Page 56 of Marked By the Devil

As I walked into the room now and began unbuttoning my shirt, I tilted my head as she shook her head. Seated at a small desk, she had the laptop open and the screen garishly bright against the darkness of the room.

“Have you moved at all in the last few hours?” I asked, familiar with how she’d lose track of time.

“No. I can’t.” She turned, though, working out the kinks in her neck. “Look.”

“What did you find?” I came toward her, setting my hands on the armrests of the chair she sat in. Hunched over like this, I partially covered her. Just because I could, and because I had a hunch that once she started talking, she wouldn’t stop, I kissed her cheek.

“Uh-huh.” She faced the screen without looking at me. Lifting her hand to pat my cheek, she nodded. “Later.”

I huffed, turning the chair until she faced me. Her red hair flung over her face with how swiftly I moved her, and she plucked a strand from her lips as she gasped.

“Later?” I taunted. I framed her face and kissed her with all the pent-up energy I’d had from missing her all day. I’d be fucked if she wasn’t here waiting for me in what was feeling like our home now. “You’re dismissing me?”

She kissed me back harder, and I swore I felt her lips curling up in a smile. “Yes, later.”

I grinned, looking down at her and loving the heat in her eyes. But something else lurked there too. Something serious.

Well, shit.

I have a later to look forward to with her.

It might not have seemed like a big deal, but the fact that she wouldn’t resist me anymore mattered. The way she anticipated our coming together implied that she was coming more to terms with her place of being with me, no one else.

The seriousness of her gaze got through the desire that was always simmering for her. “What’d you find?”

“More.”

I turned her chair back for her to show me on the laptop. “More what?”

“More of everything. More ties to this Gregori guy. More bribes being made to multiple agencies. More corruption.”

My gut tensed at the news of more evidence. This was what we wanted. This was exactly what I had been hoping she’d be able to find for us. Yet getting closer to finding a location on Gregori or finding new lieutenants of his to hit back at meant we were that much closer to full-out war.

“Trojan helped me get into the inter-office messaging.” She cringed slightly. “I know I’ll be going to hell for this, but um, that was the landmine I was waiting to find. And there’s just so many avenues to explore there. I spent a long time seeing where else these bribes were going and what favors were being asked.” She leaned back, brushing the back of her head against my chest as I leaned over her once more. Running her hand through her hair, she touched her knuckles against me. I had only just started unbuttoning my shirt, and even that skin-on-skin contact sizzled me all over.

“I don’t know everything about your Bratva, but from what I can see and who is being asked to interfere with even your legitimate businesses, this isn’t a game.” She clicked through windows, showing images and correspondence of all the little fires that we’d been putting out lately. Of the trouble our businesses were taking, and that was only half of it. Most of our revenue came from the illegitimate businesses we operated, and those were being interfered with too.

“For the number of favors that have been asked…” She sighed. “It’s insane. This isn’t one man having a grudge against you or whatever. This is a concerted effort to dismantle and destroy all that you touch.”

I narrowed my eyes at the screen, trying to keep track of all that she gave me a preview of.

She was right. Even though I had yet to explain to her who Gregori was, she could see that he had his hands in many different avenues of interference and sabotage.

“He’s not messing around, and he’s using different aliases to cover his tracks, but this money is not only going to the FBI. The DEA, the prisons, CIA… Then there’s the lower levels. Officers and admins all through the state, county, and city departments.”

“He’s infiltrated all those agencies?” I asked after she flicked through a fast folder of receipts she was collecting.

“Mm-hmm.”

This really was becoming a war on multiple fronts.

“Some of these favors are just to look the other way, like some of these shipments and things like that. Others are being bribed in the courts, and that reeks of more corruption.”

For a while longer, she showed me more evidence of the widespread corruption she’d unearthed aside from all that Smithson was involved with. It blew my mind how organized and thorough she was, truly knowing where to look and how to filter through databases. It reminded me of how wise Elena was, and I found it funny that I’d brought another computer expert to the group.

“The messages and emails that link to the intermediaries are too hard to track. That’s what I’m still working on, because from what Elena has explained and from what I can see, Gregori isn’t personally paying off the whole western half of the country’s law enforcement.”

She turned to face me. “I’m stunned at how layered this web is, though. One or two corrupt individuals here or there, that makes sense. This is something else.”