“You weren’t supposed to see me. I was trying to find dirt on Axel before I knew he was a cop.” He pointed at the files in my lap. “Come on, start reading.”
The white light momentarily blinded me. When I opened the photocopied pages, I didn’t understand, at first, what I was looking at. In the corner was a photo of Axel. It was a younger photo of him, with short hair and a uniform.
I scanned the rest of the sheet. It was a standardized personnel sheet that included his rank, badge number, division, date of hire, birthday and status. Everything was written in Russian, and I struggled to understand some of the words, but it was clearly a copy of an official document. The only thingdifferent was his name. On these documents his name was Alexei Mikhailov.
“He might have been a cop at one point, but he was definitely doing work for my uncle.” My voice sounded less sure than I wanted it to. “He probably left this job a long time ago.”
“Look at the last page. It’s his undercover assignment.”
I flipped to the last page and read the documentation that transferred him to a new department. It looked suspiciously like Sergei was telling me the truth, but I didn’t believe it could be possible. “If this was real, I would have known. I was married to him.”
I clicked off the light, calmly put the papers back into the glove box and handed him his pen.
I knew on some level that I was clinging to denial, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. My brain didn’t stretch that far. At least not in this moment.
Sergei took one look at my face and laughed again. “This is too good. You really didn’t know.”
How had all of this started with Axel?
He had found me on the train when no one else did.
He hadn’t protested when my uncle suggested marriage.
He worked around the clock in Vancouver, and he had resisted crossing lines and getting physical with me.
I had thought he was a hardened criminal who softened toward me over time.
If this was true and he was actually undercover? It changed everything.
About me.
About him.
About our marriage.
I couldn’t reconcile my mafia husband with a police officer who had infiltrated my family to have them all sent to prison.
Nothing made sense.
I also couldn’t reconcile the protective side of Axel. How he’d worked tirelessly to bring Bandit back into my life. Or how he’d worked to protect me from Sergei and everyone else.
If he was a cop, did they know? Was he in jail right now? “Was he arrested?”
“He was part of the raids, taking down the men who worked for him.”
That made me pause. Where were Oleg and Anton? Were they also in jail? What happened to the security guard dogs?
“Axel’s not in jail?”
Sergei laughed again, enjoying himself too much. “No.”
I let that truth wash over me. I had been taken from my house early in the morning, and if Axel actually was a cop, he had not only let me be arrested and forced to sit in that jail cell all day, but, worse, he hadn’t even tried to help Bandit. Who had been left, scared and alone, in the closet for the entire day.
The whole time I thought Axel was in jail like the rest of us.
None of this made sense. Axel knew better than anyone that I had nothing to do with his business, but he’d allowed me to be arrested.
Worse, he’d allowed Giselle to pick me up from jail and deliver me to Sergei.
