Conflicted (Undercover #2) by Helena Newbury

still grinning at me, he said in Russian to Luka, “I’m serious, Luka. Get rid of her as soon as you get home.”
    I had to keep the stupid, dumb smile on my face even as I felt the hurt inside me swell. He hated me. Somehow, the fact he disliked me as a father, that I wasn’t good enough for his son, bothered me even more than the sniffing around comment. Stupid! As if this is any sort of normal relationship! As if you’re really his girlfriend!
    But Vasiliy’s distrust was a problem, too. I was going to have to be super-careful around him. Luka would give me the benefit of the doubt but Vasiliy wanted to think badly of me. The slightest hint that something was off about me and I’d be screwed.
    One the guards held his finger to his ear, listening to his earpiece, then nodded to Vasiliy.
    “They’re here,” said Vasiliy. “Let’s go.”
     
    ***
     
    The building we were in was an old factory of some kind—big, hulking machines and stacks of old cardboard cartons. We’d been waiting in what used to be the front offices. Now we moved through a door and onto the cavernous factory floor.
    A group of men approached. Wait...not a group, exactly. They kept their distance from one another, as if there was no trust between them. And they didn’t seem to have anything in common. Some of them were dressed like bikers, some of them like blue-collar workers and some of them in suits. And something was off. There was something familiar about their clothes, their attitude.
    “Okay,” said one of the bikers. “Let’s get this started.”
    Only he didn’t say it in Russian. He said it in English, with a broad Jersey accent.
    Vasiliy stepped forward and introduced himself, clasping hands and kissing cheeks. I listened to the men, memorizing their names. Every one of them was American and I heard accents from New York to California. I felt sick. The weapons I’d seen in the yacht’s hold were heading straight for my home country.
    “I want to thank you for making the trip,” said Vasiliy in English. “Some things are better discussed in person.”
    I remembered what Adam had said: that Vasiliy was the figurehead now and Luka ran the business. Vasiliy would have brokered this deal and persuaded all these men to fly out here and then drive God knows how many miles to wherever the hell we were, somewhere isolated and totally private. Vasiliy was the showman and the face they’d come to trust. But, now that the pleasantries were over, it was time for Luka.
    I’d grabbed Luka’s hand again as we stood there listening to his dad. Now he dropped it, looking at me almost apologetically. Then he walked forward and, suddenly, he was all business, the mask coming down. I felt my heart slowly icing over again as he reminded me, word by word, what he really was.
    The way things were done now, with big shipments of guns coming to America in cargo containers, was dangerous and costly, he explained. “One shipment is lost, and it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when the weapons do get into the country...what then? You still have to get them across several states to reach your customers. Every state border means another chance of getting caught.” He glanced at some of the bikers. “Paying off rival motorcycle clubs, bribing the police. It’s a mess.” He shook his head. “No more.”
    “We are going to do for guns what McDonalds did for hamburgers and what Starbucks did for coffee,” he said. He described a complex network of distribution, with legitimate, Russian-owned businesses trucking the guns across America to exactly where they were needed. “No more big deals,” he said. “A million small ones. Too small to track, too small to trace. If one shipment gets caught…”—he shrugged theatrically—”so what?”
    As I listened, my blood ran steadily colder. It wasn’t just the audacity of the plan he was outlining. It was the way he sounded just like his dad. Not quite as slick or polished as Vasiliy’s