Page 155 of Ruthless Sin
Pages spread.
Dante is the first to speak.
“What is this.”
“Yelena Zakharova. Three years ago. Before she died.” I set my hands on the table. “She told me to bring it home. To give it to you. I didn’t.”
I don’t look up.
“Routes. Names. Money. Photographs. The plantation upriver. The accountants. The seven lieutenants. It’s everything.”
Marco pulls a page toward him. Reads. Pulls another. Reads.
“Cristo.”
Marco doesn’t curse in the back room.
He just cursed.
Izzy reaches across the table and pulls the photographs to her side. She lifts each. Studies. Slides them along the table to her laptop.
“Velikov network. Naples shell. Three safehouses we’ve been guessing at. The Belarus route.” Her fingers are moving on the keyboard. “Lieutenants. Seven. Of those alive, four. Of the four, three are in Alexei’s inner circle now.”
“Can we turn one.”
“Yes. Stepan Lebedev. Konstantin’s brother. Passed over for three promotions in a row. His daughter is in school in Berlin. He’s been writing emails about Berlin tuition in a tone that doesn’t belong to a man who’s going to last another year in the organization. He’s the candidate.”
“Get him.”
“On it.”
Dante speaks.
“Plan.”
I look at the maps Yelena drew. The plantation upriver. The brick outbuilding off the east side. The river approach from the south bank. The tree line.
“Hours upriver. Antebellum house. The dining room visible on the satellite. The brick outbuilding is used for storage and short-term confinement. Alexei eats in the dining room at dusk. He always eats in the dining room. Yelena said so.”
Dante. “Turning Stepan.”
“Izzy gets him in forty-eight hours. We use his comms to make Alexei think a counter is coming. He’ll be at the dining table. We come up the south bank at dawn the morning after.”
Renzo. “Boats.”
“Two boats. Your river crew. The compound to the south landing in three hours. Dawn assault. The brick building first. Marco’s team on the front of the main house. I’m in the dining room.”
Marco. “And the rest of his men at the property.”
“Yelena’s intel says six on site. Four guards, two lieutenants. Of the two, one is Stepan we’re turning. The other we deal with.”
The room is quiet.
Dante looks at the portfolio.
He looks at me.
“She gave you this three years ago.”
