Chapter 4

Paris, France

Sophia and Jen had barely exited the car when they heard a door off the underground garage fly open. Sophia smiled as one of her oldest and closest friends, Irina, practically jogged her way to them. The Russian-American heiress had her long blond hair piled in a knot on the top of her head, and she’d encased her lean model body in blue and white running leggings and a hoodie. Her green eyes were bright as she whooped with excitement. “We’ve already got more than we’ve had in months, and Jean Luc just pulled up at Élysée Palace!”

Jean Luc was at the French president’s residence.

Some of Sophia’s lingering anxiety fled at Irina’s excited greeting. When her friend pulled her into a tight hug, the rest melted away with the warmth. They hooked arms and headed to their “war room” through the door Irina had come through.

Sophia was safe in Irina’s house. No more watching for tails or keeping up a serene façade. There, in the company of those who knew her secrets and loved her despite her flaws—maybe because of them—she could simply be herself. She felt her lips curve at that thought. She only wished she could stay there longer than a few hours. Maybe hide out for a month or a year. No matter how burned out she got, she wouldn’t stop doing what they were doing. Her work mattered. The organization they’d built, along with a mercenary front, gave her a purpose she could actually be proud of. As a bonus, it had long since passed self-sustaining. Their investments had increased exponentially over the years. A zing of pride filled her for having personally cultivated many of those ventures.

They’d come a long way in the past eight years since she, Irina, and their friend Riot had witnessed the dark underbelly of their world and took up a cause they’d refused to relinquish. Her lips twitched as she remembered how incredibly idealistic and naive they’d been—young, but wise enough to have roped Riot’s dead brother’s best friend, Forde, into their big plans for bringing down a murderous Saudi prince.

She remembered meeting Forde. At the time, he’d been no more than an aristocratic playboy sailing through university on his family’s connections. Having his best friend’s sister and her teenage friends emotionally blackmail him had wiped away all that signature charm and replaced it with a resigned sense of horror. Nothing about getting him on board had been easy, but they’d done it.

Eight years later, all four of them brought something important to the table. They each held unique connections to the wealthiest and most corrupt members of society, and they all fostered public personas that made them appear unlikely threats to dangerous men and women doing bad deeds.

A princess, an heiress, and a rock star’s daughter walk into a bar… as Irina once irreverently joked after far too many drinks in university.

In reality, the three of them had been walking out of a pub that grizzly night.

Tensions had already been high as they’d slipped from the small local pub near their Swiss boarding school, La Couronne. The instant she and her friends exited the warm confines, they were hit with a blast of frigid air and a strong sense of foreboding. Then came a blast of icy wind, whipping Sophia’s hair against her cheeks, bringing the coppery stench of blood and death into her lungs.

Sometimes that scent came to her in her sleep, haunting her almost as much as the image of the boy crumpled in the blood-soaked snow, his swollen, vacant eyes staring up into the dark canopy of the wooded path leading back to the school. It had been the pub owner’s son, left like nothing more than garbage, dead leaves kicked over his beaten body.

Everything else about that night was hazy. Sophia barely remembered fighting Mischa, Irina’s loyal guard, as he ordered the three of them away from the crime scene. They’d cried and told him to do something, to call the authorities. Her stomach clenched with the memory of flashlights in the dark, and the heavier sense of fear that had nearly crushed her. It felt like hours passed before Mischa wrangled them into Irina’s dorm room and paced like a man possessed as he gave them a harsh lesson in reality. He’d been so furious that the lecture had been half in Russian, half in English.

They’d known who’d done it. It had been obvious even though they hadn’t seen it happen. The blatantly cruel Fahd, the Saudi prince from their school, had groped the dead boy’s young sister, and then the boys had nearly fought in the pub. She still remembered Fahd’s sinister smile as the prince said something to the boy that they couldn’t hear. The prince and his friends left. She and her friends had already felt uneasy around Fahd, so they stayed at the pub until it closed to avoid running into him.

If they hadn’t stayed so late, they might have prevented the boy’s murder. Or have been caught in the middle of it—three girls and Mischa against the prince, his security, and his friends.

Mischa had demanded they stop crying for justice. He emphasized the prince would never pay for the boy’s death, but they would pay if they spoke out against the Saudi. He spat those words over and over, attempting to drill it into their horrified minds. He cursed and barked at them for hours and said they had not seen the prince kill the boy, so they would do nothing. Then he laid out what he believed would happen next and demanded they watch and wait.

The events that followed proved Mischa right. It seemed the dean of the school had been paid well for the cover-up, a fact they’d uncovered after breaking into his office. They’d learned a great deal the night Riot had cracked the safe into Dean Chadwick’s office. They’d found his secret ledger—an accounting of bad deeds covered up by the school. Two decades of “services” had been accounted for in that leather-bound tome.

It had codes Sophia and the others deciphered easily enough. Descriptions of “Excessive Grounds Damages,” “After Hours Concierge Services,” and “Courtesy Public Relations and Legal Document Fees” all indicated cover-up services. In Fahd’s case, the dean had paid off the authorities and had “cleaners” stage the scene and eliminate evidence. All the fees for that night totaled upward of two million dollars, all seemingly paid to the school by the Saudi family, if the “paid in full” notation had been correct.

Not all the accounting notations had been about students committing crimes. Some were about security breaches that had to be cleaned up. Children of the wealthy were often targets for ransom. Elite families paid a great deal to La Couronne to have extreme security features and rooms for the children’s private guards, should the family wish to send their own protection details, as Sophia’s and Irina’s families had done.

Most of the students learned their way around the tight security for trips to the pub and likewise, but private guards were constantly around, most turning a blind eye to whatever their charges were doing. The overall sentiment being that as long as the kids were breathing, they’d done their jobs.

That ledger and the events that led them to the dean’s safe changed their lives.

They hadn’t gone to the authorities.

The local boy’s death and their sleuthing had cemented the fact that some of the elite had too much power and protection to confront directly. They hadn’t been completely naïve, even at sixteen. They’d each had their own family skeletons to drive home what they’d learned. If they hadn’t done something in their world, who else would have?

Taking down Fahd had been their first act of justice, but not their last. Between their ledger marks, they’d taken mercenary jobs no one else would touch. She hated taking so much time between ledger jobs, but destroying the powerful took a lot of preparation, and those activities couldn’t be linked back to them.

What truly made her edgy was that Jean Luc seemed to be a different breed than the other upper crust they’d taken down. The half dozen other marks had flaunted their untouchable status and were arrogant in their abuse of power. But if Jean Luc’s name hadn’t been in that ledger, they might never have known to delve deeply into his life.

“What’d you find out?” Sophia asked as she, Irina, and Jen stepped into a semi-dark room full of glass monitors and sound equipment. The screens of bright-blue and crimson lettering and audio waves partially illuminated the space, which was occupied by the two other people she’d been expecting to see. In the far corner, Lauren, Irina’s personal assistant, had her long legs curled under her as she chomped on a sandwich, which was probably the reason for the bacon smell in the room.

“About time you got here,” Lauren said, spinning in the office chair with a mouthful of food.

Jen headed in Lauren’s direction, likely to use the computer console next to Lauren’s to access the hotel’s security feeds for any clue about who’d potentially followed them. That thought sent a wave of renewed unease through Sophia, but she leashed it. No use worrying when she didn’t have enough information to do anything about it.

James sent a hand up without even looking away from his monitor. The guy’s thick, short dreadlocks were squashed by the massive headphones he wore, and his fingers glided masterfully over the keys.

Irina explained, “We started having trouble with the audio quality when Jean Luc got to Élysée Palace. James thinks it’s probably white-noise equipment since we’re talking about the president’s home. It will definitely test the limits of the new microtech bug. We’re just waiting to hear what’s going on.”

Others on their teams would be resting, guarding the grounds, or monitoring Jean Luc’s movements, so it was just the five of them in the war room. Confident of their privacy and security, Sophia pulled off her wig and rolled her neck. It felt good to let the long waves free until she had to don the disguise again.

The war room was slightly warmer than the garage, with all the electronics packed into the space. She sank into the nearest leather office chair as Irina spoke. There was a spark of excitement in the heiress’s green eyes as she relayed the information.

“The club music didn’t drown out Jean Luc. That’s the good news. Better was what he was doing with the Belgian.” A French politician meeting a Belgian diplomat wasn’t suspicious. The two countries were well connected with trade. Nothing about that would have seemed out of place, yet meeting in a loud club was a good way to mess with sound and listening devices. Even if Jean Luc had been swept for bugs, their new gadget wasn’t supposed to ping. Its technologically advanced manufacturer boasted it as being essentially undetectable and small enough that even a pat down wasn’t likely to uncover it. They paid for the best and latest devices, and often enough, Riot or James tweaked even that equipment.

“What were they talking about at the club?”

“We caught only Jean Luc’s words clearly through the background. James is planning to go back through and sift for more, so we’ll have to wait. What we do know is that Jean Luc gave the man something with ‘the information requested by a mutual friend’ of some sort, and there was mention of a transfer to some account.”

Irina’s voice had risen with excitement on the last words. They’d had very little to go on before, just records of a body disposal in Jean Luc’s dorm room when he would have been seventeen, attending La Couronne, as she, Irina and Riot had, only at a much earlier year. Sophia would have been a toddler when Jean Luc was a teenager at that school.

The ledger never contained the full details of any event, so they had no idea who died in that room or how it happened, but Jean Luc’s family paid for the clean-up, which said a lot. It had apparently been a death no one witnessed, as there were no initials in the margins. The dean liked to add initials of witnesses in the margins—or so it seemed after a great deal of poring over Fahd’s accounting. Aside from that, they had nothing on Jean Luc. The dean’s thorough cover-up made finding the body impossible, even if years hadn’t passed.

“Did you already call in a team to see what he gave the Belgian?” Sophia asked. Someone would need to get their hands on the document to see if it incriminated Jean Luc in any way. All they had was a two-decade-old vague ledger notation, some ex-employees that had gone missing in the last five years, and a likely dead property owner who’d conveniently disappeared after signing over land he hadn’t wanted to part with. The cover-ups spoke of more, but without details, they’d have to keep digging or possibly move to the next mark on the list.

“Yes. Kate’s team is on it. They’re going to get a look without the Belgian knowing.” Kate was good, and she had two other women on her team the Belgian wouldn’t be able to resist.

“Drugging him?” Sophia asked.

“I told Kate it was dealer’s choice as long as the Belgian doesn’t know he’s been had.” The groups they employed were diverse in skills. The heads of their three teams had personal history with Irina’s dead mother. If not for them, Sophia and her friends wouldn’t have been able to do what they were doing. Their people were loyal, paid extremely well, and had their own reasons for doing what they did. It worked. If it hadn’t, they might all have been dead by now.

“Nothing yet?”

“No. But I’m sure we’ll hear soon. We couldn’t tell what Jean Luc meant by ‘information,’ and he didn’t explain.”

“Too bad we can’t drug and interrogate the diplomat to see what Jean Luc gave him,” Jen muttered from her spot in front of a computer console. If only truth serums were really accurate like in the movies, Sophia thought to herself.

“Too risky. We’ve technically got nothing on him yet. Aside from the ledger notes, weak connections to missing people, and a few rumors Cade and the others got about Jean Luc’s reputation in the smuggling world,” Irina pointed out, frustration clear in the frown marring her face.

Cade was one of their top operatives and had some good connections. He had opted to push harder on their investigation into the minister of foreign affairs, even though nothing seemed to be coming up. Her gut, especially after her interaction with him tonight, said his skeletons were merely buried deeper than the marks before him.

After months, they were all starting to get edgy. Placing the bug had been risky, but they hoped something would come out of the late-night meeting with Jean Luc and the president of France, his interactions with the Belgian, or even some hint he gave a member of his house staff. They should hear all of that with the bug.

They’d long ago formed a system for taking down these kinds of men. The first step wasn’t generally quite this painstaking and time intensive. Intel gathering was where they learned all the bad deeds and all the players, as well as where all the money was hidden.

In the second step, they stripped the mark of protection. Finding out why they were protected was imperative in deciding how to take it all away.

In the third step, James hacked in and commandeered as much money out of whatever hidden accounts they could find, accounts that would never or could never be reported. Sometimes they’d also stage thefts of valuables, like jewels and artwork. Sophia wouldn’t say they were doing it for completely altruistic purposes, but they’d managed a very covert restitution plan to help some of the victims’ families along with bankrolling their operation. Not only did those funds pay their operatives, but it also left the mark without the ability to buy his or her way out of trouble after the last step—getting the evidence to the authorities.

“So we don’t know who their mutual friend is either? What about the account?”

“It was hard to tell by the words. Video would have been helpful. He didn’t give account numbers, so it could be they’ve transfer money back and forth before, or the ‘information’ he handed over might have noted it. So unless James can get some of that information from the audio, who knows if it’s even relevant,” Irina noted. “Still, it’s something to go on.”

James cursed. “This audio in the president’s home is just getting more distorted. I had far higher hopes for this bug. It’s mostly static. I don’t even know if I can clean this shit up.”

He spun in his chair while whipping off his headphones. “I’m going to let it record a while before I mess with it.” Sophia felt the frustration humming in the hacker’s words. He scraped a tattooed hand over the short beard covering his deep chocolate cheeks.

“So it’s a bust?” Sophia asked, hoping that wasn’t the case.

“With the president? Probably.”

“You don’t think they found it?” Sophia’s heart raced at the thought. Jean Luc was too cautious when dealing with people, and he was smart. He would remember anyone who touched him at the club that night, not that anyone would generally suspect her, but something about Jean Luc set her on edge more than usual.

James gave a shrug. “Won’t know until he leaves the palace. You did good getting it on him, though.”

“Thanks.”

Jean-Luc could still discover the bug when he took off the coat, if it was still there. It was so tiny that she doubted it, but until they had the equipment back, she would be on edge. Jean Luc’s valet sent out the minister’s highly expensive suits to a special private cleaner. The device would be covertly removed while en route to the cleaner during the early hours of the morning by the driver they’d put in place. They could be grateful the minister was very particular about his things, which made this one habit work to their advantage. Tailing him and following his accounts had led nowhere.

“It’ll be fine,” Irina said with a supportive grin.

Sophia leaned her chair back before changing the subject to something else. “Since Mischa’s not here, are you going to tell me your latest plans to get to Boris?” she asked, knowing it was a sore subject. But she was worried. Irina had gotten into an exclusive sex club in Paris to learn about a mark that was very personal to the heiress. The operation was tied to Irina’s mother and had been kept secret from Mischa, Irina’s childhood bodyguard and father figure. Mischa wanted her to stop digging into the past, but she wouldn’t… or more like couldn’t. Cade, head of their most skilled team, was helping.

If Mischa found out, heads would roll. The gruff Russian, with scars and a weathered, beaten face that spoke of his early years as an interrogator of sorts, worried for Irina. The old bodyguard didn’t speak of his past, but they all knew Irina’s mother had been the one who’d promoted him to watch over Irina. There was a great deal of loyalty and mystery surrounding her mother’s life and death. “I will get to Boris. I’m just biding my time,” Irina bit out. The heiress had gotten close to the man twice, only to have been carted out of potential danger by an ex-smuggler who’d started playing “knight in shining armor” for some unknown reason.

“I need to deal with that damned smuggler, and I’m debating how to do it.” Before she could say any more, a familiar ringtone sounded. Sophia’s lips twitched while Irina muttered, mostly to herself, “He is so damned impatient!”

The heiress answered as she stood. “I don’t know any more yet, Mischa. The meeting’s audio is too distorted.” Irina shook her head as everyone tried not to laugh. James smirked knowingly as he positioned the headphones back over his short dreadlocks.

Irina started to pace as she chastised her childhood bodyguard. “Stop worrying. You’re supposed to be resting.” Several beats went by as Irina listened, lips pursed. Sophia shared grins with Lauren and Jen. Irina was getting lectured; they could see that in the way the heiress’s head fell back so she could stare at the ceiling while shaking her head. Sophia was close enough to hear the heavy Russian accent on the other end of the phone.

Lauren whispered, “Mischa is losing his mind, being stuck in LA.”

In boarding school, it had been Mischa who’d forced them to learn anything he felt they might need to protect themselves when he wasn’t watching over them, all the while grumbling about not trusting others to do the job.

That was how Sophia had become such an adept climber. He’d always been paranoid and protective of Irina, but Sophia had been grateful he’d extended that to Sophia and Riot, as well.

She hated that the big brute was recovering from surgery in the States. He was everything a father should be. She would have liked to see him, but then again, she didn’t have to live with him.

They all chuckled when Irina switched from placating English to a rapid-fire Russian.

Sophia had studied Russian as one of her languages but not because she was obsessed with a certain Russian. Or so she told herself.

It seemed Irina was turning the tables, demanding he stop lecturing her and complaining about her aunt’s cooking. She snapped at the old Russian about being nicer to the people who were only trying to care for him.

“Those two.” Lauren laughed, her wheat-blond hair skimming her shoulders as she shook her head.

Soon, her friend calmed her tirade and ended the call.

“Is he okay now?” Jen asked. “I find it hard to believe he hasn’t been laid up before.”

Irina sighed. “He’s been shot and had some other minor injuries through the years that I know of, but it’s been a while, and he’s getting close to fifty now. Let’s just say he’s less than pleased with the doctors’ orders, and he hates being taken care of. He’ll be fine as long as he calms down. If not, I won’t rule out Aunt Olenka bashing his head with one of her giant pots. That’s what I’m most worried about. I’ve been getting almost hourly texts from her the whole damned week.”

Olenka was Irina’s self-assigned cook, which was amusing since the woman had grown up wealthy, with her own cook. She was learning via the internet and cooking shows. The woman quite frankly scared Sophia. In truth, Olenka scared most of them. The aging woman had the regal bearing of a queen, was hard as a rock, and could wither a person with a single glance. She swore servants could not be trusted if Irina insisted on doing this “infuriating” dangerous work. As Irina was unwilling to stop, Olenka had taken it upon herself to deal with the few servants allowed to clean at the mansion in America, but she insisted on cooking herself. The woman had her reasons for being so protective, and no one crossed her on them, except maybe Mischa.

The lingering frustration on Irina’s face made Sophia’s lips twitch.

“Don’t you dare laugh,” Irina groused.

“I’m sure they’ll be okay.”

“We can hope.”

Out of pity for Irina, Sophia changed the subject. “Jean Luc is scheduled to attend at least one of the charity functions I’ll be at while in London next week. I know I need to tread carefully, but I can only avoid him so much without it seeming suspicious. What I don’t like is that his interest was more… disturbing than usual tonight.”

“Avoid that fucker as much as you can,” James pointed out, hearing her even with the headphones on. “The more you’re seen with him, the riskier it is.”

“I know. I’ll do what I can.” If they were going to be in the same place at the same time, it would look odd if she tried too hard to avoid the man. With social media and cameras everywhere, it was key not to deviate from her normal. When all was said and done, people would scour every interaction Jean Luc had with anyone.

Jen got up from her computer and leaned on James’s desk. “I need you to hack into whatever surveillance cameras are around these intersections.” The guard handed him a note.

“What’s that about?” Irina asked.

Jen proceeded to tell the room at large about their potential tails.

James frowned. “There aren’t many businesses in that area, but I’ll sure as hell see what I can do.”

“You had a tail tonight and didn’t say that first?” Irina’s eyes narrowed before she hit Sophia’s shoulder with just enough force to send her and the office chair rolling several inches to the left. If the punch hadn’t told her, her friend’s hurt look would have clued Sophia in to her mistake. Irina was worried.

At Sophia’s glare, Jen calmly covered. “They didn’t follow us long, if they were looking for Sophia at all. Nothing on the hotel’s outer surveillance cameras showed anything I didn’t suspect.”

Sophia rubbed the renewed ache in her temples as James, Lauren, and Irina all listened to Jen’s detailed report on her interaction with Viktor at the club. The only men who seemed to show up in the video feeds in the hotel parking garage were Viktor’s, at least within an hour’s time frame of her exit.

“The Russian’s men got into a couple of dark SUVs maybe five or ten minutes before the camera showed us leaving. The cars fit, but dark SUVs aren’t uncommon,” Jen admitted.

“If they left first, they may have just gotten off duty,” Sophia offered, though her heart rate had kicked up.

“Or they were placing themselves in a location to better tail us.”

With mounting dread, Sophia grudgingly nodded. “That would indicate they saw me climbing the wall.”

Jen gave her a pointed look. “If it was them, and if they saw you climb, I didn’t see them. But it turns out Mr. Popov’s suite has a window with a potential view to your balcony.”

A chorus of curses rang out as Sophia’s heart stilled.