“The few standing members of Vitya Morozov's network. Someone also joined forces with them to destabilize your Bratva. He’s a new political player in Russia.”
“Names. Who are they?” I asked.
“Aleksandr Aslanov, Vissarion Romanov, Aliya Reece, Matvey Alexeev, Fyodor Pavlov…I don’t know if there are others. That’s all I know, please—”
I pulled the trigger, my bullet making a hole in his forehead.
His body fell back into the chair.
I went back upstairs. Alina was standing, and nobody else was in the office. She was waiting, her face pale but steady.
“It’s over,” I told her, walking over to her. “You’re free.”
“Am I?” she whispered.
And then she walked right past me and left the room.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alina’s POV
The house had become even quieter since the night the mole was found. The rhythm of the manor remained the same, but there was a relaxed air over everything. Just that the relaxed air didn’t get to me or my thoughts.
I felt adrift, even though I was now free of the whole Bratva’s suspicion. It definitely felt good to be free, but the truth was that I still felt bound. Bound by marriage and this world altogether.
“Oh, I thought I’d have to come drag you out,” Mila remarked as I came down the stairs.
“Good afternoon,” I greeted, chuckling.
Mila and I have gotten closer in the past few days. We’d done a little bit of catching up three days ago, but I’d been mostly upstairs for the past two days because I didn’t feel like talking. Besides, she was busy wrapping things up and following the lead the mole’s confession brought up.
“How have you been? What’s going on?” she asked as I claimed the couch beside her in the sitting room.
“I’ve been…okay. How’s it going? Your work and all?”
“Fine. It’s all going well,” she replied before adding, “You know, you’ve been like this since we caught the mole. That was why I suggested catching up the other day. What’s really going on?”
“It’s just…all this,” I told her, sighing.
“Things should be smoother now. The truth has been discovered.”
“Of course, it has. But that doesn’t make me free.”
She frowned like she was trying to make sense of what I was saying.
“Konstantin and I got married because of this case. I left Manhattan and was working in Russia as a nurse at a small clinic. I had gotten out of the relationship with Vitya a while before then, so I was single and happily putting my life together. But the Bratva entered the picture and all that changed.”
“My ex was arrested by the Russian authorities, and my name was listed among his possible accomplices since he still texted me every now and then. The general assumption was that we were still a couple. The Bratva also thought so. And they took me because of that. Konstantin was put in charge, so he took hold of me. But when I didn’t have anything to tell them, and he didn’t want to let me go since other factions could take me, he brought up the marriage idea.”
“Oh,” she uttered, surprise clear on her face.
“Yeah. So, we didn’t just meet, fall in love, and decide to marry. There was no proposal; it was pure strategy. It was the only option aside from killing me.”
“Wow. I never could have imagined.”
I sighed. “We’ve become closer, a bit closer than friends, maybe. But now that I’m no longer a suspect—“
“You don’t know whether to go forward or backwards,” she chipped in.
