Russian Mafia Boss's Heir (30 page)

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 to 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.

“Hello, Agent Polzin,” Vitaly said in a voice loud enough to be heard over Alexandra and Dimitri’s arguing.

It was as if someone had pushed pause on the scene before him. Both Alexandra and Dimitri stopped talking mid-sentence. Dimitri’s hand was still raised, his finger pointing toward the street. He’d obviously been telling her to take a hike.

“Dimitri, Anton,” Vitaly said reasonably. “Please allow me to handle Agent Polzin.”

“Boss?” Dimitri raised an eyebrow, and then he switched to Russian. “You can’t expect us to let her in the house. You might as well be granting her a blank check on search warrants.”

“Trust me,” he said to Dimitri, also in Russian. “I want to know what she knows. This is the best way to accomplish that.”

Dimitri immediately backed down. He bowed his head to show his respect and then he and Anton retreated into the house. Vitaly turned his attention to his guest. He tried not to be distracted by the way her hair moved in the light breeze, or by the scent of her perfume.

“Please,” Vitaly said solicitously, “do come inside.”

“Thank you.”

She looked calm, but something told him that she was incredibly uncomfortable. That gave him a shot of confidence. And he needed some of that desperately, because he had apparently forgotten just how enticing Agent Polzin could be.

He led her down the same path they had followed before. This time he didn’t speak. He was utterly aware of her presence behind him. He could smell her, sense the heat of her skin, and he was utterly consumed by the need to clear the air between them.

He opened the study door and stood back to let her pass. He felt the brush of air against his chest when she walked by. Every nerve on the surface of his skin was alive with sensation. It was as though she had touched him. Perhaps that was when he knew it did not matter that she had lied. It did not matter that she was a federal agent, and the only thing he cared about was making this work. Even if it meant breaking a few more rules to get what he wanted.

***

Alexandra swallowed back the sour taste of dread in her mouth. She had expected Vitaly to let her in. He would have wanted to do that much simply because she’d warned him about the warrant the night before. Now, though, she simply didn’t know what to expect.

The study door closed with an ominous thud. Then Vitaly turned around and stared at her until she was fidgeting beneath his regard. She gathered her confidence. The cat was out of the bag, so to speak. There was no point in being apologetic about it now. She had nothing left to lose—except everything.

“So,” Vitaly began. “I do not know why I never put two and two together. Jacob spoke of an FBI agent named Alex. And here you are, Alexandra. I truly have no one else to blame.”

“Jacob has called me that since we were in school.”

“School. Which is where you, Jacob, and that bastard Ivan Popov who launders money for me through his arcades first met.” Vitaly paced a circle at one end of the room, looking very agitated. “I cannot believe I didn’t see it.”

“What? That I’m the one who sent your boss to jail?” She couldn’t tell how angry he was and that was making her twitchy. Was she in danger? She had taken if for granted that the physical connection they had forged would somehow protect her.

“I used to dream of retaliation,” he told her quietly. “I used to think of how I would make that agent squirm when I found out who it was. Yet here I am with the information in front of me and I cannot do what I should.”

Alexandra lifted her chin and refused to be intimidated by her circumstances. “Why did you tell Jacob to let Joe and the team pick him up?”

“Perhaps there is certain information that I thought your superiors should know.” He smiled and her belly did an unwelcome flip-flop. “Didn’t you used to do the same thing? You would look around at all of the activities going on in Ivan’s branch of the mafia, or maybe someone else’s. Then you would decide what information to release and conduct your investigations and subsequent arrests based on what Ivan wanted. You were a bit like his own personal legal hit squad.”

She hated that comparison, mostly because there was some truth to it. “I was just doing my job!” she argued.

“As I’m doing mine,” he pointed out. “So there should be no complaining or accusations here.” He heaved a sigh. “And you should know that Jacob is incredibly loyal to you. He wouldn’t give evidence against you if they paid him millions.”

He could see the moment she relaxed. Apparently the possibility of Jacob tattling on her was a big deal. Vitaly couldn’t help but wonder if it was because she didn’t want to lose the loyalty of a friend she’d had for so many years, or if Jacob really knew some damning evidence that could destroy her personally. Either way, Vitaly found he wanted to know the answer.

“Where is Jacob?” she asked suddenly. “I’ve been waiting to hear from him for days. Surely he checked in with you.”

“Actually, he hasn’t. I figured he’s going to ground and he’ll turn up eventually. What does Jacob know that you don’t want told?” he asked her, trying to read her expression without having any luck in doing so.

“He’s Jacob,” she said flatly. “By now I’m sure you have noticed that he pretty much knows everything. So while I don’t exactly know what it is he could use to hurt me, I’m fairly certain there is something.”

“Well I don’t suppose I can argue with that,” he mused. “The man is like a cockroach.”

“I know!” She chuckled, pausing for a moment and then seeming to decide something inside her mind. “If I tell you something, will you give me something in return?”

The offer was intriguing, mostly because it was so damn blunt. Vitaly couldn’t resist. “Yes.” He held out his hand. “Shall we shake on it?”

“Of course.” She placed her fingers in his grip and he felt a jolt very reminiscent of the chemistry that constantly seemed to explode between them.

She let go of his hand as though she’d been burned. He could see her struggle for her composure and felt rather smug until he realized that the blood was rushing to his groin. He couldn’t even pretend to be unaffected. Not when his body was so ready to react.

“So?” he prodded in order to downplay both of their reactions. “What did you want to say?”

“The guy in charge of interrogating Jacob is a man named Joe. He’s desperate to take my job and he’s hungry. He’s completely willing to break all the rules to do it.”

“I see.” Vitaly processed that for a moment before deciding what to say. “This Joe person might be discovering plenty of information from Jacob,” Vitaly admitted. “But none of it has a damn thing to do with me or my organization.”

For about two seconds she looked startled, and then Alexandra started laughing. The sound was so merry and inviting that Vitaly couldn’t help but smile. Then she shook her head. “Okay, I have to appreciate the irony of that, but I was actually thinking about Joe’s role in all of this from another angle.”

“How so?” He could not help but admire the way her brain worked.

“You and your guys keep talking about a DEA agent or a mole, or someone who is spilling information. What if Joe is that guy?” She had relaxed a bit, not even seeming to realize how close she had moved to him. He liked having her near, but that wasn’t what he was supposed to be focusing on right now.

Vitaly needed to share some information if the two of them were ever going to muddle this through. “Donovan O’Leary was heard saying that if the O’Learys gave the DEA some information on us, the DEA would, in turn, stop pressing so hard on O’Leary territory.”

“Donovan O’Leary is a conniving little shit,” she said irritably. Then her expression settled into something quite thoughtful. “You know, the other night when Joe’s bust went bad, no O’Learys were arrested.”

“I wondered about that,” Vitaly mused. “There seemed to be no effect on them at all.”

“I need to see the report from that bust,” she said decidedly.

A sudden wave of anxiety took Vitaly by surprise. “If he’s really doing something wrong and he thinks you’re onto him, he’s going to be dangerous as a cornered animal.”

“Are you
worried
about me?” she asked, her brows lifted in surprise.

Vitaly shrugged. “If anyone is going to kill you, it’s going to be me.”

Chapter Fourteen

Alexandra crept through the dim hallway at the FBI field office. Most of the floor was monitored by a closed circuit camera system. The hallway housing the personnel offices was not. For once, Alexandra was very glad. It was after five o’clock on a Friday night. Anyone who was still at work would be down in the operations suite.

The hallway was dead quiet. She passed her own office and kept going three more doors down. Joe’s office was on the same side of the hallway, although she noted with satisfaction that it was even more of a shoebox than hers.

Pulling out her little lockpick, she set about jimmying the door open. She held her breath when it clicked. The sound was deafening in the silent hallway. She put her hand on the knob, but waited until she had counted slowly to three. Nobody seemed to be coming. She entered the office and shut the door behind her.

In one hand, she grasped a tiny memory stick. She tiptoed to Joe’s computer and signed in. This whole thing would have been much easier if Joe had filed the report the way he was supposed to. For whatever reason, the FBI’s database listed the report as pending. Yet there was nothing in the team files about it. The entire thing stank of subterfuge, as far as she was concerned. Joe was up to something and she was going to find out what.

She sat down at his computer and moved the mouse to wake it up. The arrogant prick hadn’t even password-locked the thing. What sort of idiot made it this easy to steal his files? She snorted in amusement and plugged in the flash drive. It began blinking. Then the blue light went solid. That meant it was transmitting via Wi-Fi to Vitaly’s car out on the street below.

A feeling of relief had just settled in when she heard footsteps in the hallway. “Hello, Alexandra. Fancy meeting you here,” Joe said with a twisted smile filled with malice. “I wondered when you were going to catch on and become a pain in my ass.”

***

Vitaly tried to focus on something other than the fact that Alexandra was up in that office stealing files. She was making herself a prime target for prosecution. If he thought about that for too long he would go stark-raving mad with worry.

“We’re connected, boss!” Anton called out from the front seat of the limo. “And, man, does this guy have some secrets to spill!”

“Like what?”

“Like he’s an O’Leary.” Anton chuckled. “Apparently on his mother’s side. Donovan is his cousin. They’ve been colluding for a while now.” Anton read a little further, his finger drifting down the screen of his laptop. “That crap Donovan told us about the DEA was a smokescreen. There is no DEA.”

“Uh, boss,” Dimitri said from the front seat. “We’ve got a problem.”

“What?” Vitaly’s belly cramped with anticipatory fear. “Why do you say that?