Devin: A Romantic Suspense (V Mafia Series Book 2)

by Karice Bolton

  “Why are you trembling?” His low voice reverberated through me, sending a hum through my entire body.

  “I didn’t know I was.”

  His beautiful gaze penetrated mine, and I was completely aware of everything I was feeling. Every emotion, all the uncertainty, and the sheer frustration of being able to do absolutely nothing in a situation like this weighed on me to the point of being paralyzing.

  If it was true that an agent had murdered Jenn and wanted me next, it blurred the lines even more that I’d worked so hard at staying on the right side of. My shoulders sank in defeat. I wanted out, but I was stuck.

  Officers couldn’t just walk off a job. I had nowhere to go, and even if I did, it would raise suspicion with the Volkovs.

  They’d find me.

  “Avery, I’m sorry for being a dick today.” He shoved his fingers through his dark hair. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind, and I didn’t want to drag you into any of it until I had all the answers I needed.” He let go of me. “Here, I want to show you something.”

  I glanced around the conference room before following him out the door, back to the reception area. His hands slid over the leather portfolio he’d brought with him.

  “What did you want to show me?” I asked as he unfastened the snaps.

  He pulled out several pieces of paper and set them on my table, motioning for me to come over and take a look.

  Images of a horrible wreck were scattered all over my desk. I didn’t recognize the car, but I’d guess whoever was inside didn’t make it out.

  I leaned over the photos, noticing where the fire department clamped on and cut through with the jaws of life.

  “They had to extract the body. That much is obvious.” I glanced up at Devin. “But why are you showing me this?”

  “This car belonged to the man who killed your father.”

  The air was knocked out of me and a chill coated my skin as I blinked in confusion.

  “What?” I stared at him in shock as my world spun out of control.

  “It’s over. He’s gone, and you don’t have to worry about him ever hurting another family like he did yours.”

  “I don’t understand.” I shook my head. “How did you find this out? When did it happen?”

  “It happened yesterday.” He began collecting the photos.

  “I—” I stopped and looked at him. “You—” I twisted my lips into scowl. “Yesterday?”

  “As chance would have it, yes. He hit a patch of black ice on US-30N.” He held a secretive smile at bay. “Too bad his brakes didn’t work.”

  The words hung in the air as I felt a new emotion begin to swim through my veins. The sensation was so new I could barely fathom what I was feeling.

  “Life isn’t always black and white, is it?” I took a photo of the wreck from Devin’s hands and clung to it.

  Peace. The emotion was peace, and I had Devin Volkov to thank.

  “Not the good kind of living.” Devin shoved the others in the shredder, and I silently listened to the hum of the machine.

  I’d spent so many years hating this man who’d been granted the gift of life while my dad was six feet under that I didn’t know what to do with this news. I honestly didn’t know how to feel. The only emotion I recognized was one that made very little sense.

  Gratitude.

  “It won’t take the pain away.” Devin shook his head. “But it does end one horrific chapter. Now, it’s up to you to begin the next exactly how you want.”

  I drew in a shaky breath, knowing nothing in my life would be easy going forward, and nodded in agreement. I wanted to say thank-you, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t like that, and I couldn’t read Devin’s expression one way or another. I mean, do you thank a person for something like this? It seemed better unsaid.

  “But Avery?”

  My eyes darted to his.

  “Do me a favor and don’t read too much into anything you saw tonight. I mean anything.” He leaned over, placing a soft kiss on my cheek before stepping back and motioning for the door. “Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Devin

  “The Lieutenant says Avery’s story checks out completely,” Jaxson revealed, leaning over his desk to grab a note. He placed this piece of paper in front of him, and I traded nervous looks with Drake. Neither of us had expected that news to start this morning’s meeting. Drake had just gotten back from Miami with huge news, yet here we were discussing Avery.

  “Her father was a police officer killed in the line of duty. His killer roams free. Got off on a technicality.”

  “Well, technically—” Blake began, unable to keep the news to himself. He’d had a hand in the planning, so I didn’t blame him. Going from professional soccer player to mobster looked pretty good on him.

  “Technically what?” Jax interrupted, bringing his eyes to meet Blake’s.

  “Technically, he’s not still roaming the streets.” Blake glanced in my direction. “There was this horrible storm, wicked temps, black ice, and the guy ran off the road.”

  Jaxson squeezed the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh.

  “For the good of the universe.” His brow arched and he lifted his head and continued to read from the list. “The Lieutenant says she has no current—and never has had any—affiliation with any law enforcement agency, other than volunteering back in Idaho during high school, possibly junior high, at the local police department. Her mother has been MIA since Avery was small. She has a younger brother she doesn’t know about, but he’s been in and out of jail since he turned eighteen.”

  My insides squeezed at that bit of information, but relief filtered through me as the other news settled around me.

  It also made me feel like a real dick for the way I’d been treating her. She’d been through so much and I’d started to doubt her, let that agent get into my head.

  “She was a communications major.” Jax looked up from his note. “Relieved?”

  My brows shot up and I shrugged my answer. I wanted to feel like the weight of the world had been lifted, but I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that quite yet. I had to be careful. Not to mention, I knew she wasn’t a communications major.

  “It’s written all over your face.” He clicked his pen and glanced at Blake. “Don’t get too relaxed. We won’t know for a few days whether she took the bait or not. I’d like to believe the Lieutenant has our back, considering how much we pay out, but we all know how that goes.”

  My chest tightened, and I glanced out the window. Jax had few pleasures in life, but one of the joys for him was setting traps and watching people stumble right into them. Usually, I enjoyed watching the elaborate methods he’d employ while people’s worlds unraveled all around them.

  Not this time.

  I didn’t want to believe that Avery wasn’t who she said she was, but I’d learned long ago that there were very few in life a person could trust. Seeing the relief flood through her when I told her that her father’s killer had been taken care of was genuine. There was no faking that look.

  Hell, I didn’t believe there were any emotions Avery faked with me, which was what made being around her so difficult. When I was with her, I thought about getting away, and when I was without Avery, all I thought about was getting to be with her. I knew what I really wanted with her wasn’t in the cards. I wasn’t capable of giving her what she needed, but it didn’t lessen my desire to be with her.

  “Earth to Devin,” Jax said, cracking a smile.

  “I hear you.”

  “So you agree then?”

  “Fine. I missed what you said.” I shifted in my seat.

  “The information on the manifests would send the authorities straight to the Sokolovs’ next shipment. I think that could be a fun catch to witness, but I don’t think it’s the best idea to send you.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I think you’re not the most impartial right now.”

  “Wha
t’s there to be impartial about? Either squad cars surround the Sokolovs’ shipping container or they don’t, but whatever.” I waved my hand at Jax. “I’ve never given you any reason to question my loyalty. If Avery’s not who she claims, all bets are off. You know that’s what we believe, no matter who gets in our way.”

  I didn’t need to mention his ex-wife. It was silently said.

  “I hope for Avery’s sake, she’s exactly who she says, but it would be kind of fun to watch more members of the Sokolovs go down.” Blake let out a sigh and glanced out the window.

  To say the rivalry between the Volkovs and Sokolovs had slowed would be a lie. There was a quiet truce amongst us, but it was fragile at best. The Sokolovs had been quiet players in the arms distribution channels set up at the local port authority for years. However, it was their inability to control members of their organization that was most troublesome. We didn’t have that issue in our family, which was partly why we were all still alive.

  “I want Blake to be at the Port on Sunday.” Jax gave a pointed stare. “Document everything you see.”

  “Sure.” Blake nodded and slid me a sideways glance.

  “That’s fine,” I agreed.

  My stomach tightened into a thick knot. I honestly didn’t want to be there.

  “Now, on to what we’ve all been waiting for.” Jax stood and rubbed his hands together before going to grab a bottle of water. “Anyone else want one?”

  “I’ll take one.” I raised my hand while Drake opened a padded envelope and shook out the weapon we’d all been waiting for.

  More of these devices were on the way, but we wanted to ensure we could get the first one over here with flying colors. This wasn’t the first shipment we’d managed to pull through Miami, but the first package was a decoy. Next week was my turn to pick it up.

  While the Sokolovs were bogging down in the arms trade, we were ten steps ahead, getting our hands on a new kind of weapon, one that we not only wanted to use, but we wanted to break.

  Drake picked up the device that was no bigger than the tip of his thumb.

  “A new era.” Jax smiled and took a seat, sliding me the bottle of water. “This little piece can locate and tap into up to fifteen thousand analog and digital devices over one surface area. Our interest is mainly cellular devices. It even intercepts voice and text data, but I’ve heard it can also crack routers and hardware firewalls just by mere proximity. We’ll know soon enough.”

  And this little gadget was what gave me the idea for my own project.

  “Things just keep getting tinier and tinier.” Blake shook his head and took the device from Drake. “Soon, our phones will be the size of a Tic Tac.”

  Blake set it on the desk. “What is it they’re charging for that?”

  “A quarter mil,” Jax answered. “Which, as we all know, means we can charge double when all’s said and done. The money isn’t in coming up with these gadgets. It’s in coming up with ways to destroy their effectiveness.”

  “Joel is getting an excellent team together.” I glanced at Jax, who nodded in agreement.

  Each shipment contained a different type of device that my brother was determined to hack, and with our tech savvy people in place, it was only a matter of time. And only a little longer after that when the government comes knocking on our door for our technology, which always meant more money and more favors.

  “So, since we’re on the topic of gadgetry.” I sat back in the chair and waited for Jax’s attention to reappear. He’d turned to answer an email and I stayed silent.

  “What?” Jax asked.

  “I’ve been working on something that will help us manage things a lot more fluently and from far away.”

  “When has that ever been an issue?” Jax asked.

  “Well, considering I’m the one dashing from place to place in the middle of the night, checking on drop-offs, pick-ups, and running any interference when necessary, I’d say it’s an issue after midnight every night. There is a better way that offers a veil between—”

  Jax cut me off. “You’d rather be in bed tucked under the covers?” He stood and rested his palms on his desk. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  The longer I worked with Jax, the more I disliked him. Granted, his behavior changed once he got divorced. Pre-divorce, he was a lot of fun.

  “Nope. Not saying that at all.” I pressed my lips together and let his insult slide right off. “I just don’t see putting myself or any of my brothers in the crosshairs. We’ve been lucky so far.”

  “It’s not luck.”

  “Anyone who doesn’t believe in luck is asking for trouble, but I’m not here to argue about that with you. It’s getting riskier out there. I trust our men, but they run into a lot of thugs and possible police interference every night, and that will always create a vulnerability. Sure, we have a lot of them in our pockets, but there’s always the one hero in the bunch to screw it up.”

  “That’s part of the job. There are inherent risks to running the streets.” A wicked grin spread across Jax’s expression. “We’re known as the Wolf Brothers for a reason. We rip apart anyone who gets in our way.” He straightened up. “If we’re not there in the flesh to enforce the rules—”

  “Not true.” I took a sip of the water. “Burying our heads in the sand and pretending that we don’t have vulnerabilities with the system in place is begging for trouble.”

  “I don’t want to waste any time or resources on something that is working perfectly fine. We don’t need to run our business from the comforts of our couch.”

  “I think we should listen to what he thinks is such a hot idea.” Drake stood and walked over to grab himself a water. “Then shut him down afterward.”

  Jax laughed. “Point taken.”

  “The good news is that I’ve already done several test cases, and with Joel’s help, I fine-tuned the device a bit.”

  “Excuse me?” Jax clenched his jaw.

  “Yeah. About a year ago, I began pouring my own money into something to keep me out of prison. Go figure.”

  “The chance of any of us landing in prison is small,” Jax countered.

  “But not impossible,” Blake said, shaking his head. “Why do you think I kicked a ball around on the field for as long as I could? Behind this rough exterior lies a tender vittle.”

  My brothers laughed and I felt the tension in the air lift slightly.

  “When we started feeling around these new devices about a year ago, I realized they didn’t just need to be used for destruction. We could use them to warn our men if there’s fuzz in the vicinity of any of their pick-up points.”

  Jax looked at the device on his desk. “Those cover a lot of ground, but with as much territory as we have, we’d need one every few blocks.”

  “Exactly. That’s why Joel and I have been working on a gadget that taps into the existing network the city already provides.”

  Jax’s eyes tapered on me as if I were speaking a foreign language. “Too much risk. If the authorities or city workers find—”

  “Not gonna happen. It’s impossible. The device depends more on the software than anything. What is it that every street corner in the city has available?”

  A sardonic smile spread across Jax’s lips and I rolled my eyes. “Besides that.”

  “Traffic lights,” Blake answered.

  “Yup.” I nodded, feeling an excitement I hadn’t felt for a long time. “Joel and I developed software and the device that will run it that taps into the city’s traffic lights, and the signals allow us to intercept calls, scramble messages, and end calls so if our men get an alert that there are cops in the area, they get a heads-up and wait to pick up or deliver until after they leave.”

  “Seems like it would be costly.”

  “The initial startup was,” I agreed. “But I value my freedom enough to front all the costs.”

  “I don’t know.” Jax shook his head. “Mama V isn’t going to go for this.”

  I hid
a smile. “The other part of this technology is that we can track all of our men. If they say they were somewhere and they weren’t, we’ll be able to tell. If they run into a problem that requires our assistance, we’ll be able to locate them in under thirty seconds, and these uses are just the tip of the iceberg. The best part is the software has been programmed to recognize communication from all law enforcement agencies. We’ll be able to zero in on when we’re mentioned. It allows us to stay one step ahead.”

  “And you covered for all the development costs?”

  “And then some.” I tilted my chin up, feeling good about my explanations.

  “The best part of this deal is if anyone catches on, all the data leads to a cloud server in Russia. There is no way to track the devices, software, data encryption codes, or anything, back to us.”

  “What are the weaknesses?”

  “Very few. The biggest will be getting our men to accept being tracked. It essentially violates a person’s civil liberties, but I assume once they start working for us, they don’t have those any longer if they want to stay out of prison. Or we just slip it to them.”

  Blake snickered.

  “We had a few thugs out there not affiliated with us who were into drugs too deep and provided themselves free of charge as the perfect guinea pigs.”

  Jax knitted his brows together. “Yeah? How’d that work?”

  “I had one of our guys supply them with a made-up drug called a Betty. It was just the normal ecstasy they already took, but I dropped in our tracker in the center of the pill.”

  “How big is the pill?” Drake asked, astonished.

  “It’s not how big the pill is, it’s how little the tracker is. It’s the size of a grain of rock salt. When it’s swallowed, it lodges into the intestinal lining.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. So, I’ve been able to test the GPS in conjunction with the devices we installed at the traffic lights.”

  “You expect our men to swallow a tracking device?”

  “When they find out it’s for their own safety, I don’t think they’ll have a problem doing it.”