Page 45 of Sinful Embers

I snap my head toward him. “What the fuck are you saying?”

Viktor doesn’t flinch. Instead, he sends a hard look to Nikolas, something unspoken passing between them before he turns back to me. “Clyde seems okay,” he admits, “but he’s loyal to that Syd woman, and she…” He hesitates before finishing with, “She seems rather fond of Oleksi.”

“Fond?” Sabrina scoffs. “Syd and Oleksi have been fucking.” She leans back, crossing her arms. “I figured it out when they both kept disappearing together every night.”

My jaw tightens. I’d suspected something was going on between them, but I hadn’t thought much of it. Not until now.

“Listen,” Viktor moves the conversation away from Oleksi’s sex life, his voice grave. “There’s something else. Molchanov, Mirochin, and Fabri have been using a subsidiary of Ice Man Industries for various ‘exports’ over the past two years. We’ve been using them since a month before our first truck was hit.”

A cold sensation creeps up my spine. My hands curl into fists. “Fuck. Was this Daniil’s doing?”

Viktor shakes his head. “No, Rad…” His voice trails off, but his hesitation says everything before he does. “Oleksi. He set up the contracts with them.”

I go still.

A beat of silence.

Then rage ignites in my gut, scorching through my veins like acid. “What the fuck did you just say?”

Viktor doesn’t blink. “I said Oleksi has been using that subsidiary for two fucking years.”

The betrayal slams into me like a hammer to the ribs.

My cousin. My brother.

Bile rises in my throat, fury thickening the air around me. “I’m going to rip his fucking insides out.”

“You will not!” Nikolas’s command is delivered in a low dangerous tone. “In about four minutes, agents will arrive. They’ll tell you they’re Alpha Team. Passcode 4477. They’re here to detain Oleksi, Syd, and Clyde.”

Sabrina’s sharp intake of breath cuts through my pulsing rage. “That’s a bit harsh,” she says. “What if Syd and Clyde have nothing to do with this?”

“They know the rules,” Nikolas says flatly. “Syd compromised herself the second she got in bed with him. Clyde? He’s become Oleksi’s new favorite drinking buddy.”

Jesus.

“You’re not allowed to socialize in your team?” Sabrina bites out, disbelief warring with anger.

“Nikolas is right.” My voice is clipped, barely containing the rage simmering beneath the surface. “I’d do the same.”

Oleksi. Fucking Oleksi.

A part of me doesn’t want to believe it. But another part—the part that’s watched him disappear night after night and take secret phone calls on a phone we should have secret phone calls on… that part of me knows he’s been holding something back—knows it’s true.

“Did he tip off Dmitri?” My tone is clipped. “Did he know this entire fucking time where Leigh actually was?”

Was Sabrina right about the penthouse?Shit I didn’t even get to question the woman Oleksi claimed to be screwing the night Leigh was taken.

“We don’t know that yet,” Nikolas says, reading my thoughts. “But we’ll get the information from him. Don’t worry.”

I grind my teeth, my hands flexing at my sides. “No—I need to deal with this.”

“No, you don’t.” Nikolas’s voice sharpens into a command. “You and Sabrina have other things to attend to. Like going to see Giles and Parker tomorrow. Right after that, we’ll have a jet ready to take you to Russia and you’ll have a new security detail.”

Sabrina snorts. “Maybe make them ugly this time.”

Nikolas ignores her sarcasm and cuts his gaze back to me. “Leave this to us, Radomir. Focus on your mission.”

A muscle ticks in my jaw, but I nod once, forcing my fury down into something colder. Controlled.

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