I smiled, leaning over to cup her face and kiss her.
“That can wait,” he drawled with annoyance.
I sat back down, feeling like a fool in love. Her words of commitment filled me with hope.
“Let’s talk about what you know, then, Agent Langer.” He sat back and crossed his arms.
“First of all, I’mnotan agent. I was fired months ago, removed from access to the security clearance I had, and was manually escorted out of the building.” She held her hands out. “I’ve been stripped of all privileges.”
“Noted.”
“Before I go any further, it’s important for you to know that Emil has never betrayed you since meeting me.”
I stroked my thumb over her knuckles so she’d feel my presence and know she wasn’t alone to take the initiative like this.
“He never betrayed the Dubinin Family. In those two weeks when he held me captive in?—”
He sat up and narrowed his eyes at me. “You actually did that? You kidnapped her?”
“She was an agent then,” I said in defense.
“It’s just semantics now,” Sadie said.
My father laughed once. “Oh, you forgave him?”
“How could I not when it looks like he moved mountains to save me when no one else would?”
He nodded. “Fair enough. Go on.”
“Emil never told me anything,” she said.
“Because you never asked me anything,” I reminded her. “You were tailing me for months and then when we were alone, you never questioned me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Because we were busy in other ways. Besides, you were the one in control. I was tasked with bringing you in for questioning to see if anyone in the Dubinin Family was involved with the startup of the Obsidian Eye group. If I exposed my interest in the matter and you were involved, I would’ve been dead, not knocked up.”
“Obsidian Eye?” my father asked.
“My last case for the agency was about a secret network of leaders from criminal organizations. Rumors are that bosses are joining in a ‘club’ to further expand their collective monopoly of the black market and AI programming for warfare.” She glanced at me. “Like I started to tell you that night I was taken.”
I met my father’s gaze. He nodded. “I never heard of any name for it, but I’d been hearing about this new organization too.”
“That was why you assigned me to Romanoff,” I reminded him. “You thought he was the leader of this group.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Romanoff wanted to be in charge, but he was never the actual front runner of the group.” Gesturing at his laptop, she asked, “May I? I downloaded copies of everything when they accused me of selling intel to the Cartel in Mexico. After someone decided to strand me on an island…”
My father raised his brows, curious. Then he stood. “Come to the operations room so we can all see on the bigger screen.”
It wasn’t a welcome, not into the family, but he was taking leaps of faith to bring her into a secret meeting room.
We went down together, and I did my best not to get ahead of myself. My father was still reserved about her being here. I knew this trust would take time. But so far, he was all ears.
In the meeting room, Sadie logged into a commercial email system and began a lecture of a summary about her former work. Files upon files were there to use as resources. Dossiers about who was who. We already knew a lot of this, but her saved notes and material about the formation of this Obsidian Eye alliance was more in-depth. It was all confidential and new to us.
My father and I listened for an hour as she described what she’d learned about her case. When he called in Ivan and Alexsei and introduced them as top officers in the family, she continued with what felt like a briefing, not a family meeting.
She impressed me when she cleared the air about whether I’d told her any confidential information. She didn’t need to do that, but it was touching that she had worried about it.
She wowed me when she described her casework, too, but as she carried on, like this was official business and she was the boss of her work, I worried that she would be seen as an informant. As an asset.
