Ivan: A Dark Mafia Romance (Underworld Book 1)
Ivan: Chapter 18

I’m driving back to Sloane’s old apartment. She says the flash drive is hidden there, and that it might still be readable.

I’m not thinking about the flash drive, though. I’m thinking about Lyosha Egorov.

For once in my life, I actually feel guilty.

Nadia Egorov meant nothing to me, but she must have meant something to Lyosha. He risked everything to take revenge on me.

It would have confounded me before. Now I understand a little better how a woman can drive a man mad.

What would I do if I married Sloane, and then lost her to someone else?

I can’t even imagine it.

Sloane knows what’s bothering me. She’s ignoring Zima, who’s trussed up in the back of the van. She’s watching my face instead.

“What are you going to do to him?” she asks me.

“To Egorov?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know,” I say.

Before, I would have ordered him cut into a thousand pieces and the pieces fed to my dogs.

But now, I feel like he was only doing what any man would have to do. If he really loved his woman.

“I was thinking you should send him a fruit basket,” Sloane says innocently. “After all, if he hadn’t hired me to kill you, we never would have met.”

I can’t help laughing. I’ve tried a hundred times to tame this woman, but she has this rowdiness inside of her that can never be extinguished.

“That’s not a bad idea,” I say. “You can help me pick it out.”

We pull up in front of Sloane’s flat. The top floor is a smoking ruin, the whole apartment complex taped off. Leaving Zima tied up in the van, Sloane and I scale the iron fire escape up the side of the building.

The metal stairs creak and sway the higher up we get. The staircase is barely connected to the bricks up at the top because of the hole that’s been blown in the wall.

I have to boost Sloane the last five or six feet up to the fourth floor. She helps pull me up after her.

Then we’re standing in her kitchen, or what’s left of it. A few items remain miraculously untouched: a single porcelain mug up on a distant shelf. A magazine thrown to the far corner of the room, only singed a bit on one corner.

The rest of the kitchen looks like a war zone. Shattered dishes, torn-up flooring, the twisted remains of the stove.

It gives me a sick feeling, knowing that Sloane was here when it happened.

“Don’t worry,” she says, laying her hand on my forearm. “It was a pretty shitty apartment even before the grenade.”

“I can see why you preferred the cell,” I reply.

As we pick our way around the massive hole in the floor, Sloane leads me into her living room.

Here, too, most everything has been burned up or blown to pieces, though this room was farthest from the blast. Sloane heads straight back to the white brick fireplace, which is mostly in one piece.

She pulls out one of the bricks from the left-hand side of the mantle. In the gap behind the brick sits a little metal box.

“Fireproof,” Sloane says with satisfaction.

She tucks the box in her pocket, and we head out of the apartment once more, this time though the front door.

“Remizov must have a copy of whatever’s on there,” I tell Sloane.

“Oh yeah? What makes you say that?”

“Because he didn’t care if it got blown up in your apartment.”

Sloane nods, seeing the logic in that.

“Probably,” she agrees. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable.”

Once we get back to the van, I drive us a few blocks away to a more deserted part of town, while Sloane pulls the tape off Zima’s mouth. I noticed he didn’t even try to wriggle out of his bonds while we were gone. He’s lying in the exact same position and seems entirely resigned to being a captive.

Once he can speak again, he says, “Can we stop at Teremok or something? I haven’t had any breakfast yet.”

“It’s ten o’clock at night,” Sloane says.

“I’m a night owl,” Zima says with a shrug.

I can tell Sloane is debating how best to motivate Zima. In the end, she decides on the carrot over the stick.

“I’ll get you some food,” she agrees. “But first I want you to decode this drive.”

“I can’t work on an empty stomach,” Zima whines.

“Can you work with a broken ankle?” I growl from the front seat.

Sloane holds up her hand to me.

“Flash drive first, then food,” she says to Zima firmly.

Zima groans and rolls over so he can squirm himself up into a sitting position.

“Fine,” he says. “But I’ll need my hands.”

Sloane cuts his bonds. He makes a big show of rubbing his wrists, which are barely red. Then he sits cross-legged, opens the laptop on his lap, and inserts the flash drive.

Once he’s got it in place, his eyes gleam with interest.

“This is a tricky little system,” he says happily.

“Can you figure it out?” Sloane asks.

“I dunno. Probably.”

He starts typing away, his expression bright and focused for the first time since we met him. It’s quite the transformation. While before I was wondering if we even had the right person, now I can see the intelligence in this kid. The genius, even.

“What are you doing brokering hits?” I ask him. “A kid with your talent.”

Zima gives me a look of disgust. “What, are you going to tell me to get a real job?” he says. “Bit hypocritical coming from you two.”

“No,” I say. “Maybe just something that won’t get you killed. Once Remizov realizes you’re not getting the flash drive for him . . .”

“Yeah, I know,” Zima says. “I won’t go back to that apartment. I’ve got others.”

“Do you clean the other ones?” Sloane says.

“Not much,” Zima admits.

“Where’re your parents?” I press him. I should let it go, but I don’t want this kid getting killed the minute we drop him off. Maybe because he reminds me of Karol a little.

“I’m adopted,” Zima says, still typing away furiously. “Bit of a cuckoo situation. I outgrew the nest by the time I was twelve years old. My parents are a janitor and a grocery-store clerk. Nice people, but they didn’t know what to do with me.”

I take a sharp left at the next intersection.

I’m not just going to dump Zima off in the middle of nowhere.

“Where are you going?” Sloane asks me.

“I’ll take him back to the compound,” I tell her. “He can stay there awhile.”

Sloane cocks her head, giving me an appraising look.

I don’t know if my sympathy for this kid will earn me any points in her eyes—Sloane is no softy herself. But she seems to respect my decision.

When we’re about five minutes away from the monastery, Zima stops typing. He looks up at us.

“Got it,” he says.

“Really?” Sloane asks, grabbing the laptop.

“Yeah,” Zima says, in his offhand way. He doesn’t seem any more animated by success than he was by our threats. The only thing that seems to get this kid excited is a challenge.

Sloane scrolls through the files, her face slack with astonishment.

“What is it?” I ask her.

“It’s . . . everything,” she says. “All Remizov’s dirt on everybody. Offshore accounts, details of dirty business deals, pictures of mistresses, criminal evidence. He’s got half the bosses in St. Petersburg by the balls.”

“Not anymore,” I say. “Now we’ve got them instead.”

“I guess so . . .” Sloane says.

She’s still scrolling through the files, her face growing increasingly pale.

“What is it?” I ask her.

“It’s just . . . there’s some dark shit in here,” she says.

She turns the screen so I can see.

It’s true.

Some of the evidence involves crimes that even I would consider beyond the pale. For instance, it appears that the governor made his money in a chemical plant that’s been leeching chemicals into the soil of a nearby town, causing cancer rates to skyrocket. And the commissioner seems to have a penchant for underage girls.

It’s no wonder they’re at Remizov’s beck and call.

He’s blackmailing them.

“Who did you get this drive from?” I ask Sloane.

“From Yozhin, the Minister of the Admiralteysky District. Remizov brought it to him at the club. Yozhin was supposed to deliver it to someone else. But I killed him first.”

She pauses, glancing over at Zima.

“Who hired me to kill Yozhin?” she asks him.

“That was Boyko Honchar,” Zima says, promptly. When Sloane and I look at each other blankly, Zima says, “He’s run against Yozhin three times for Admiralteysky. Guess he didn’t want to lose a fourth time.”

“So Yozhin was killed for a petty political rivalry,” Sloane says, thinking out loud. “And I stole the flash drive, which was probably supposed to go to the governor or some other politician. As proof of what Remizov has over them.”

“Remizov figured out that you took it,” I say. “He probably has his own copy. So, to keep his leverage, he has to get the drive back. Or kill us. Or both.”

“Unless we get him first,” Sloane says.

We’ve pulled up to the compound once more.

I let Zima out, with instructions to Andrei to feed him, keep an eye on him, and not let him near any computers.

Back in the van with Sloane, we sit quietly for a moment, both thinking.

I know that neither of us likes what we saw on that drive. The idea of using that information for our own blackmail campaign is hardly appetizing.

Besides, blackmail becomes less effective with the more people that have the information. If Remizov and I both try to twist the governor’s arm in opposite directions, using the same leverage, we’ll essentially cancel each other out.

There’s another way to use the flash drive. One that sticks the knife in Remizov instead. And doesn’t turn my stomach quite so much . . .

“What are you thinking?” Sloane says to me, her face as troubled as my own. “What do you want to do with the drive?”

“I think we should give it away,” I tell her.