“I’ve tapped her finances,” Ilya, my tech specialist, finally pipes up, saving Ivan from my next round of wrath.
“And?”
“She is in an obscene amount of debt for her age bracket. It appears Cassio was telling the truth about that.”
I have to suck in a breath to keep my jaw from visibly vibrating alongside my throbbing pulse. I know that my men are correct.
Were it anyone else who conspired against me like this, they would be at the bottom of the Hudson by now. Not waiting intact in a holding cell downstairs.
Unfortunately, my morals don’t seem to matter much to me anymore.
I don’t see a world where I could bear harming a single curly hair on that girl’s head, betrayal or not. I should just release her under threat and face the consequences of her potential destruction. I’m not sure what other information she could have gotten hold of in our limited time together, but it seems she broke into the office to look for something more tonight.
I just have to hope that my idiocy doesn’t provide the Italians the opening they so badly want.
There’s just one more piece of the puzzle I need to see in order to come to terms with the circumstances.
“Ilya, access Rover 3.”
My tech specialist’s gaze jumps to mine in momentary surprise. The secret I’ve had him swear to keep for the past nine months is finally revealed, thrown out onto the table. “Of course. One moment, please.”
I’ll be able to recognize her, I tell myself. The last shred of proof I need to move on.
“What the hell is Rover 3?” Lev wonders aloud. I can feel Ivan’s hot gaze of shock locking onto my cheek. It’s enough to make me feel a tinge of guilt about concealing my distribution of hidden surveillance from them. I know it won’t help our trust issues with one another, but I’m not really thinking about that right now. Desperate times, after all.
Rising from my seat, I circle the desk to perch over Ilya’s shoulder, the rest of my men following suit.
“Damn, Mikhail, you’ve been holding out on us,” Andrei mutters next to me.
Ilya sorts through the classified collection of camera footage we’ve been collecting, stopping when he reaches the file with my name on it. We all stare down at the blurry image on the computer, becoming clearer and sharper one pixel at a time.
Eventually, the door to my office comes into clear view. Ilya manipulates the time track, scrolling through the entire period of time in which Cassandra was in my apartment. He slows it down just as the shadow of a figure enters the scene.
“This was the breach,” Ilya verifies from somewhere beside me, but I can barely hear his voice.
Because it isn’t the familiar, lithe body of my Little Menace jamming a key through my door, but a large man with our Bratva’s sigil tattooed across the tan, revealed sliver of his wrist. The same brand I had received from my father’s men at just twelve years old. The same one that decorates the wrists of every man in my organization. In this very room.
It means somehow, one of my men managed to breach my impenetrable security systems and slip into my apartment right under my nose, but I can barely process that horror right now.
Because Ilya opens a new folder, and a new image flashes across the screen. A small figure, wrapped in my blankets, fast asleep in my bed during the entire ordeal.
And suddenly all I can hear is that guttural, tortured scream, cut off with the click of a door.
Cassandra
Despite my best efforts to slow my panicked breaths, it seems I passed out after all.
Because when I awoke, head in a small puddle of blood from where it must’ve hit the concrete floor on the way down, the same blurry grey walls squeezing closed in suffocating proximity, it was just as bad as I had feared.
All the terror came pouring into my consciousness all over again like some cruel rebound, my body still reeling from the last attack.
An artificial silence chokes the room, allowing for no distractions to deter the memories from returning once more.
Please, Joe, I’ll do anything. Please let me out.
A bitter laugh breaks through the slots of wood.
A stamp, his foot striking the door. I flinch back to the shadows.
