Page 13 of Shattered Empire (Shattered World)

Bingo.

“Holy fucking shitballs, Batman,” Vas murmured under his breath as file after file popped open on the screen.

“I really hope she labeled these,” I muttered. There was enough data on the screen that it would take weeks to sift through.

“Well, that’s why there is more than one of us.” Vas winked at me and stood. “Let’s get this back to the compound. We can get the others to help.”

The others.

Maxim and Nikolai had been scarce since I took up the mantle ofPakhan. Dima was apparently out of the country on personal business, and Leon was busy helping build alliances with my Uncle Dante and the Cosa Nostra.

I thought.

Or he was out assassinating them. Vas hadn’t made it super clear.

At this point, I couldn’t care less.

* * *

The drive to the compound took longer than normal thanks to the heavy flow of traffic. I hadn’t been back since the first time Matthias had taken me here, and I missed it. Mark’s smiling face greeted me as I stepped out of the vehicle. Vladmir, my driver and secondary guard, nodded at me as I closed the door to the SUV and led me up the stairs to the underground bunker.

He was tall and muscled. The pristine white dress shirt he wore was stretched tightly over his chest, the seams straining at his broad shoulders. I was waiting in silent anticipation for the buttons to suddenly burst off. His accent was thick and deep, his skin covered in tattoos from the Cyrillic Russian letters on his knuckles to the ink scrawled up his neck.

Vladmir was one intimidating mother fucker, and if he wasn’t on my side, I might have shit my pants when I first met him. No joke.

“I’ll wait here, ma’am.” HisWsounded like a softV.

“Ava,” I corrected him. The big man blushed, the red creeping up his neck.

“Ava.”

Vas shot me a disapproving look, but I simply winked and walked right past him into the somber darkness of the tunnels that ran beneath the compound. A lump of sadness threatened to emerge when my thoughts turned back to the last time I was here with Matthias. We’d been a team then, taking down Elias’s port access and bringing his illicit dealings into the light.

We’d been in a bubble those few weeks that were later shattered by my perceived betrayal.

I wanted him to be here with me. I wanted to rule together, side by side. That was all I had ever wanted from him. What a fairytale that had been. A dream that would never be reached. A goal that could never be achieved.

There was only me to lead, and just the mere thought of that darkened the surrounding colors.

“You doing okay?” Mark questioned hesitantly while we walked. I nodded and turned to face him, a smile on my face that didn’t quite reach far enough. Skepticism burned deeply behind his eyes. He didn’t believe me. “If you ever need anything…” He let the invitation hang in the air between us.

“I know,” I assured him. “Thank you.”

He took a deep breath and nodded, accepting that I wouldn’t be spilling my guts to him anytime soon. Emotions weren’t new to me, but growing up, I had learned to limit them, hide them, secure them away so they couldn’t be used against me.

Show fear, and they made me more afraid. Show pain, and they reveled in increasing it by tenfold. The rage was beaten out of me, the defiance whipped from my body, sadness had been starved, and happiness barely existed enough for them to bother with. Matthias had been the first person I truly opened myself up to emotionally. He took them and shaped them into armor for me. Carved weapons from the very things that had burned me, drowned me, and carved me into pieces.

“There she is.” Nikolai stood from his seat, a toothy grin cracking his normally grumpy exterior. “Welcome back, ma—Ava.” The cold glare I gave him stopped the formalities dead in their tracks.

“Hello, Nikolai.” I beamed back at him and took the chair he offered me. “Maxim.” I nodded at the burly Russian.

“Ava.”

“Let’s get started.” Vas inclined his head to Mark. A moment later, the screens before us were filled with the files Libby had been collecting on Persephone’s Web.

“So,” Mark began. “I’ve been digging through these files for the last two hours, and I have got to say—Libby was a fucking genius. Not only did she use Persephone’s servers as a way to hide the files, but she also encrypted the hell out of them. The NSA and CIA would be proud.”

“I wonder who taught her how to do that,” I mused teasingly.

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