Page 72 of The Bratva Betrayal

It still works on me a little.

He’s standing when I arrive, which means he's been here long enough to be restless, which means I'm not as early as I thought I was. He's wearing an immaculate charcoal suit that probably cost more than my first car.

He glances up when I enter and nods once.

"Artem."

"Benedikt.”

I drop into the chair across from his desk without waiting to be invited, mostly because he'd find it irritating if I stood there waiting like one of the foot soldiers. Getting under Benedikt’s skin in small doses is one of the few pleasures the job affords.

He sits, then folds his hands on the desk, and looks at me with the expression he uses when he wants information and has no interest in preamble.

"The Gallagher girl," he says flatly.

"What about her?”

"Where are we?”

"She's careful. Knows how to present. Misha's comfortable with her, which means he's not watching for anything she doesn't want him to see." I pause. "She's been running searches on Lucas Manifold, the task force expansion of his donor networks, and his public calendar. Her father is building something on that front."

"And the bratva? Has she found anything?"

"No."

That part is true.

Since I made myself an unavoidable fixture in her life, Cady Gallagher hasn't run a single search on Benedikt, our operations, or anything that would damage us. She's been too busy being furious with me to remember what she came here to do.

Benedikt studies me for a moment with dark, flat eyes that have unnerved better men than me. He's not suspicious; he's just thorough, and he applies the same attention to everything.

"She's a distraction," he says. “And I’m not a fan.”

“I understand.”

"The Gallagher family isn't subtle, but they're also not stupid." He stands, moving to the window, and I recognize the shift. He's transitioning from intelligence review to logistics, which means something's in motion that needs my attention. “Colin Gallagher has been building toward something for months. The Manifold connection is part of it. If he gets his people inside the task force structure, he controls who gets looked at and who doesn't. That's not just an Irish advantage; that's a direct threat to how we move."

"I know."

"Then you understand why I need his daughter handled before she becomes a liability."

Handled.

The word sits in the air between us for a moment.

"I'm on it," I say.

He turns from the window. "The Vitrenko shipment moves on Thursday. Rotterdam to the port. Same route, different contacts on the receiving end. The last rotation burned when Ilya's man talked, so I've restructured the chain." He moves back to his desk, pulls a folder, and slides it across to me. "Four new faces. I need them vetted before Wednesday night."

I take the folder. I'll go through it later, alone, where I can think. "Timeline's tight."

"Timelines are always tight." He says it without apology, because the concept of an inconvenient deadline has never once slowed Benedikt Volkov. "I need confirmation by Tuesday. If any of them have outside connections I don't know about, I want to know before the cargo is in the water, not after."

"Understood."

Satisfied, he closes the folder on his side of the desk. There's a brief lull, and then my phone buzzes in my jacket pocket.

Benedikt's eyes drop to my pocket for a second, and I pull out the phone.