She pauses, and I can almost see her wringing her hands. “Well, while my father was out this morning, I decided to have a look around his office.”
And just like that, my stomach drops into my shoes. “Christ, Tati. I told you to stay out of this and let me do the investigating. Were you seen?”
She sighs and says, “Yanov caught me.”
“Shit. Tatiana, what have you done?”
“Okay, listen, we can fight about my disobedience or we can talk about what I found.”
I’m pissed. Really pissed. I slow down and park my car on a side street. “What did you find?”
“Nicki kept a journal. My father had it locked away in his desk.”
“Please tell me you didn’t pick the lock.”
“I didn’t. I swear.” She pauses. “I found the key instead. Taped under the desk.”
“And Yanov found you with the journal?”
Again, she pauses. “No. But… but he knew I was snooping. He was pretty pissed.”
I’m thinking back to my conversation with Nikolai and talk of assassinations. I hope to God it was just questions and not a veiled suggestion that I might have to kill Tati. I set that thought aside for a moment. “Did you get to read the journal at all?”
“Just a few paragraphs, but it was enough. Marla was right. He was having doubts about being Bratva.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. The confirmation is bad. Worse than I could imagine.
“I think if I got that journal back, I could find out more,” she says. “But Yanov took it with him. Maybe if I can get it off him somehow?—”
“Don’t even suggest that, Tati. You’ve put yourself in enough danger.”
She doesn’t respond at first. Then, “The accident wiped some of your memory, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So… so you don’t remember Nicki talking about leaving the Bratva, do you?”
I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to tell her that I started to see signs of his disillusionment weeks before the accident. That whenever he did bring the subject up casually, I’d brush him off. I do not want to go down the path of believing that taking him more seriously might have actually saved his life…
“No,” I tell her. “I’ll bet he confided in Marla, though. She probably knew more than even I did.”
“And that journal might tell us even more than she knew. Viktor… we need it back from Yanov. Please tell me you’ll help me get it.”
“Of course I will, but no more going rogue. You don’t move unless I tell you to.”
“Yes, sir,” she says with a smile in her voice. “I’ll leave the investigating to you.”
She says it sincerely, but even I know better than to believe her. All I can do is my best to keep an eye on her in the meantime.
