Page 47 of Corrupted Guilt

“What do we know about who’s responsible for the Tasha mess?” I ask them immediately.

“There’s a mole for Petya. There must be,” answers Anton.

“Do we have any suspects?” I ask.

Neither will answer me, neither will make eye contact. “I didn’t think so. What can we do to flush them out?”

“Get Petya and beat it out of him,” Maxim offers with a smile.

“That’s one idea. Give me another one.”

“What’s wrong with that one?” Maxim pushes back.

“The first idea is rarely the best one. Let’s keep going. Anton?”

“Plant someone trustworthy back with Viktor and start a list of suspects, get close to them, and cross them off until only the mole is left?”

“Not bad. It’ll take some time. You should start back asap, when we’re done here,” I tell him.

Maxim smiles widely.

“You want me to go?” Anton says more than he asks. “I thought Nikita maybe, he’s already installed in Viktor’s house to keep tabs and report on anything unusual.”

Nikita was a hitman we had used from time to time that I placed near Viktor to be another set of eyes for me. He was a good man, the only trouble was he was Anton’s man, not mine. He had been his own man for too long to be completely trusted. He worked for himself as a hitman. And even more concerning, his father had also been a hitman, fiercely loyal to Viktor. That was the problem with Nikita, and I wished Anton could see that.

But he was clouded by their relationship. Nikita was like a son to Anton, had filled the void when Anton’s own wife and daughter were killed. He helped Nik do his first job, helped him take his father’s place as hitman for hire.

“I don’t know and trust him the way I know and trust you, Anton.” I tell him honestly. “I need someone I don’t need to worry about.”

“He’s an extension of me. If you have doubts about my loyalty, then doubt him. But if you don’t question mine, don’t question his.”

“Okay,” I had to trust him. Anton deserved it, had earned it. “So then, the other plan. How can we lure Petya out to take him out once and for all and uncover who he’s been working with in Viktor’s Kolesova Bratva?”

“Viktor’s Bratva? As opposed to yours?”

“Yes,” I rasped. “Focus on the task at hand.”

“Torture him,” Anton offered.

“We don’t always get the best information that way. Besides, I can’t promise to keep him alive.” Especially if Katya tries to escape and Petya comes within an inch of her out in the wild instead of exactly how and where I want. But they don’t need to know that. This is partly a test, there’s an obvious answer here, I’m just seeing if either Anton or Maxim can get there.

“Any thoughts, Anton?”

“Disinformation to out the mole.”

“Exactly.What shape?”

“Hmm,” he thinks hard, brow furrows.

Not ready to lead yet. Anton wasn’t the planner and strategist I was, and that was okay. Some lead, some follow. But I wanted him to be able to think like me in case anything happened to me. Maxim was years away from leadership but that’s not why he was useful. Tough as they came and fiercely loyal to me were Maxim’s strengths.

“Don’t think about what you would do in my position. Think ‘what would Yuri do in this situation’, okay?” I grumbled then gave them my thoughts, my plan. “Here’s what we’ll do.We’ll put Katya in a safehouse and spread the word. BUT we spread three different locations for her to our three different suspects of the mole. We watch all three places, whichever place Petya shows up, we trace back to that mole, eventually anyway. If Petya is alive, we ask him before we kill him, too. But this way, we’ll get both of them. The men watching each place will call us and we’ll go get him.”

When they left, I slumped back into my chair and looked over my desk. Still messy, even Tasha’s financial documents spread over it, her forensic accounting of Viktor’s spending over the last several years, all the way back to Dmitry’s death and before.

Just as I was thinking I needed a distraction, a distraction that looked, smelled, and tasted exactly like Katya, there she was, standing in front of me, behind my desk with me. I stood up to face her, but words failed me.

She looked uncertain, her lips parting as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t think of what it should be.

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