Page 114 of The Sniper
“Fine.I recommend you keep this inside these four walls—”
“Oh God, it’s like we’re informants or something.”
“Sadie,” both Noah and I say at the same time.
“Sorry, sorry.Keep going.”
Noah eyes her for a moment, then looks back at me.“You know Nadia is Dmitri Volkob’s daughter.He’s the head of the Russia mafia—”
“Eeeeek.”
We ignore Sadie.
“I’ve seen the transcript of her police investigation.She didn’t say too much, likely trained for such an eventuality.”
That makes sense.
If you were born into a mafia family, they would train you from the time you were little.I imagine.
“Do they think she was complicit?”
“They haven’t said, and then the president demanded her return.Politically, it would have been too much trouble to keep her,” Noah shares.“But Josh and I have a theory.Between you and I...and our accomplice here,” Sadie chuckles.“I think Josh has spoken to people way up the food chain.”
“What food chain?”
“The government, Sade’s.Senior people,” I explain.
She looks between us.
Noah deadpans her.
“Carry on,” I insist.
“What we think is that she was either being used as a pawn and didn’t know about the diamonds being laundered by the men she had come to the US with.It wasn’t just Alexei.She had Bratva guards and other soldiers here.”
“Jesus.A mini mafia living next door.”I scowl.
“Yeah, we should have fucking discovered it, but they are clever.”Noah shakes his head.“So she either knew, or she didn’t.”
I blink.
“She could have been used as a pawn, a cover, to move to America so Alexei could move the diamonds through the States.”
“Wow, real mafia stuff.Right here in Bel Air.”Sadie sighs.“Like in my smut books.”
“What are smut books?”Noah frowns, and I have never seen her blush so hard.
“Nothing.Research.”She looks at me with big eyes, begging for help.
I snort.
“So, Nadia was innocent?”I ask.
It would be nice to think she was, after the effort we both put into our friendship.We were never going to be best friends, but to think someone lied and used you all that time is hard to swallow.
“It’s a theory, that’s all.”
I realize now that I will never know the truth.I guess I should be grateful I lived through that horrible ordeal and get to be frustrated about it.
