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The flashbacks were coming more frequently now, and he seriously needed to get them under control before he got himself dead. There was no room in his life for softness. Life was too hard for that. Memories of a princess who'd been his for three short hours pierced his thoughts when he least wanted them. If he thought it would rid himself of the memories, he would gladly bang every woman in the city to work Khloe Monroe out of his system, but he'd already tried that tactic and knew it wasn't going to work like that–at least not thistime.
As much as he dreaded the upcoming meeting, he was relieved when he saw the high-end Ferrari with the neon racing lights on the undercarriage rounding the corner at too high of a speed. It screeched to a halt in front ofRyder.
Everyone drove like shit in Moscow, but it was always a toss up if the Bratva's henchmen or Alexi Ivanov's driving would kill him first. Hoping this wouldn't be his last ride, Ryder opened the door and slid into the heated leather seat. He hadn't even got the door closed yet when Alexi floored it, slipping on a patch of ice in the street, ass end of the sports car slip-sliding several dozen feet before he got it under control. Alexi managed to flick the ashes of his almost spent cigarette into the too-full ashtray even while wrangling thevehicle.
"You're a fucking lunatic, the way you drive, you know that?" Ryderaccused.
Alexi grinned, obviously proud that he could get a rise out of the normally unflappable man sitting in the passenger seat. To Alexi, he was Nicolai Romanovski, arms dealer and all-round bad-ass who'd somehow managed to break into the inner circle of one of the world's most sophisticated crime families. He didn't want to think about the fucked up tests he'd had to pass to prove his loyalty to thefamily.
He needed to get his head in the game. Slipping into his deep-cover persona, Ryder conversed with the closest thing he had to a friend in Moscow in his flawless Russian, accent andall.
"You're late," he accused inRussian.
"Sasha came home drunk after work." Alexi grinned before adding a sly, "I needed to take care ofher."
Ryder grunted, "Yeah, I bet youdid."
Alexi took another drag on his cancer stick before flipping the butt out the cracked window. "You're just jealous. You haven't had a nice piece of ass like Sasha inmonths."
Ryder had met Sasha and didn't know what was more surprising. That she was Alexi's gold-standard in women or that a few months ago, he might have agreed with him. The scale of which every woman he'd ever meet for the rest of his life would be measured and forever be skewed by one A-list actress named KhloeMonroe.
She'd ruinedhim.
When he didn't rise to Alexi's bait, the driver added, "And anyway, I'll make up time on the drive out toBarvikha."
Yet another reason for Ryder to be on edge. The meeting location had changed, and he didn't like it. He had access to additional friendly assets in the city if he ran into trouble. He also had hidden weapons and ammo in the Bratva's compound intown.
He lost access to all of those benefits with the location change of tonight's meeting. He'd been to the luxurious estate in the upscale suburb several times, but had never been able to fortify his position on his visits. He was going in cold. No wire. No backup. Not even a real grasp of why the family had called the last minute emergencymeeting.
He neededinformation.
"So what's this get-together about anyway?" he prodded, hoping to get Alexitalking.
Alexi was already lighting his next cigarette, filling the small interior with stagnant puffs of smoke before answering. "I'm notsure."
Ryder knew him well. He waslying.
Interrogationtime.
"Viktor better not pressure me for another load of SVK semi-automatics. I told him I won't be able to get another batch for at least six weeks." Ryder left out the critical information that it would take his CIA handlers that long to locate the weapons and put the undetectable tracers inside them so the US could keep track of them wherever they ended up around the globe. The last load had already led Navy SEALS to two previously unknown terrorist hideouts. Remembering the good that came out of his sanctioned crime was the only thing that helped him sleep atnight.
Alexi waited until he'd navigated a tight turn in the road to answer. "Naw, I think he has a favor to ask ofyou."
"A favor? Fuck." The last favor Viktor had asked of him had ended with him gettingshot.
"Da. Artel called mehimself."
Doublefuck.
The aging Viktor might be the head of the family, but his oldest son, Artel, was one ruthless sonofabitch. If he was involved, the favor would be costly for Ryder. Not financially, but to his soul. He'd already done unspeakable crimes against humanity in the name of the greater good, but the tests were getting harder–taking a bigger toll on his body and hischaracter.
Maybe his boss, Webster, had been right. Maybe it was time for him to retire before he got himselfdead.
And maybe you should get your head out of your ass and into the game,Helms.
He was surprised when Alexi offered up more information. "He told me the family had made their move." At Ryder's sideways glance in his direction, the Russian added, "Something about going onoffense."
Ryder nodded a stiff acknowledgment of the comment as Alexi reached out to turn on the radio, filling the car with a pulsating song that sufficiently covered the thump of Ryder's pounding heart. He'd had a bad feeling about the meeting before, but now every ounce of his fiber knew he was walking into a trap. He hadn't been a deep cover CIA agent for over thirteen years by ignoring his gut. Sometimes his gut was the only thing that got him home at the end of theday.
