Page 58 of Bought By Sin

“Yeah.” Nikolai frowned. “He said that location they’d been looking into might be a stronghold where Yusef Antonov is basing his operations from.”

Adrik nodded. “That’s the last thing I wanted to discuss. It’s another chance to get a lockdown on him, and if we can watch him, or even place a tracker on him and those close to him, we could find Gregori.”

And end him. For good.

“I can prepare a crew to go check it out,” I told them.

Adrik grimaced. “We need to, but I’m concerned that so many of our spies might be compromised. That Gregori will recall who is who from before.”

Those were valid points, but a lot of time had passed since Gregori faked his death and resurfaced. Not all the familiar faces from before would be on his radar. He could, however, have stakeouts and spies on us and know who to look out for. After all, we’d been under the assumption he was dead all this time. We had no idea how long he’d been forming this network and potentially spying on us. Elena had previously hinted at his starting his global network years ago.

“I want a task force to spy on where this lieutenant might be,” Adrik decided. “But we’ll need to be careful with who we send.”

“You mean we need someone new and not associated with working for us for long?” Viktor gestured at Mila.

Fuck. He has a point.

“Someone sneaky and fast with lightning-fast reflexes?” Maksim added, also gesturing at Mila.

She shot me a quick look but didn’t seem intimidated.

My instinctive reaction was to tell them to forget about it. I didn’t want to send her into danger. She mattered too much to me.

But she was sneaky and fast and could think fast on her feet. She was skilled for something like this, an espionage assignment.

“Mila?” I asked. I was looking at her as I spoke, but I meant for my brother and cousins to answer me.

She did instead, nodding. “I’ll do it.”

“Actually, this isn’t a bad idea,” Adrik said. “You are new and not many will know that you’re working for us now.”

“She can do it,” I said, nodding slowly. There was no way in hell I was letting her be the main operative on this mission to see if she could track Yusef Antonov to this location and hopefully track him. I would be there, orchestrating it from the sidelines. I would go with her and dispatch her to get closer, as close as she could.

Mila locked her gaze on me and nodded, and beneath the determination burning in her eyes, I wondered if this was something she’d been waiting for.

A chance to prove herself to me. To my family.

I tried not to be crushed at the fact that she felt it was necessary after I’d already started to show her that she mattered to me on a more intimate and personal level.

“I’ll do it,” Mila said without a hint of hesitation.

No. We. We will handle this task force—together.

Maybe then, she’d see how she was so much more than someone who could be included on the high-stakes missions that kept our empire safe and thriving.

22

MILA

Preparing for this task force took up every spare minute of our days. For the better part of a week, Lev and I went over all the logistics of how to get close enough to the compound where we assumed that Yusef Antoniv was basing his operations out of for now.

Satellite maps didn’t paint a full picture of what was there in the remote landscape halfway between the desert and the coast. Mountains complicated the ability to have a drone do reconnaissance. With all the walls and secure structures that were no doubt put in to block anyone from spying in the sky, it was a secretive location.

It reminded me of the first few Cartels I’d been sold to. Top-secret. With lethal violence within the shrouded secrecy inside the walls.

“Are you prepared to go this deep undercover?” a soldier asked me as I was fitted for gear.

We’d head out tonight. Lev, Alexei, and Nikolai would remain in a vehicle nearby while I would sneak in and try to get as close as possible to Yusef or anyone else in his inner circle.