by Bella Rose
Then she realized that Vitaly was standing in the doorway of her shoebox-sized office. He rested one shoulder against the doorframe, looking incredibly sexy and maybe a bit scary too. “Hello, Alexandra. Surprised?”
“I think that’s an understatement.” She considered it a point of pride that she managed to spit the words out without choking on them, since she was having a bit of trouble catching her breath.
***
Vitaly tried not to lose his temper. It was obvious that he had startled her considerably. He was glad. She deserved it. “So which is it? FBI? DEA? You cannot be surprised that I discovered what you are,” he said coldly.
“Well, actually, FBI agents are supposed to enjoy a bit of anonymity when it comes to our home address,” she remarked. “So I suppose I took it for granted that you didn’t know where I lived.”
“I will always find out where my enemies live.”
He was hoping for a reaction, and he wasn’t disappointed. Her mouth opened and closed once, and then again as she tried to come up with a response.
“I suppose—that is to say—I didn’t consider us enemies.” She looked almost chagrined after admitting this to him.
Vitaly purposefully arranged his features into a frown. “When someone sneaks into my house and then deliberately goes where they are not welcome in order to take pictures of things that are none of their business, I certainly don’t consider that person my friend.”
“Oh, well, I suppose when you put it like that.” Alexandra gestured to her office. “Feel free to take as many photos as you want.”
“You have an office at work where you keep the important things,” Vitaly reminded her. “Although I do find it interesting that you’re working on the photos you took of my office here at your home instead of at work.” Vitaly sauntered farther inside the tiny room. The space was utterly devoid of any decorations. It was all stark-white walls and cheap composite furniture.
“How did you know that?” she asked, her elegant brows lifted in surprise.
“I didn’t. It was a calculated guess because I would have thought you might want to take a peek at those right away, and you are here and not at work.” Vitaly perched on the edge of her desktop. “But thank you for clarifying that point for me.”
“Okay, I have to admit that was a nice trap you set.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I completely fell for it.”
“It wasn’t a trap.” Vitaly cocked his head, staring at her and trying not to be distracted by how beautiful she looked. “Not everybody is trying to get something from you.”
“But you are,” she guessed.
“This from the woman who gave me an amazing blowjob right before she went snooping through my house on the pretext of using the bathroom?” He was actually teasing, but the look of embarrassment on her face made him feel bad for what he’d said. “I’m not making fun of you, Alexandra.”
“Then what are you doing?” she asked. “And why are you here?”
He struggled to decipher that for himself. “You’re better than this,” he finally said. “You’re better than those federal assholes give you credit for. And you’re certainly better than you seem to be giving yourself credit for.”
“I don’t understand.” Her brow furrowed and he fought down the urge to smooth out the two tiny lines that formed.
“You’re an incredible woman, Alexandra. And you’re too much woman to let the feds use you just to get to me.” Vitaly turned around and walked out of her office. If he said any more, he would say too much. Of course, he had pretty much already done that.
Chapter Twelve
Alexandra strode into her office the following morning with a chip on her shoulder and a desire to kick some ass. So Vitaly thought the FBI was just using her, did he? For some reason, she was determined to prove him wrong. She was not being used. She was the one who had insisted to Johnson that she use her body to get into Vitaly’s house. Well she’d done exactly what she had set out to do, and she’d gotten intel. Now she had to decide the best way to use it.
Turning on her big monitor, she pulled up a map of the city. She didn’t have the details of Vitaly’s map, but she did have the weird numbers and addresses she’d gotten off the refrigerator. Now she began plugging them into the map.
Just as a picture was beginning to emerge, Agent Johnson came barreling into her office. Behind him was Joe. If the smirk on Joe’s face was anything to go on, he thought he had finally gotten something to push Alexandra out of the hot seat.
“Agent Polzin,” Johnson said curtly. “You and I need to talk.”
“All right?” Alexandra sat back in her chair and folded her hands across her middle. Her computer screen was facing her, and for now that was perfectly fine.
“Agent Farelli here”—Johnson gestured to Joe—“has discovered from Jacob Lowenstein that Vitaly Volkov and the O’Learys are joining forces to use the same drug runs and drop locations.”
“Is that what Jacob told you?” Alexandra asked curiously.
She had already assumed that Jacob would give the FBI nothing but information about other organizations, according to Vitaly’s orders. Apparently Jacob had decided to add his own twist in order to really hard sell the notion. It was a typical and brilliant Jacob maneuver. Now Joe was going to think he had the whole organization in the bag.
“Don’t play coy, Polzin,” Joe said triumphantly. “We can base an entire operation off of this information and bring down the Maximov-Volkov branch of the Russian mafia for good!”
“Hmm,” Alexandra mused. “Did you notice that all of the routes and drop zones Jacob gave you were actually on O’Leary territory instead of Volkov territory?”
“They’re working together,” Joe said impatiently. “Lowenstein was adamant about that.”
“Yeah.” Alexandra nodded. “Except Vitaly Volkov would never work with the O’Learys. But you feel free to run whatever sting operation you want. I think I’m going to keep my focus elsewhere.”
Johnson’s expression grew interested. “Were you able to deliver on that promise you made in my office yesterday?”
“I was,” she said with forced casualness. “I spent about an hour at Vitaly’s yesterday. I got photographs of some very interesting things in his kitchen, which I’m working on. And I also caught a glimpse into his office. There’s a map of the city hanging on his wall. My next goal is to get a good look at it.”
“What?” Joe snapped angrily. “You were inside Vitaly’s house?”
“I was.” She didn’t mention that he had returned the favor. “I visited with him yesterday and have plans to see him again tonight.” That last bit was a lie. But she could easily make plans. She just needed a new dress, and probably a new identity at this point.
“Wait.” Joe looked positively livid. His face was even turning red. “You’re telling me that you’re going out with this guy? On a date?” Joe swung around to face Johnson. “Is this legal? Are you allowing it?”
Johnson shrugged. “Polzin asked permission, and stated the parameters and exactly what she intended to gain from the operation. So far she has delivered, which means I have no complaints.” Johnson headed for the door. “Carry on, Polzin, but keep me well informed of your progress. I want daily reports, please?”
“Yes, sir,” Alexandra said eagerly.
Johnson left her office, leaving Joe standing there with a sour expression on his ugly face. “You fucking whore.”
“Excuse me?” Alexandra felt a shot of adrenaline mingled with anger fill her veins. “You don’t get to talk to me that way, you arrogant prick.”
“I call them as I see them, Polzin,” Joe snarled. “We all knew you were screwing a mafia guy for years before this last big bust. Then you lost that contact. Well I finally have one of my own and I’m going to expose you for the liar that you are.”
“I’m a liar now? When have I ever lied?” She shook her head, wondering when he had become so angry with her. “Joe, you and I are on the s
ame team. Remember?”
“No fucking way,” Joe said, backing toward the exit. “I don’t have to screw my way into the good intel. I use actual investigative techniques to get my leads.”
“Careful with Jacob,” she said suddenly, surprising even herself. “You’ll never really get what you think you’re getting.”
“Jealous?” Joe smirked. “I’m going to set up a sting tonight. We’re going to hit that supply route and those drop points and we’re going to make Vitaly Volkov hurt. So if your boyfriend is walking a little funny tonight, it might be because me and my team have fucked him over.”
“Really?” she said, her voice filled with disgust. “Sometimes I truly wonder how you managed to get this far in life. You’re so low I can hardly picture you someplace like Quantico.”
“I know people,” Joe boasted.
“So basically you know people who got you your job.” She rolled her eyes. “For future reference, moron, you might want to keep that little fact to yourself.”
***
Vitaly glanced at his phone. Alexandra had texted him. It was tempting to answer, but he should really hang on to his willpower and ignore her. He turned back to the numbers he was entering into his spreadsheet. The oxy sales were down in the area where their territory bordered the O’Learys’. If the idiotic FBI man actually hit the O’Learys, he would be doing Vitaly a giant favor.
His phone trilled again. He sighed. Picking it up, he noticed that her latest text was a very plain request to meet in person. Apparently she had something important to tell him. Setting the phone back on his desk, he leaned back in his seat and tried to put his thoughts together.
What could she want now? Or was she just trying to get inside his house to take pictures of things that she could then use to incriminate him?
“Boss!” Uday called out from down the hall. “You are never going to believe this.”
“Believe what?”
“Look at the damn security screen in your office. The one for the front door,” Uday suggested. “You might find it interesting.”
Vitaly really had zero patience with guessing games. Still, he turned on the monitor and was immediately faced with someone holding a big piece of poster board. It was Alexandra. He could see her silky hair hanging below the sign she had made.
He read it quietly. “Sorry. I know you’re irritated, but I really need to tell you something important.”
Dimitri appeared in the doorway of Vitaly’s office. “You want me to throw her off the property?”
“Not yet.” Vitaly thought about what she was claiming. “Jacob said something was going to happen. Perhaps she knows the details and is willing to share.”
“Or trade,” Dimitri suggested darkly. “Boss, I think it’s time to get rid of this woman.”
“Let her in,” Vitaly said decisively. “I want to hear her out. It’s only fair.”
“Fair, my ass,” Dimitri muttered in Russian. “The woman is like a living, breathing stick of dynamite ready to explode.”
Vitaly smiled in spite of himself. He couldn’t argue with that description, though he likely had different reasons for thinking that than Dimitri did. Moments later, Alexandra was being led into the kitchen flanked by all three Maximov brothers.
“It’s like a human barricade,” she said irritably. “They’re so big, they’re suffocating.”
“You get used to it,” he assured her. “Now. Speak. I want to know why you’re here.”
“Jacob told the FBI about the O’Leary routes and drop points that border your territory,” she said quickly.
“I know this.” He waved his hand dismissively. He had given her more credit than this.
“Yes, but did you know that Jacob decided he needed to lay it on nice and thick and told them that you and the O’Learys have been sharing these routes?”
Vitaly froze as the implications set in. “No. This I did not know. Why would he do that?”
“In Jacob’s mind, he knows how the FBI works. There was no way he could go to them with a complete set of intel on another organization when it was so obvious that he was working for you. It would have been complete bullshit and he knew it. So he mixed the lies with a little bit of what could sound like truth. He just didn’t think about the fact that implicating you like that means we can get a warrant to do a shakedown of this house.”
“What?” Vitaly leapt to his feet. “When is this happening?”
“Tonight.” She glanced at her watch. “In about an hour. And don’t get pissed off at me. I’ve been trying to warn you for hours.”
So she had.
Vitaly shot to his feet. He bolted from the kitchen and into the hallway. “Everyone! We’ve got FBI incoming in less than an hour. Sweep this place clean!”
The pounding of boots became deafening as all three brothers began sprinting through the house. They were yelling in Russian, arguing over what should go and what wasn’t that incriminating. Vitaly knew he needed to get to work too.
“I owe you,” he told her, feeling strange about this twisted series of events. “I’ll come to you later tonight.”
“Where?”
He smiled at her. “Your place.”
“Can I stay and help?” she asked, batting her eyes.
Vitaly snorted. “I think you would be just as bad as the guys who show up with a warrant.”
She started laughing, turning and walking back out the front door with a smile on her face. Vitaly watched her go. What was happening between the two of them? It was like a complicated game of chess where none of the rules were consistent and the only thing that seemed to matter was the vitality of the give-and-take relationship. One would give, the other would receive, and then they seemed to fall duty-bound to reciprocate.
“Would you stop drooling over your girlfriend and start sweeping the kitchen?” Uday shouted. “You’re like a teenage boy with his first crush!”
Damn, Uday was sort of right. Vitaly needed to get moving or risk losing everything to one misplaced raid.
Vitaly began pulling stuff off the refrigerator. He held it in his hand, realizing as he did that it was highly possible that Alexandra had seen these addresses. He filed that away for a problem to deal with later. For now he needed to get these scraps of paper into the safe that had been built into the back of Uday’s SUV for an occasion such as this.
“Into the garage!” Dimitri was yelling. “They could be coming at any moment!”
Sure enough, just after Uday had carefully left the driveway and made it all the way down the street and around the corner, a caravan of FBI-approved black SUVs roared in from the opposite direction. By the time they squealed to a halt at the curb, Dimitri, Anton, and Vitaly were all standing on the porch waiting for them.
“Vitaly Volkov!” A man Vitaly took to be Joe Farelli was waving his badge and a warrant in the air. “I have a warrant to search the premises.”
Vitaly gave a nonchalant shrug. “Go ahead, Agent Farelli. Enjoy yourselves, but please don’t break anything. I’ll have to submit a receipt to my insurance company and they’re heartily sick of suing the FBI for property damage.”
Vitaly watched Joe’s face turn red and then begin to puff up with rage. Yes. This agent was going to be trouble.
Chapter Thirteen
Vitaly looked at the numbers in front of him and cursed in Russian, and then in Ukrainian. “Anton!” he shouted. “What the hell happened last night? I thought the FBI hit the O’Leary routes.”
Anton came striding into the office with a grim expression on his face. “I’m starting to think that either Agent Polzin is lying, or she’s really a DEA agent ratting out the FBI.”
“You sound like you’re fabricating the plot of a very bad spy movie,” Vitaly griped. He turned his attention back to the numbers and tried to decide if it was possible to find a pattern.
“Again? You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Uday muttered as he looked at the security feed from the front of the house. “I do have t
o give her credit for having a huge set of brass balls.”
Vitaly looked up from his desk, wondering what could possibly be happening now. The FBI vehicles had long since cleared out of the neighborhood. Now Vitaly was expecting to hear from Jacob at any moment to find out how he had cut a deal in exchange for the valuable information that had led to last night’s raid. Hopefully that would shed some light on what had happened to their routes.
“Your agent Polzin is waltzing right up the walkway.” Uday pointed to the screen. “I’d know those legs anywhere.”
Anton bolted from the room, presumably to go help Dimitri harass Alexandra. Fantastic. Those two would have her pissed as hell before Vitaly could even get to her.
“Would you?” Vitaly said mildly. It was odd, but he didn’t like knowing that Uday was admiring Alexandra’s beautiful figure, and it didn’t matter that she was a fed. It still pissed him off.
Uday started to stand. “You want me to get rid of her?”
Vitaly glanced around his office. He certainly didn’t want Alexandra in here, and yet he wanted to talk to her again. He wanted to know if the chemistry between them was still intact, or if she had only been pretending. Something deep inside him insisted she could not fake that sort of passion. Nobody was that talented.
“Alexandra’s being here suggests the FBI is split into two camps,” Vitaly told Uday. “I want to see what she’ll divulge. You stay in here. I’m going to take her to the study on the opposite side of the house.”
“Unless she’s working for the DEA,” Uday muttered. “Are you sure you want her in there? Look how well that turned out last time.” Uday looked dubious. “There are other pieces of evidence around this house. We can’t just make it all go away.”
“It’ll be fine,” Vitaly assured him. “Trust me. I can handle Alexandra.”
Uday did not look convinced, but Vitaly gave him a slap on the shoulder and headed out toward the front door anyway. He could hear Alexandra verbally sparring with Dimitri and Anton on the front porch. He put his hand on the handle and took a deep breath. He needed to keep his head. That was all that mattered. Alexandra might have intel that could help him figure out who the mole was in his organization.
