Page 93 of Innocent Bratva Twins

Tires squeal and the van jerks forward.

Chapter 25 - Nico

“Here you go,” Justin says, putting a takeaway cup down on my desk. “You getting anywhere?” he asks. The air quickly fills with a scent of fresh coffee, and my dopamine spikes excitedly. Reaching out, I pick it up and sigh, happy that he thought to bring the caffeine.

“I’ve just finished up with the team—I’ve sent them to follow another lead and ask around on the streets. We just have to keep pushing, or we’ll always be a step behind in finding Andrei.”

“That’s good, man.”

“Thanks for the coffee.” I take a deep breath and lean back in the office chair, stretching my legs out in front of me.

Work has been a great escape for me these past few days.

After that night, in my stupid drunken moment, when I called Sera and made a fucking idiot of myself—I promised myself to take a massive step backwards. To really give her the space she needs without any pressure at all.

It is a lot harder than it sounds, though. I struggle with it constantly. I have to keep telling myself that I’m doing the right thing. Most of me wants to fight for her—to call her every minute of every day and smother her with my love. But it would push her away from me and that would be devastating.

So, I’ve focused on work and it’s going pretty well.

In private, I’ve been working on trying to figure out who is responsible for the discrepancies—who the rat is inside my office.

But with my team, the team that knows myrealbusiness, we’ve been working on finding more leads to locate Andrei.

Justin is part of that team.

He’s been pulling late nights and overtime to support me in this and I’m grateful to have him with me.

He flops down onto the sofa and leans over the documents that I’ve spread across the coffee table in the corner of my office.

It’s a map of the city and notes on key points of interest that we’re focusing on in our search for Andrei.

He traces his finger over the routes and red marks.

“What happened with that club—the one on Spencer Street?”

“Nothing. We questioned the guy. He actually spilled a ton of information, but not about Andrei.” I shrug.

This morning, Sera is at a doctor’s appointment and I hate the fact that I’m not there with her. I have my phone volume turned up full to make sure I don’t miss her call.

But the more I glance at my phone, waiting, the more annoyed I get with myself. She will call when she’s ready.

Patience, Nico. Patience.

I stand up and wander over to Justin, sitting on the sofa opposite him I spin the map to face me. I tap against the markings. “This is the next point of interest,” I say, then lean back against the sofa and sip my coffee.

“ This coffee is great. Is it from the place on the corner?” I ask.

“The one with the chocolate croissants.” He nods.

I smile, thinking about how much Sera loves those things.

“Hey, I was wondering—did you ever catch the asshole syphoning funds. You haven’t updated me on that.” Justin says.

I haven’t updated anyone except my brothers and the Kuznetsovs. We all decided it was better that the fewer people who knew about what was happening, and the little details, the better it would be. It’s the most logical way to keep everyone safe and to keep the information from getting into the wrong hands.

“Yes, we’re still busy with that,” I comment, brushing the topic aside without giving anything away.

“You must be pretty pissed off though. Finding out that Orlov got someone that close to you.” He says, picking up his own coffee.

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