“I think you should start fresh.” I reframed it. “Go somewhere where rent is cheap, where the paparazzi won’t hound you.”Or any Bratva members.
She mulled it over, munching on her lower lip. In my defense, moving her elsewhere wouldn’t only benefit me. She didn’t need all the paps swarming around her when shit hit the fan and news started breaking about Craig.
“I guess…Minnesota is beautiful this time of the year.” She looked mystified by the idea of taking a new path, maybe a new identity.
I nodded encouragingly.
Hallie shook her head, suddenly frowning. “No, I can’t do that. I can’t just up and leave. It would send the wrong message. Like I’m running away.”
“You can’t stay in Los Angeles,” I said impatiently, thinking about Kozlov, about stupid Anna, about all the complications.
“Of course, I can.” She smiled. “And if I run into financial issues, at least I’ll have—”
“Your life’s in danger,” I cut her off, tired of orbiting around the same issue.
She blinked, staring at me wide-eyed, as if I’d slapped her. “My life’s in danger?” she repeated, dumbfounded. “How? Why? Craig?”
Digging my fingers into my eye sockets, I let out a shaky breath.
“Nothing to do with him. You’ve been in danger for months,” I said. “Ever since I came into your life, to be exact.”
“Tell me everything.” Her tone was cold, unyielding. She was already a different woman from the one who’d tried to stab me with a soda bottle. She was made of sturdier stuff. And I wondered if she knew it.
“Back when I worked in domestic counter-terrorism, my job was to take down the L.A. Bratva. The Russian mafia operation had gained power quickly and taken control of the streets, especially around Hidden Hills, Westlake Village, and downtown. The illegal gambling and money laundering were bothersome, but not a deal breaker. Human and arms trafficking was where the government drew the line, and it was becoming clear we had a problem on our hands. The year I stepped into the role, thirty-three innocent people were killed by them.”
Her head hung down in sorrow, but she didn’t say anything, which allowed me to finish.
“The ringleader was a guy named Vasily Kozlov. A nasty son of a bitch with an impressive track record for taking the lives of those who crossed him. The mission was to get our hands on him, dead or alive. Breathing was always preferable, but it wasn’t necessary.”
This was the part I dreaded. I took a deep breath. I hadn’t rehashed that day since the moment I’d handed in my resignation and given the agency an on-record statement of what happened. Law knew most of it. Tom, only some.
“One day, we got word of a meeting. Illegal weapons were being exchanged between the Bratva and some NorCal MC club. The hot tip we’d received disclosed the exchange of two hundred 9mms and an array of rifles. The meeting took place in the back of a Georgian restaurant. We raided the joint.”
I stopped and closed my eyes, letting my head drop between my shoulders. I had no clue why I was telling her this. I could’ve given her the short version. The one that wouldn’t paint me as a monster.
But she deserved to know the whole truth.
That I was, in fact, a monster. And monsters could only thrive in the dark. Far away from her and everything she represented.
“Tell me,” she croaked, reaching to touch my hand. “Show me your vulnerabilities. You’ve already seen so many of mine.”
“It was a back-alley raid. We kicked down the exit door. But it was a setup. Kozlov wanted the people on the case—us—slaughtered. We were met with DIY smoke bombs that made it impossible to breathe, let alone see. But I was a stubborn bastard and I just took it as an invitation to hand in Kozlov’s head on a silver platter. I pushed forward with two of my colleagues, barreling through the narrow, dark corridor. I could hear people running, screaming in Russian. Guess they’d thought we’d retreat once we were met with the smoke bombs. Suddenly, I found myself in a room with about a dozen men. One of them was Kozlov.”
I was physically sick with the memory of what happened next. No part of me wanted to continue this story. I slammed my eyes shut.
“He raised his hand and pointed it toward me. I thought he had a gun. Thought he was going to kill me.”
Silence.
“What did you do?”
“I fired three shots,” I croaked. “Straight up the middle.”
I felt my heartbeat in my throat when my lips parted again to finish my story. “Hallie…”
“Yes?”
“He was holding his baby. His two-year-old son. It was his version of a white flag.”