Page 71 of Exacting Vengeance

Over the keyboard, he fisted his hands, wishing he had the guts to heave the laptop against the wall and watch it shatter into pieces. Like his heart. No matter how this ended, he was about to lose her again, and that’s what pissed him off the most.

He flexed his fingers and scrolled through the entries. There were four column headings: Date, In, Out, and Remaining. A fifth column had no header but each entry in that column contained two initials. Seven line items total. Seven victims. He guessed the Out dollar amounts were either given directly to Nikolai Lebedev as his cut or transferred to an obshchak, the Bratva’s collective pool of cash used to fund their criminal ventures. The total amount of money taken in was over ten million. The grand total beneath the seventh remaining entry—Yuri’s cut—was over five million. Blood money.

Kyle pulled out his phone and cued up a report he’d made years ago, containing the names of the seven kidnapping victims and the dates their families had paid the ransom money. Not surprisingly, the initials in the spreadsheet coincided with the initials of each victim, as did the ransom amounts. The dates in the In column were all within two days of the ransom payments.

The normally smooth skin above Victoria’s nose creased, her eyes filled with more worry and anxiety than any one person should have to bear. He wanted to tell her everything would be all right. Not only couldn’t he do that, but it wouldn’t be all right. Severing his emotions from what he had to do was the only way he’d get through this without losing his shit and doing something stupid. Like running away with her to some part of the world without extradition.

Needing to formally record the facts, he pointed to the screen. “Is this the spreadsheet Yuri told you to make for him?”

She nodded jerkily. “Yes.”

“Was that before or after he told you to rent safe deposit boxes in your maiden name?”

“About a week before.”

“Did he tell you why he wanted you to make the spreadsheet for him?”

She shook her head.

No small amount of relief swept through him. As much as he wanted more evidence to put Yuri away, it was better for Victoria that he’d kept her in the dark on the details.

“Did you ever print out any copies of this spreadsheet?”

“No. Yuri specifically told me never to do that, or…” She shrugged and looked away.

There was no need for her to finish the sentence. He had a damn good idea of what Yuri had threatened her with if she disobeyed him.

“Did Yuri ever tell you to email it to anyone?” Where email accounts were concerned, Yuri was smart. They’d never discovered a single account in his name.

Her brows scrunched. “Yes. Nikki.”

“Is the account you sent it from still active?”

Again, she shook her head. “No, I shut it down after I left the hospital. Marissa told me to cut all ties with anything Yuri could use to find me.”

That was ten years ago, meaning those records were lost forever in the email void.

Long ago, they’d searched Nikolai Lebedev’s email accounts. No such file had ever been found. Bratva protocol dictated Lebedev would have forwarded the file to a man named Maxim Sharapova, the high-ranking Bratva who’d managed the obshchak at that time, then deleted the file. Ironically, Sharapova had died in a plane crash in the Caucasus Mountains only days before the FBI had served warrants on Novikov’s entire network. Unfortunately, Sharapova’s laptop had died with him, and he’d had the foresight to set up his email account to delete all sent or received emails within minutes of being opened.

“What instructions did Yuri give you for making this document?”

“He told me to create a spreadsheet and what information he wanted to keep track of, like the dates and the amounts. I made the column headers just like he told me to.”

“Did Yuri give you the amounts for the In and Out columns?” She nodded. He indicated the column with no header, the one with initials. “Did he also give you these letters to enter?” Again, she nodded. “Do you know what they’re for?”

“I didn’t then.” The creases on her forehead deepened. “I can guess, now. They’re the initials of the people Yuri and Nikki murdered, aren’t they?”

“Probably.” Technically, they had no way of proving it. Not even with the spreadsheet. “How did Yuri give you the money for deposit?”

“In a large shoulder bag. It was heavy but manageable.”

“Makes sense.” Yuri wouldn’t have wanted her to call attention to herself by rolling a suitcase in and out of a bank. A million in hundred-dollar bills would weight just over twenty pounds and take up less than half a cubic foot. “After you deposited each bag of cash, did Yuri ever instruct you to go back to the bank and remove some of it?” With his finger, he pointed to the Out column on the spreadsheet, the figures in which were exactly half of each In figure.

“Yes.”

“What did you do with that money?”

“I used the same shoulder bag and brought it home. Yuri would always be waiting there to count it the second I walked in the door.”