Page 90 of Bought By Sin

I envisioned the moment that this would be over. When I could hand over whatever I found and further prove to myself and to him that this was where my loyalty would always lie. With the Volkovs. With Lev.

Beyond any shadow of doubt, they would know that I was with them, ready to fight for them.

Ready to spy and do any clandestine mission for them.

Because as I stepped into the office, I knew that this was not a sign of how I was owned and expected to behave. This was my mechanism of fighting for the man I loved.

Love.

Honor.

Respect and the freedom to belong.

I rode the elation of accepting those truths as I stepped through the office. No one was in here, and I didn’t waste a second to start recording all that lay out on the table. Maps. Correspondence. The more that I scoured through the piles on the desk, all of them lying out haphazardly that made me realize this was more of a makeshift meeting room than a real office, I wondered if there was another administrative space where more intel could be waiting for me.

I glanced at the computer screen, narrowing my eyes.

A countdown had begun on the screen.

Someone had logged out only a minute ago.

I frowned as my heart thudded faster.

We’d come at this hour of the late night and early morning because of the spies’ reports that Yusef Antonov usually retired this far into the night.

He wasn’t supposed to be up and moving around.

But he was.

He’d just left this office-like space.

I jerked my head up, straining to hear for movement upstairs.

He could be anywhere in this building, able to ambush Lev.

Oh, shit.

I darted out the door, taser at the ready, to alert the man I loved that the target was on the move.

33

LEV

“Stop.”

The Bratva soldier behind me froze at the same second I did. My body was locked tight in tension. My muscles felt charged. My nerves were frayed. My stomach was knotted from that whole-body sensation of it being go-time.

But at the whispered word from Mila over the comms unit, I stayed put.

Mid-step. Mid-breath. Mid-thought.

Together, the soldier and I waited, poised for another clue.

She’d gone down that other hallway, clued into the prospect that she could be onto something, probably so damn determined with tunnel vision to get as much intel as she could. Maybe it was a high, sneaking in like this and stealing information. I could get on board with that. It felt fucking good to know I was the king in this court, the ruler over all the variables that could pop up.

But I didn’t know if she was okay. I couldn’t tell if she was in danger and was telling me to stop to come back and help her.

The soldier and I stared each other down in the reflection of a framed piece of art.