she said to the men, who didn’t look happy but nodded at her glare.
“So, what’s the plan?” Junie asked, spinning around in her office chair.
“Jolene, Josie, and I get to planning, and you start adding whatever Irina knows about our mystery man to our list,” Lessia said matter-of-factly, not waiting for Matteo to chime in.
Xander cleared his throat, his expression carefully neutral.
“Actually, I might be useful in the planning. After all, I’ve had years to observe her habits and routine.
” He and Vik exchanged glances again, and for the first time, it really dawned on me that Xander, having been left behind after Vik left, had likely filled his void in the organization.
Vik’s main job before leaving Russia had been to guard Demi.
Demi had told me Vik’s family had been protecting his since his grandfather was a young man.
“I also have the codes needed to access most of their secure communications and bank accounts. I figure the communications might help track down other parts of the trafficking ring, and well, if the money dries up, it will cripple the organization. At least for a while.”
Junie bounced in her chair, pulling herself over to the computer and reaching with the other hand to grab a mostly empty bag of chips.
“At least now we have some cover in killing this one. I know she was off-limits for a long time, but with her trying to gain access to this list, everyone will now think the US government did it to prevent her from getting the information. They won’t even look at anyone else,” she said, happily typing on her keyboard, while Josie handed Xander a pad of paper on which he scribbled down line after line of meaningless numbers, letters, and symbols.
When he was done, he put the papers next to Junie.
“These are her preferred passwords. She re-uses the same ones for different accounts, thinking because they’re so complicated, and she moves them around so much, they won’t be discovered.
But because they’re so hard to remember, she keeps coming back to the same patterns.
These are the passwords I know she’s used in the last year.
And as her father’s daughter, she’s listed on the majority of the main accounts for the Bratva, even if they aren’t tied to trafficking.
Some are legit—the companies they show to the public—but most are fronts for their drug running or other illegal activities. ”
Juniper practically squealed. “I love taking money from the bad guys. I always feel like Santa, giving it away to various charities and organizations once we scrub it clean.”
“What about Hardy?” I asked, getting back to the issue closer to home.
“And my government contracts? Am I going to lose them because of him?” I knew it wouldn’t be fair, but in my experience, the government didn’t care about fair.
They cared about expedient and simple, and it would be far simpler to shut me down and move onto another psychologist than it would be to ensure Hardy hadn’t passed my information to anyone else and compromised my practice.
“Don’t worry about it.” The words came from a blacked-out screen in the corner. One I hadn’t realized was in use. It was computer modified, but I knew the person must’ve been Harrison. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you, sir,” I whispered.
“Come on,” Vik wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Xander will be a while. Let me take you out to eat.”
I wanted to stay, but despite Vik’s quiet words, I knew it wasn’t a suggestion.
He turned me around, gently leading me from the room.
When I looked back, I saw Xander, staring at me from where he stood beside Junie, Matteo, and Grimm.
Lessia, Josie, and Jolene were a few computer terminals down, their heads together as they looked at a computer screen.
Xander’s eyes didn’t leave mine. I could feel them on me even after I turned back to walk with Vik out the door.
Vik was still in ultra-protective mode an hour later, barely doing more than grunt at the wait staff and glaring as he called out our server for being “overly friendly” to me.
He scared the man so badly we never saw him again.
His female replacement certainly wasn’t fearful of Vik’s poor manners or attitude, and I had to resist rolling my eyes at her very obvious attempts at flirting.
I wasn’t sure why she bothered. Objectively, I knew Vik, while grumpy and rough around the edges, was handsome in a dangerous kind of way. But his entire vibe was pissed-at-the-world and don’t-give-a-damn-about-you, the rules, or anyone else.
Despite his attitude, or maybe because of it, I couldn’t help poking a little on a subject that had been bothering me. “Vik,” I asked hesitantly. Because, as much as I wanted to know, I knew he’d be able to sense the hurt behind my words, no matter how hard I tried to hide it from him.
He grunted, not looking up from his plate, eating as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your brother?
I mean, before …” I trailed off. Yes, I was hurt he hadn’t told me.
But I was also off-balance by my earlier realization that Xander must have been the one to fill Vik’s previous role to some degree.
Did that mean he’d also stepped in as Demi’s main guard?
Were the two of them supposed to get out together?
If so, what had happened that caused Demi’s death and Xander’s escape?
I’d deliberately kept Demi’s name out of my talks with Xander as much as possible.
But had Xander known whom I was talking about this entire time?
Vik paused for a second, his fork hovering in the air over the table before he stuffed the huge helping of pasta in his mouth. “I’m sure I’ve spoken about him before,” Vik finally replied after swallowing.
"No, you haven't."
Vik’s eyes darted around the room before he gave me a fake smile. “I’m sure I have. You just might have forgotten. We can talk more about this later. At home,” he said pointedly, but I couldn’t quite drop it yet.
“Did Xander know him?” My miserable, pathetic, question came out of my mouth before I could regulate it.
Vik set down his fork slowly, solely focusing on me.
“That’s not a fair question to ask. Nor is it one you should torment yourself with, little sister.
The past is the past and cannot be changed.
The dead cannot be resurrected, nor anything positive come out of dredging up history.
Let it go.” With the finality of a man who laid down the law, he picked his fork up and dug in as if the entire brief conversation hadn’t happened.
“You going to eat that?” he asked me around another mouth full of food, pointing at my grilled salmon.
I knew he was right. Nothing good could come with my line of thinking, but I couldn’t let it go.
I knew, as a therapist, that my obsessing over Demi hadn’t been healthy.
And my developing feelings for Xander was likely causing guilt to kick in—yet another reason I was trying to backtrack and lose the ground I’d gained in moving on.
But despite the professional voice in my head trying to reason with me, I knew I wouldn’t be able to let it go that easily.