Page 87 of Bought By Sin

I turned to face Mila, appeased with that same glint of determination in her gaze.

She was ready.

I only had to get up to speed and be okay with her going back out into dangerous territory.

It will work.

We’ll be together.

As we should be.

32

MILA

Adrik said he wanted a team formed to strike out against Yusef Antonov as quickly as possible.

Lev was in charge of setting it up, and he didn’t stall or delay. There wasn’t a single second to spare in finding the people he wanted to dispatch to the docks where Yusef Antonov seemed to be hiding.

Since the night that I snuck into that compound halfway between the Las Vegas desert and the coastline, Gregori’s right-hand man, his lieutenant with the target on his back, had been spotted with the tracker that I’d placed on a vehicle. When I slipped past a few cars and slapped small trackers under their carriages, I hadn’t known who’d drive them or if it would matter. On the mission, sneaking in, I had wanted to accomplish as much as I could. That meant leaving trackers wherever I could. It just so happened that one of the SUVs had been taken by a man who assisted Yusef often, and that was how the Volkovs could have the ready-made access to his movements.

“What if they spot you?” Lev asked when we spent another long day and night of studying the routes and the plan. He’d chosen Eli and Pyotr as the assassins to assist us. A few more Bratva men would be coming along as backup too.

I glanced up at the question that singled me out. We’d been discussing the gear we’d all be wearing. Head coverings would assist us in sneaking in undetected, but Lev still had his worries.

He wasn’t necessarily a worrywart. He was a control freak, though, and that included his tendency to overthink and stress over every detail and contingency. As if he could control them all to make sure we’d be successful.

“Me?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Only me?” I asked.

He nodded again, not backing off from the question. “You were one of the last to infiltrate their compound.” By saying I was one of the last, he was referring to the reports that had come in after that fateful night I’d been captured. A nearby gang had chosen the following day to attack that location, and it helped to more or less cover the tracks of my activity that night. The men Lev and the soldiers killed were excused as casualties of that gang coming in.

“All right…” I agreed. “I was, but we’ve confirmed that the surveillance at the fence had been killed. All those exterior cameras were powered off when Nikolai had someone tamper with the lines.”

“I know,” he replied, “but there’s still a chance someone who was at that compound could see you at the docks and your cover would be blown.” Instead of using it as another reason he didn’t want me to be near danger and not come, he turned to Eli and Pyotr and the others. “If there is any indication she’s compromised, we retreat.”

Hearing him vouch for me was another stamp on how convinced I wanted to let myself be that I mattered to him.

Seeing him “allow” me to be included on this hit was also another piece of evidence that he wasn’t going to try to shackle me and exclude me from action.

I didn’t know how to be idle. I didn’t know how to be a kept woman or to lack a job. Being on the run, out in the field, was what I’d been conditioned to do, and I appreciated that I was still able to participate. Especially with knowing that Lev would be with me every step of the way.

Just like the previous mission, the time both dragged and raced by. Before I could fully realize it, it was time to move out. We’d spent our days rehearsing and strategizing and we’d ended every night with passionate sex in bed.

Too soon, it was time to move out.

And I was ready. I was impatient to get this thing in motion.

We’d gone over the maps. I’d memorized the aerial layout of the docks we were heading to. As a team, we’d practiced placement and pored over the blueprints and building diagrams.

All of us were trained.

We had an aggressive timeline for planning this strike, but we weren’t rushed and taking a sloppy approach.

Before I knew it, it was time to start the long drive west and get into position in the dockside area where Yusef Antonov was supposed to be hiding. If he was out on the boat that he was reputedly staying on sometimes, we’d need to adjust to reach him there, but the collective hope was that he’d be in the three-storied industrial building near the large warehouses where he was overseeing shipments of arms and drugs from overseas.