AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER1
One
Phoenix
It’s odd seeing him here. I don’t like it. I don’t care if John Hart runs the entire Chicago office of the FBI. I don’t like anyone in my space, my home. We’ve only ever “met” through online calls and meetings over the last few years. Even though he’s one of the few people I would say I respect, I don’t want him here. He is aware of it. Desperation pushed him to come.
I’ve ignored him for three weeks. I was beginning to wonder if I pushed too far. Except him here proves I’m right—they need me. And if they need me, then they’ll give me what I want. Which is to take down the Levin family. The Levins might think they’re impenetrable but there is always a way in, if you keep at it long enough.
“What you’re asking for is not possible. Making you an FBI agent with an office in the building is going too far, even for me. We’ll pay you for consulting if it’s the money. Help us with this case and it’s the last time we’ll ask you for anything.”
I shrug. It isn’t the money. “Nothing is impossible. Just likeyouaren’t able to access what you need butIam, while breaking about a half dozen laws to do it. You know, the ones you always threaten to toss me in jail for. And you said the last time was the last time. Yet here you are.”
His face goes red.
I give him another shrug. “If I were an FBI agent in the building you could shoot me an email or come down to my office. It would make it easier on everyone.”
Running a hand through his graying hair, it’s clear he’s having a hard time holding on to his temper. “This is to pin down trafficking, Phoenix. Isn’t this what you’re—”
His use of what I’ve been fighting pisses me off. “Don’t. You have my offer: make me an FBI agent with a badge and an office in the building and I’ll keep helping. If not, quit contacting me.”
His jaw clenches tight. “Or I could lock you up and take away your access to a computer.”
One more shrug of my shoulders—it was either that or roll my eyes. I’m so tired of the threat, he’s used it dozens of times. John here means they need me more than I need them. There are other hackers just as good as me—maybe even better . He’s here because they won’t work with him, odd how people don’t like being threatened. “You could do that too. It’s your call.”
When he sees the threat doesn’t mean a thing to me, he leaves without another word.
I’m not worried, he’ll figure it out. I need to get into the FBI building and see Raymond’s file on the Levin family. Raymond was notorious for preferring paper files over computer. Since the only file I could find on the FBI mainframe for the Levins out of Chicago was slim as fuck and more than twenty years old, it means Raymond’s files are collecting dust somewhere in the building.
The Levins in New York are on quicksand. I don’t need to worry about taking them down—they’re doing it all on their own. The two families don’t have anything to do with each other. They don’t even send Christmas cards between them. My hope of using one to get the other went nowhere.
All my answers are here in Chicago with Milos or Aleksander. Milos as the Pakhan, head of the Bratva—the Russian mafia—and Aleksander as his number two are the ones who could tell me what happened to Ray.
He’s dead, I know he is.
What I need to know is, how and why.
Then I need to destroy the Levins for what they did to Ray—to me.
Once I’m done with the Levins here in Chicago, I’ll move onto the others in Philadelphia.
An alert sounds on my computer, I move fast to see what it is. Milos Levin appears with his brother Aleksander at his side. As usual Milos is stone faced, his freaky yellow eyes cold. He has a beard to cover scarring on his cheek. The beard does a good job of hiding it, yet even from a picture the man is menacing. There are only two rumors for the source of the scarring: either a dog bite or a gunshot wound. I’d lay money on the gunshot since I can’t find a record of a hospital stay. If it were a gunshot wound the hospital would have to report it.
It doesn’t matter he’s at an event to honor him and his family for their Safe Haven shelters—for survivors of trafficking. Milos Levin obviously would rather be anywhere else. Them being honored has bile rising in my throat.
Aleksander is the one who smiles for the camera, his amber eyes glinting with humor at the reporter asking questions he is answering for Milos. The sexy female reporter blushes often, despite Aleksander not saying a single thing that could be considered flirtatious.
Rage fills me. Because these men are beautiful, no one even considers looking beneath the surface to see the evil lurking beneath. It’s bullshit. These men used to sell men, women, and children. Theystillsell weapons of destruction and bring drugs into the city.
And there’s the fucking building I want to rip apart with my bare hands. An entire building filled with women selling sex. I don’t care if the women are there because they want to be, if no woman has to take a client she doesn’t want, unlike before when they kept women drugged for compliance. Now nothing harder than ecstasy and weed are allowed, and only at the woman’s okay ahead of time.
These men couldn’t change who they were. They didn’t deserve to be treated like princes of this city. It didn’t matter if the FBI saw them as the lesser evil and refused to take them down.
Despite knowing the family dealt in trafficking for more than a decade after Milos’s father first came to Chicago, I can’t find anything to prove it. Everything I’ve found is from their family in New York. Even what the FBI there collected wasn’t actionable, as it was all past tense. Since it was all from when their father was alive, once their father and grandfather were dead they cut ties with New York. There wasn’t even a single murder they were less than five degrees of separation from.
I don’t care they stopped trafficking before Milos took over from his father. Their empire was built off evil. I’m not going to stop until I burn it all down—with them inside.
Except it’s harder than I thought. The bastards are protected by not only the FBI but Diego Valdez—a man who heads the most elite security contracting company in practically the entire world. There’s nothing Valdez and his crew couldn’t find or hide. They have boots on the ground in more than a hundred countries and they’re active in operations in America. The hackers have skills I envy even though I’ve been doing this for three years. Because of Valdez I couldn’t even find a fucking parking ticket on any of them.
