Page 43 of Scarred (Russian Sinners 2)

“Yes,” I told Andrey tiredly. “Sorry, bad dream. I hope I didn’t wake up Tasha.”

He watched me carefully and it reminded me of the way my brother watched me when he knew I lied. Debating whether to let me get away with the lie or not. He wouldn’t have a choice because I would never tell the things Malcome did to me. It was my own shame to carry.

“No, she is a deep sleeper,” he finally answered.

“That’s good,” I muttered, pushing my hand through my damp hair. “I apologize for waking you two up,” I avoided their eyes. “Better we go back to sleep.”

He was worried; it was written all over his face. But thankfully he let it go.

Once Andrey left my room, a breath I wasn’t aware I was holding left my lips. My mouth felt dry and my lips cracked. I hated those dreams. I hated those memories. They made me feel filthy. The girl I used to be, gone and swallowed by the darkness. Instinctively, I reached between my legs, feeling the scars of the cigar and lighter. The wounds had healed months ago, but the memory was still as fresh as the day it happened.

The nightmares were back. I knew they would be the moment I saw Malcome a few days ago. I was just surprised it took this long.

Chapter Fifteen

Nikolai

“Damn it.” I slammed my fist against the table. “I know this is illegal. I can smell it all over this deal.”

Oliver had found millions of dollars’ worth of transactions indicating Malcome Schmidt purchased bandwidths of internet connectivity through a Russian satellite. Regularly, Russian satellites provided unsecured internet connectivity. The Russian government kept secured satellites only for themselves; not for the general public nor commercial use. They made no exceptions when it came to those secured satellites. They were a precious commodity and it took years to successfully launch a satellite.

The thing was, Malcome didn’t have any commercial contracts for internet and bandwidth. He strictly provided satellite bandwidth services to the U.S. military; more specifically the intelligence community.

We couldn’t prove it but he was selling it to the U.S. government as a secured network channel and this Russian satellite was anything but secured. It was a perfect way to bring him down. The sanctions and penalties would start pounding on him from all angles. If we could prove this and bring it to the U.S. government’s attention, all his assets would be frozen while the investigation was ongoing into those transactions. And that would take them years, so he wouldn’t have access to any of his funds nor assets. It would be a first step to bring him down to his knees. After that, it would be a piece of cake to destroy him for good and make him pay for the death he had caused.

“I think so too,” Oliver agreed. “We’ll find it. I’m sure of it.”

Oliver had turned out to be a great asset. With Ilya and Oliver at my back, we were invincible. I was eager to put Malcome away for good. Truthfully, I wanted to see him suffer, financially, emotionally, and physically. He would get it all back tenfold.

Oliver had good connections on the ground with high-ranking military personnel. With his resources and my money, we went all in. His reasons to destroy him were his family. He didn’t know what was driving me but we were both going after him for similar reasons. We didn’t discuss it but he was smart and figured it out.

“Is there a way to trace the link he claims to be from his own secured satellite?” There had to be a logical and simple way to expose his fraud.

“There is, but there are so many layers that he tacked on, it will take a while. I have top notch guys already working on it.”

Malcome wasn’t stupid. He had to hide the traceability to an unsecured satellite but in today’s day and age, everything was traceable. One way or the other. He just got greedy and too full of himself because he kept getting away with so much for so long.

Oliver was already gathering all the information on available secured satellites so when the shit goes down, at least military forces could easily switch to secured channels.

I leaned back in my chair, trying to release tension in my shoulders. It has been four days since I dropped Olivia at my house in St. Petersburg and two days since I had spoken to her. She reached out to Oliver to find out updates on Anastasia. It pissed me off that she didn’t reach out to me to ask for her friend’s status; although I knew she wouldn’t. Instead, she avoided me like a plague.

Shit, she needs time. Not me overbearing her or demanding she calls me.

Anastasia had finally woken up and Dimitry was caring for her while she was recovering from a bullet wound, and Sergei had been working to win back Scarlett and track Vlad's threat.

Vlad was the mole amongst us that betrayed us and now almost cost Anastasia her life.

We should have known that Vlad would eventually betray us. After all, he betrayed Boris and they were best friends; Vlad had been his right-hand man. Now that we wanted to go legal with our operations, he betrayed us. He had been working with Boris and somehow managed to get him out of the prison. Now, Boris was dead and Vlad wanted to take over and be the head of the rússkaya máfiya.

Andrey called me earlier to provide an update. They had taken Tasha to the park again this morning then stopped for lunch at the street vendor. He had doubled their security per my instruction but that wasn’t what disturbed me the most.

It was his update on Olivia. She has been having nightmares. Bad ones from what he described. The first night he barged into her room and found her soaked in her own sweat and shaking from it.

Last night, she had her room locked so they had to wake her up by banging on the door. She refused to open the door and assured them she was fine. Fine my fucking ass!

She started jogging, doing yoga, and painting late into the night. Andrey gathered from her that she had always kept a very busy schedule, and it was nothing outside her normal routine. To me, it sounded she was trying to exhaust herself into oblivious sleep.

Damn it, I wanted her to feel protected under my roof. I had never felt such a strong urge to protect another woman, excluding my own family. I wanted to know what caused such nightmares and help her through them. I wanted to ease her fears and assure her I would protect her. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind she would pull through, but I wanted to be the one to help her.

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