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CHAPTER9
Mila
Several hours later, I was on my own in a ritzy penthouse at the top of one of the finest hotels in the city. Jon had insisted on only the best for me. My protests that I didn’t need anything more than a room with a bed only earned a quick painful trip over his knee in the back of the limo along the way. My shrieks hadn’t stopped him from baring my bottom and spanking me until I was sore and sorry for arguing with him in the first place.
I reached back and touched my still tender cheeks, feeling the heat he’d left behind and feeling comforted by it for some strange reason when I was here all by myself. I rolled back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. I felt like a part of me was losing my mind.
I missed him. It was too fast. I knew that, but I didn’t really care.
I wanted him here with me, his warm gaze and caring embrace, even his firm hand if only he was here with me.
But I had work to do. I had diamonds to steal back and having Jon here would simply be a distraction that I would want to indulge in again and again.
I groaned and leaned my head back, staring at the laptop screen upside down. I was running a program through Python, and it appeared to be going smoothly for the time being. It was a deep background check on Sergei Reznikov to see where his money came in from and where it went, as well as anything else interesting I might find in the process.
The man had always seemed like a decent guy to me, at least from our mostly virtual interactions. We’d communicated over email, and he’d been respectful, which is something I wasn’t always accustomed to in my line of work.
Some of my former clients had made unwelcome advances toward me once they realized that I was a woman. Sometimes I followed through with the contract, but most of the time I ghosted them.
My laptop pinged, indicating that my program had completed its run. I rolled over onto my belly and double clicked the created folder, finding a string of Excel spreadsheets inside. I started combing over them, taking note that several payments had been made from a few addresses located here in New York, along with many from Ukraine, Slovenia, and Russia. There were others, but they were much more infrequent.
There was nothing that indicated that he’d sold the diamonds, at least not all at once. A transaction like that would stick out like a sore thumb. There weren’t any small regular payments either, which might indicate that he was selling the diamonds piece by piece, so hopefully that meant he still had them for the time being.
I reached for the giant manila folder Jon had sent up to me, pulling out the various blueprints of all the abandoned warehouses the Reznikovs had supposedly set up shop inside. From the surface, it appeared that they were four or five stories high with a basement beneath ground level. There was a railway system beneath that too, but that had fallen into disuse in recent years since there were newer pipelines laid a few streets over.
The New York City Underground was alive and well. Unused sewers and rail lines were overtaken by the homeless and in certain areas by gangs and hardened criminals. Organizations like the mafia didn’t typically take part in such activities, but the Russians weren’t well established here yet. I knew they weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty though.
Jon had sent over the footage that the Montagnas had captured, and I combed it for Sergei. I spotted him a few times at one particular warehouse, and I pulled the plans for that one specifically.
In all likelihood, Sergei was waiting to sell the diamonds at a later date. I flattened the oversized paper, looking over the layout for places that he might keep a safe or a vault.
There was one particular room on the top floor that appeared to be a prime contender. The walls were thicker than the rest of the place, comprised of three-inch-thick steel all the way around. The rest of the building only used drywall or at best, one-inch-thick steel in their walls, but not this room. It was small, seemingly an innocuous closet off of one of the offices at the end of the hall, but I’d been in the game for a long time. It was the perfect place to store expensive things that needed to be kept safe.
I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions right away, so I combed over the rest of the blueprints looking for any other place that Sergei might use to store his goods. There was nothing that fit the bill quite as well as the first one though and I ultimately eliminated the rest as any logical candidates.
I picked up the phone and texted Jon the address, letting him know he should focus his efforts on that particular building.
On the security footage, I saw the crates they had mentioned at dinner being wheeled in and out. The camera was only at the entrance of the building and there were zero data signatures around the building that indicated that there was an internal surveillance system of any kind.
I might have to do reconnaissance of my own at some point soon.
I typed in a few more commands, running some surveillance of my own. I tapped into the city feeds, using it to track Sergei’s movements in and around New York.
That would take some time. I moved the laptop over to the desk and plugged it in. I glanced at the clock. It was already well after eleven. I stretched my arms over my head, working out the tightness I felt from lying still and working on a computer for several hours at a time knowing that I had more work to do tomorrow.
I should be more tired by now, but I was still pretty wired, and I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I could watch a movie on the luxuriously big television and hopefully get sleepier in the process, but I didn’t really feel like it. I glanced over to the massive bouquet of flowers that Jon had sent. It had beautiful coral pink roses, brilliant blue hydrangeas, bright white carnations, and a gorgeous array of lavender that made the room smell heavenly. I leaned in, surrounding myself in the flowery scent.
He’d sent a cute stuffed kitten that was sitting up and hugging a heart too. I picked it up, noticing that it was a bit heavier than the usual stuffed animal.
I knew what this was.
It was a nanny cam of some kind. He wanted to keep an eye on me, maybe to protect me, but maybe not.
With a soft snort, I placed it back on the counter. Slowly, I emptied the bed of papers, moving the endless pile of blueprints to the desk. I glanced around the bedroom, checking for signs of other cameras. There was one potentially hidden in the emergency sprinkler system in the ceiling, another maybe in the fire alarm overhead, but there was definitely one concealed inside the decorative metal piece hanging on the wall.
I made sure not to look at any of them directly. I sniffed the flowers one last time and walked into the giant bathroom. I looked longingly at the tub, thinking it would be nice to take a long hot bath, but I didn’t want to do that tonight. The shower was just as impressive, complete with a massive rain showerhead and a series of small ones along the wall. I tapped the tablet on the wall and turned it on, sighing happily as a rush of steam heated the shower all at once. The sound of running water was like music to my ears and I quickly disrobed. The marble tiles were warm beneath my feet as I tiptoed inside.
I took my time, enjoying the warm steam and the copious amount of expensive bath products. Soon enough, I was surrounded with the scent of mango and pomegranate, and I was using a loofah to scrub all over my body. It was absolute luxury.
