My smile widened as I stood and followed her up a flight of stairs. “You really need to meet my wife.”
Ava didn’t answer, and by the time she opened the door to her office, my mind had settled back into business mode. She motioned toward a tall wingback chair that I purposely stood beside until she sauntered behind the large desk and settled down behind it.
I wasn’t chivalrous. Just cautious.
Rule number one: Never go first.
We sat in silence for a few moments, which bored me. It was like a page out of the Crime Boss for Beginners handbook. I’d spent too many years in this game to waste time with such bullshit.
“On the phone, Niko said you had intel on the Italians, which means you know one of my lieutenants is days away from closing a deal with Don Ricci for New York port access. Now, either you know something I don’t, or you’re about to fuck up something I already have. Which is it?”
Ava chuckled while bending down and pulling a bottle and two glasses out from under her desk. “If I wanted to fuck up something you had, Valentin, I wouldn’t invite you into my inner circle to do it.” Pouring one nearly half full, she extended her arm across the desk.
Rule number two: Never drink anything given to you.
“So, you know something.” Sitting back in my chair, I waved my hand, declining the offer. “What’s your price?”
Her lips hovered near the top of the glass. “Are you always so blunt?”
“Yes. I dislike small talk. It’s a waste of time. We both know information is always attached to a shitload of strings.”
“Well said.” Taking a healthy drink, she cradled the glass in both hands and ran her tongue across her top teeth. “I have multiple high-level connections at the FBI.” As soon as I arched an eyebrow, she added, “You can verify that fact with Niko if you want, but the story behind it is mine, Carrera.”
“The price, Ava. I don’t have all day.”
I really didn’t. Eden knew I was in Miami, but I told her it was to iron out a shipment loss. The last thing I needed was for her to start blowing up my phone.
“Actually, it has to do with Giselle,” she said, folding her arms over her desk.
“Who the fuck is Giselle?”
Ava rolled her eyes. “The girl on the pole. The one you were ten seconds away from tattling about to your Houston lawbreaker.”
Mouthy bitch.
Absolutely right, but still mouthy.
“My connection uncovered an active human trafficking ring started by Sevastian Petrov.”
“Petrov? As in Andrei Petrov’s brother?” What the fucking fuck? The late Bratva pakhan had ruled Moscow almost as hard as he’d hated Sevastian. Their Cain and Abel shit only ended when Sevastian’s bullet exited Andrei’s skull last year. Sevastian died months later in an empty jail cell with a knife sticking out of his throat. No one mourned him, but it sounded like someone mourned his business.
Sighing, she scrubbed a hand across her forehead. It shook. Her fucking hand shook, and when she realized I was staring at it, she cleared her throat and dropped it in her lap. “That’s the one. He wasn’t operating alone, either. I don’t have to tell you that my father was one of the most prolific sex traffickers on the East Coast.”
I connected the dots for myself. Sevastian Petrov and Sergei Chernov were both sadistic sons of bitches who deserved much worse than they got.
“I put an end to that shit,” she continued. “But girls have started disappearing again. Giselle’s friend, one of my own, went missing two weeks ago. Turns out, someone’s been carrying on their messed-up trafficking legacy.” She let out a long breath as I studied her pinched lips and rounded shoulders. “My contact traced leads to Mexico.”
I allowed a marked silence to fill the air, so I could be calm enough to speak without choking her. “The Carreras don’t deal in flesh if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
“I’m not. I’m insinuating that someone is filtering them in and out of your country, Val.” She let the sentence hang, and it wasn’t by accident. The message was clear.
Right under your nose, motherfucker.
“I’ll ask again, what do you want, Ava?”
Fire ignited in her cat-like eyes. “I want your help in shutting this ring down. I want your word that you'll work with us. That you’ll work with all of us in doing whatever it takes to end these mudaks!”
Not an unreasonable request. And a cause I’d enjoy spilling blood for.
“If I do this, you’ll tell me what…” I trailed off, replaying her words in my head and picking out the three that didn’t sit right. “What do you mean by ‘all of us’?”
“Well, my Bratva and FBI connections...” Clearing her throat, she brushed an invisible piece of lint off her desk. “And Dante Santiago.”
In a flash of movement, my palm cracked against her desk. “¡Estás loca, hija de puta!” You’re fucking crazy!
Dante Santiago was the overlord of the largest cartel in South America: Colombia’s counterpart to yours truly. Men weakened at the mere whisper of his name.
Most men.
That asshole didn’t intimidate me. No one did. But I didn’t feel like making war with him, either. He stayed in the red corner of the world, and I stayed in the blue. Narcos didn’t simply “team-up” and don white capes when it suited them. We were criminals, not saviors, and Santiago, by all accounts, was an inhuman bastard.
I should know. I looked at one in the mirror every day.
“You and Dante might enjoy playing truth or dead with each other,” she snapped, “but on the sly, he’s spent the last few years destroying trafficking rings like this.” With her reserved façade gone, she waved a frustrated hand in front of her. “When one’s crippled and bleeding, it’s like Christmas morning on Santiago’s Pacific island. No survivors. No marked graves. You’ve heard the stories for yourself.”
Back the fuck up. “You brought this to the Colombian before me?”
“Not exactly.” She knew she crossed a line. Her wince just now was telling.
Son of a bitch. “Santiago has FBI connections as well.” It wasn’t a question.
“You could say that.”
“I didn’t; you did.”
Ava glanced up, clearly startled, but quickly recovered—that infamous Chernova cold queen act falling into place. “Be that as it may, if you accept my agreement, I’ll give you the information that will save your Italian deal from blowing up in your face.”
“Fine.”
“I want your word, Val. Don’t fuck me over on this. Trust me, you do not want me as an enemy.”
“I said yes, didn’t I?” I growled. “Trust me, Ava, you don’t want me as an enemy. Just tell me what you know.”
There it was again. That flicker of fear. That break in the ice. She knew I wasn’t fucking around. But then again, neither was she. I’d seen the carnage Ava Chernova left in her wake.
In many unrecognizable pieces.
She nodded. “The Feds have Don Ricci on tax evasion charges, and it seems the boss crumbled like a stale donut.”
“He talked?”