Chapter 18

18

Artur

T he following days feel like an agonizingly slow torture.

I can’t sleep. I can barely eat. I keep checking my phone, looking to see when Lyric was last online.

We’re worried about her.

As long as Smith, Bowman, and Phelps are on the loose, I don’t think Lyric will ever be truly safe.

“She’s inside.” Max’s voice knocks me from my thoughts.

It’s a chilly evening, close to midnight, and the city’s hustle and bustle has dwindled with the late hours. My nerves are fried and everyone I see feels like a potential enemy. It could be paranoia on account of everything that has happened over the past few months, or it could be the simmering anger morphing into anxiety, playing tricks on my mind in Lyric’s absence.

Either way, I’m fucking miserable, and my brain is working overtime to keep me focused.

“Phelps’s secretary, you mean?” I ask, looking around, making sure we weren’t followed.

“Yeah. We’ve had eyes on the building since the last volunteers left a couple of hours ago,” Max confirms. “I’m not sure what she’s still doing up there.”

“She’ll tell us,” Ivan replies.

“You’ll make sure of it,” I chuckle dryly.

We make our way up the steps and through the front doors, stopping by the night guard’s desk first. I flash the guy a fake badge—one of the many we use for more covert operations such as this. “We’re here to speak to Miss Sullivan. I understand she hasn’t clocked out yet,” I say.

“Fourth floor,” he replies, not giving us a second thought.

I give him a thankful nod and lead Ivan and Max to the elevator, occasionally glancing back to find the chunky guard with his feet up on the desk, flipping through a smut magazine.

“If only all our missions were this easy,” Ivan mutters as we step into the elevator.

“We haven’t gotten to the hard part yet,” Max warns.

The elevator doors slide shut. A minute later, we walk into the bullpen of Matthew Phelps’s campaign office. Posters of him hang everywhere, his white plastic smile plastered over every damned wall.

He appears charming and handsome at first glance. No wonder he’s got the support of the middle-class so tightly in his grasp. He looks like the friendly next-door neighbor who will water your plants for you while you’re on vacation.

To my dismay, however, the place isn’t as empty as we’d thought.

“Shit,” I mumble as I see Phelps’s secretary coming out of his office. She’s not alone. Two men in dark suits accompany her, and they’ve spotted us. “Guys…”

“It’s cool. I’ve got this.” Max takes the lead.

We keep walking but I’m no longer sure what we’re walking into. Four FBI agents come out of an office to our left. Four more from the right. My heart starts beating faster, my eyes zooming all over the place to register every possible detail. Beads of sweat bloom on my temples.

“I thought the place was empty,” I whisper.

“Our guys were clearly wrong,” Ivan replies, a muscle twitching in his jaw. He’s pissed off. “This isn’t going to end well.”

“Keep cool,” Max mutters.

Director Smith is one of the two men with Phelps’s secretary, and the grin slitting his face is enough to make me feel nauseated. “I was wondering how long it would take you to get here,” he says with a casual and unconcerned tone. “We’ve been waiting for you, gentlemen.”

“Waiting for us?” Max asks.

We meet halfway across the open area in the middle of the bullpen. Stacks of flyers and manila folders cover almost every workspace. Dozens of phones. Computers. Stickers with Phelps’s mug everywhere.

“What are you doing here?” Max asks Smith.

“I could ask you the same question,” Smith replies. “Actually, my first question is how’d you get up here?”

“The night guard let us through,” I calmly cut in with a nonchalant shrug.

Smith gives me a hard look. “Hm. Guess somebody’s getting fired tonight. I told that idiot not to let anybody in.”

“What do you want, Director Smith?” Max draws his focus away from me, while the secretary watches our exchange with tense and weary interest.

“Are you deaf? I’m asking the questions here,” Smith shoots back. “What do you want?”

“We were hoping to speak to Councilman Phelps. Alone. I take it he’s not here?”

His agents inch closer, almost unnoticeably so at first glance. They have their hawk-like eyes fixated on us, hands on their holstered weapons. They can’t be stupid enough to open fire in the office, so my guess is they’re going for good old-fashioned intimidation.

“You know he’s not here,” Smith says. “And we both know it’s not the reason for your visit.”

“What other reason is there?” Max asks with a raised eyebrow.

Smith scoffs, raising his chin in sheer arrogance. “Miss Sullivan here is the object of your attention. Go on, ask her what you want to ask her, then be on your way.”

For a split second, I’m speechless. I see Max’s gaze narrow. How did these fuckers know we were coming to see Shelby? As if reading my thoughts, Smith continues. “I know everything that you’re doing. I know where you go, who you meet with, what your endgame is. I know it all, and it’s time for you to understand that. You have nothing to surprise us with. Nothing to scare us with. And rest assured, you’re never setting foot in this building ever again. You’re not to come anywhere close to Miss Sullivan. If I so much as catch a whiff of you in the air, I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Get a restraining order? Arrest us? For what?” Max chuckles dryly. “You’ve run out of reasons, Director. You’ve run out of warrants. And soon enough, you’ll be running out of excuses and support, too.”

Smith takes a step forward. He’s about half-a-head shorter than Max, but he’s well-built and bold enough to stand up to the three of us. My guess is that the badge and gun give him a certain kind of false confidence. “I will do whatever it takes to see you and your whole organization burned to the ground,” he says. “If you think you’re going to reinvent the wheel, you’ve got another thing coming, Mr. Sokolov. The world doesn’t want change. Even your own people agree.”

“No number of threats will stop us from what we have to do,” Max replies. “Your threats, however, are proof of repetitive harassment. I will be filing a complaint directly with Quantico about this.”

“You go ahead and do that. See how many more raids you can withstand before one of you finally breaks and you let things stay the way they’re supposed to stay.”

“Nothing stays the same forever. Change is inevitable. Adapt or die, Director. It’s been the way of the world since long before this great country was even founded.”

Smith laughs lightly. “You must be delusional to think that you three have what it takes to institute real change in a system designed precisely against it. I will enjoy destroying you, that’s for sure.”

“Max, let’s go,” Ivan cautiously places a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “They’re itching for a fight. We’re not going to give them one.”

To my surprise, Ivan is the one talking sense and advocating against any form of violence. Then again, he’s got two good eyes and he knows how to use them. We are outnumbered and outgunned, two to one. And I’ll bet there are more agents waiting in a van or two somewhere outside.

“I know, I know,” Smith says. “You were hoping to come in here, take Miss Sullivan by surprise, and maybe squeeze her until you get your dirt on Matthew Phelps. We’re just here to make you understand that you, Mr. Sokolov, are not ahead of us in any way. If anything, we’re ahead of you.”

“Is that why you haven’t been able to make any charges against us stick?” Max replies. “Because you’re eons ahead of us?”

Smith is getting angry. I firmly grasp Max’s arm and pull him back. “Come on, let’s go.”

“It’s a matter of when, not if,” Smith says.

“Let’s go,” I say to Max again.

“That goes both ways,” he tells Smith, then turns away.

Shelby is wide-eyed and quiet. I think she’s scared, but not necessarily scared of us. She keeps staring at us, hope twinkling and dying slowly in her gaze, while Smith’s lips twist into a sickening smile as he savors this minor victory.

We walk back to the elevator, constantly aware of the number of federal agents just waiting for one of us to make the wrong move, to justify the unholstering of every gun on these premises.

“We’re not giving them that satisfaction,” Max grumbles as we go into the elevator. “This is fucked up.”

“And then some,” Ivan sighs. “They knew we were coming. They were waiting for us.”

Downstairs is no longer empty either. A dozen more agents have entered the building, standing close to the doors and watching us as we leave. The amount of discomfort that I’m experiencing has my senses flaring every which way while I keep my sights ahead and hope to make it back to the car without an altercation.

“Somebody told them,” Max replies.

His steps grow faster and heavier as we get closer to his SUV, parked just across the street. Next to it is a black van, the side door half open, revealing a snippet of a fully-equipped SWAT operative. These bastards were ready to come in, guns blazing, if we got even a single inch out of line.

“Somebody told them,” Max says again when we’re back at our office behind closed doors and with double the security downstairs.

“Heard you the first time,” Ivan replies, pouring himself a drink. “But who?”

“Who knew?” I ask as I sink into one of the guest chairs across from Max’s desk while he gets behind the computer, rubbing his temples. “The three of us knew. And nobody else.”

For the briefest of seconds, Ivan and Max give me a long, curious look. I become heated as I sit up straight and shake my head in dismay.

“You do have a history of oversharing,” Max sighs.

“I told Polina about our moves all those years ago because we were in a relationship with her. I thought we could trust her. You both thought we could trust her too,” I shoot back, anger coursing fiercely hot through my veins. “Dammit, Max, are you ever going to let me live that down?”

Ivan clears his throat. “In Artur’s defense, we were just as stupid at the time, brother. He’s right. We can’t point fingers at one another here. It would mean that Smith has already won.”

“I’m sorry,” Max says to me. “It’s just, who would’ve told them? We have a mole in the organization. The Feds knew too much already, long before the events of tonight. But Smith clearly had inside information.”

I keep looking around the office, trying to find something, some inanimate object to focus on while I attempt to figure out what happened. It’s better than dwelling over a past that none of us can change. Polina screwed us over once, and we each played a part in that miserable situation.

We can’t let Smith or a potential mole threaten our bond. What Max, Ivan, and I have is more than a simple friendship. It’s more than a brotherhood. It’s a connection that will survive anything as long as we never forget where we came from, and where it is that we strive to get to.

“We talked about approaching Sullivan over the past couple of days while at the penthouse,” I say, deciding to focus on the solution rather than the problem. “Maybe they found out that we own it and they bugged it.”

Ivan shakes his head. “We sweep for bugs every two days.”

“Long-range mics, then? From a neighboring apartment?” I suggest.

“We own the whole floor,” he casually reminds me.

“We talked about Sullivan in the car,” Max chimes in. “Never mind, that gets swept for bugs on a daily basis.”

“Hey,” I mumble, chills running down my spine. “We had a conversation about it not long after our meeting with the Larionov’s the other day.”

And there it is. The flicker of realization, flashing hot-white in Max and Ivan’s green eyes as they both look at me, a half second before Max starts digging through CCTV footage. We have cameras mounted everywhere, including hidden ones in tricky angles for anybody who’s aware and determined enough to try and bug our office.

It takes a few minutes, but Max pulls the footage from our Larionov meeting, while Ivan and I join him in front of the screen.

“Okay,” he says, hitting the play button. “Here’s Larionov and Polina, coming into the office. His guards stayed outside.”

“Right,” Ivan replies. “Fast forward a bit.”

We watch the footage at triple speed and I notice something odd about Polina. “Hold up, slow it down,” I say, then point at the screen. “Look at her.”

“She takes off her ring,” Max mumbles, eyes narrowing as he leans forward toward the screen. “Let me zoom in.”

A couple of seconds later, the three of us bear witness to the greatest insult that a Larionov can commit against the Sokolov’s and the Bratva itself. In the video, it’s clear that Polina had a small recording device hidden underneath her dramatically large, pink quartz ring.

I remember cracking a joke about it being potentially classified as a blunt object and deadly weapon during the meeting—a meeting that none of us wanted to be in but had to—because the Bratva needs the Larionov’s, unfortunately.

“Look,” I say. “She leans forward here, to straighten her shoe strap, supposedly.”

Ivan immediately moves away from the desk and kneels next to the chair in question. He leans all the way down while Max and I listen to his hand patting the bottom of the upholstery. He comes back up holding a small device the size of a penny, just a little bit thicker, disgust giving his face a pale hue.

“Our sweeps didn’t find this,” Max says. “Why? We have detectors for this kind of stuff.”

“It’s ceramic plated,” Ivan replies. “Next generation, Quantico-developed. Only the upper echelon of the FBI’s division has access to this type of tech.”

I blow out a breath, quickly putting two-and-two together. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Max leans back into his chair. “Polina’s working with the local Feds? It can’t be.”

“The Larionov’s working with the local Feds isn’t the craziest scenario,” Ivan surmises. “Not when Larionov is still so keen to keep the Bratva in cahoots with local law enforcement, to keep the corruption and bribery machine well-oiled across Chicago.”

It makes my stomach sink like a lead weight.

“Polina planted a fucking bug in our office,” I say. “This is insane. This can’t be happening.”

“Oh, but it is,” Ivan replies. “She’s probably doing her father’s bidding.”

“It’s in her best interest as well, to keep us from accomplishing what we’re trying to do,” Max says. “She should be ready to embrace the consequences of her actions, though. She knows how this game is played.”

“Now we have an even bigger problem,” I say, as the whole picture comes into sudden focus. “This bug has been recording for what, six days?”

“Yes,” Ivan says.

“Six days’ worth of private conversations have reached federal ears,” I reply. Ice courses through my veins, tension thickening in the pit of my stomach as the possible repercussions begin to emerge, one awful layer after the other. “They know way more than just our intended visit tonight.”

Max frowns deeply, staring at the screen. “Yet it’s Sullivan they decided to focus on. Why?”

“They want us to stick to our original lane,” Ivan says. “They want the Bratva right where it is, laundering money, paying their people off, making back door deals and feeding into the great machine that the chuckleheads at the FBI’s field office have put together over the past few decades. They want us running the same illicit affairs, the same under-the-radar businesses while they continue pretending to hunt us down, to keep up appearances. That’s it. That’s the whole gist.”

“The Larionov’s want the same,” I conclude. “Hence why Polina did this.”

“All that wedding crap is nothing more than her own personal whim. A whim that old man Larionov decided to indulge, if only for her to be rejected again while she planted a bug and made herself useful, anyway.” Max groans and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jesus Christ, they’re a twisted fucking family.”

“We need to close ranks,” Ivan warns. “And we need to update our security measures.”

We need to do a lot more than that. There were several sensitive topics that may have reached Smith’s ears aside from our intention to privately accost Sullivan and get access to Phelps’s secret documents.

There were conversations about Lyric, too. I desperately try to remember what was mentioned about her. Hopefully, nothing important, only trivial stuff that might’ve gone unnoticed.

Then again, what are the odds, given the shitstorm that we walked into earlier?

Slim-to-fucking-none.