Page 57 of Bought By Sin

Elena had a purpose here as the bookkeeper. Carina served an important role as the connection to the smuggling world and Cartels.

But Mila?

I glanced at Maksim, wondering if he had said something to his brother about how I was tugging Mila around with me everywhere. It wasn’t an insane thing to have an assistant, but it was a very big difference to have one here, in this meeting with only us.

And she wasn’t an assistant. Not in my eyes.

“Outnumbered?” Alexei smirked. “Don’t look at me getting in the mood to extend a plus-one invitation to these meetings anytime soon. Come on. What’s going on?”

Elena cleared her throat and sat up straighter. “What’s going on is that there are new developments with where this network is spending money. And where they are getting new forms of revenue.”

While it wasn’t a topic of how to find Gregori or Yusef Antonov to send them a message—or kill them—it was something. I listened carefully to how Elena described and showed the new financial trails that she was discovering. The network was already large and complicated with most of the clues of transactions hiding behind shell companies and loosely labeled business deals, but she was damned good at knowing what went where.

“That’s worrisome,” Viktor said with a frown after she concluded a bit about how PACs and political groups seemed to be affiliated with sending money to the network.

“It is,” Elena agreed.

“But it’s not anything new,” Alexei said. “We’ve faced our fair share of politicians campaigning on confronting organized crime.”

“It’s also not new how there are more federal agents directed to certain routes,” Carina said. “And we think that’s the point.”

Elena nodded. “They’re finding new sources of money and expanding who they bribe.”

“Which is an attack against us,” Adrik said, “if they are singling out our enemies and rivals.”

“And they’re placing more pressure on the smaller groups around us too,” Carina said. “Especially with the uptick of agents on the routes they might think as relevant to us.” She went on to share more about that. With what the Garcia Cartel shared with her and the system of informants that she could still count on, we had a wealth of tips to wade through. It all pointed to an increase of federal activity where there usually wasn’t much, and it looked, again, like a conducted effort against our regional interests.

“Most concerning to me is how some operatives seem to be roving the area to do nothing but stir up trouble,” Carina said with a frown. “They’re traveling like agents, or scouts, and every time they try to get in with a smaller Cartel, it causes infighting.”

“Like they want to make them all fall apart from the inside out,” Maksim guessed. “Then they can come in and take over and consolidate for more power.”

“Like the Garcias,” I said, glancing at Carina, who pursed her lips and dipped her chin in acknowledgment. Her brother, Arturo, had been courted by Yusef just like that. They’d tried to take over the Cartel or influence them with malleable leadership, and that would’ve been an attack on our business.

Mila cleared her throat and shifted in her seat.

I glanced at her and wished she’d speak up. She didn’t. She never wanted to. But I had learned her tells and I knew that something was waiting on the tip of her tongue.

“What is it?” I asked her.

“You agree?” Carina asked. While Elena and Carina hadn’t had much time or space to personally befriend Mila, there was an undercurrent of sisterhood that they would embrace if the time ever came. All of us in here understood that, like Carina, Mila was once closely in with the Cartels—if not by choice.

“I do,” she told Carina. With a quick glance at me, then the rest of the room, she cleared her throat again. “I noticed a lot of infighting in all the Cartels. Like there was a higher power trying to shift who was in control regionally.”

“When you were with the Hernandezes?” Adrik asked.

She nodded. Then she gave the names of other Cartels she’d been sold to. “All the leaders seemed to argue more than usual. Lots of fighting among the members.” She shrugged. “It seemed like they were all under the influence or pressure of someone ‘bigger’.”

I wanted to smile with pride.

She’d spoken up.

She’d offered her insight.

And fuck, did it feel good to witness it.

It was a small step, but one in the right direction.

“All right. But what about that tip from Dean?” Maksim asked, rubbing his hand over his face.