35
Maddox
“Jesus fucking Christ! How do they have no clue where they went? There’s only one way in and out of an elevator… via the front fucking door.”
I’ve never seen Agent Machini worked up enough to swear once, much less twice, but from the bits of her conversation I caught on the fly, her dual slip-up is understandable.
During the raid that saw Justine and Nikolai disappear without a trace, Dimitri was arrested by the Feds. If Rocco’s chuckles trickling through my ears right now are any indication of how his escape went down, the Feds aren’t just scratching their heads, they’re scrambling for an excuse to pacify the massive media contingency following this story.
The mafia entities in this country are royalty in their own right. They’re hounded by the paparazzi like movie stars, pursued by people purely for their money, and play by their own set of rules.
It’s the latter I’m hoping to work in my favor.
Rocco has assured me time and time again that there are rules not even Dimitri can break—rules that see enemies join forces to ensure they’re upheld.
Justine is pregnant with the next Russian heir, which means she is protected by the rules Nikolai and Dimitri have been governed by their entire life. I need to remember that every time I peer at my watch to check the time. Nikolai and Justine have been gone for almost seventy-eight hours, yet no one has any idea where they are.
“I’ll reach out once I know more,” Rocco says down the line before he disconnects our call.
I begin to wonder how many eyes he has on me when his abrupt ending of our call is quickly chased by Agent Machini returning to my side of the room. We’ve been camped out at the Popov compound for three days now under the guise we arrived in Vegas for a quickie wedding. Five years of lockup supposedly made me restless, but since Macy was raised as a good Catholic girl, she wanted us to seal the deal the old-fashioned way before taking up the traditional route.
Don’t worry, you weren’t the only one skeptical about our story. Trey eyed my new ink as much as he did Macy when we were ushered into Nikolai’s office by five armed goons three days ago. He’s certain we’re playing tricks, but since Nikolai gave me full access to his crew, Trey has no choice but to follow his command.
“Did they know anything?” Since the information Rocco shared wasn’t more than Agent Machini already knows and hoping to sidestep an interrogation as to how I have a high-up member of the Italian Cartel’s cell phone number on speed dial, I shake my head. “Great…”
She flops onto the sofa next to me before lowering her eyes to the paperwork spread across the coffee table. The rooms in Nikolai’s mansion are bigger than a hotel. With the maids doubling as cooks, we haven’t needed to leave our room the past three days. It hasn’t been all bad. It’s given me plenty of time to run several theories through my weary brain.
“What are you working on?”
I sling my eyes to Agent Machini. “A timeline of Trey’s life.”
She glares at me like I am insane. “Maddox…” She stops, swallows, then tries again. “I understand your eagerness to see India brought to justice.”I want her dead, but since I can’t say that, I don’t interrupt her. “But right now, you need to focus on the present instead of the past. Your future needs you. Your past doesn’t.”
“I know that,” I lie. “I’m not tweaking Trey’s timeline for India. I’m doing it for Justine. You’re assuming that these cases aren’t related, but what if they are.” When my simple approach doesn’t ease the groove between her brows, I hit her with the hard facts instead. “Justine is pregnant with the next heir of the Russian Mafia.”
“Shit.”
Yes, that’s all she says.
Shit.
Then a few big breaths later, she adds, “If India already has a Russian on the hook—”
“She needs to get rid of the competition,” I fill in. “But I have a feeling this isn’t solely about future monarchs. It’s personal for India.” When confusion crosses her features, I try to settle it. “Nikolai raided the Dvoráks…twice.The first time was f—”
“Four years ago,” Agent Machini breathes out heavily, advising me she isn’t as far off the mark as I thought.
I jerk up my chin. “And the last one was as recent as nine months ago.” I place down a photograph of a grubby-faced blonde with big blue eyes before covering it with one from an auction that was held in Czechia weeks after the original photograph was captured. Although she looks completely different once she’s scrubbed clean, there’s no denying the blondes in the photographs are one and the same. The features of a face don’t alter with makeup. “The rumors we heard aren’t rumors. Achim was obsessed with his housekeeper. So much so, when he sold her to prove to his wife he wasn’t, he went to great lengths to get her back.”
I give Agent Machini a couple of minutes to take in images Smith swiped from an agent’s hard drive earlier before I gather them up and dump them into the fireplace that makes the disgusting Vegas heat even more intolerable.
“Maddox! That is vital evidence—”
“Vital evidence your agency has sat on for months.” She doubles back, but she doesn’t dispute my claims. “During their marriage, Achim and India killed dozens of women, sold hundreds of them, and have destroyed the lives ofthousandsof families, but not once has the Bureau arrested them. They didn’t even bring them in for questioning.”
“Because the crimes were not conducted on US soil.”
“That isn’t true,” I fire back. “My unborn baby was killed here.”
