Page 7 of Bride of Vengeance

If Pavel is alive, he'd need new resources to operate. New contacts. New ways to access federal databases and witness protection details.

And what better way to rebuild than to eliminate his enemies while framing them for crimes that destroy their credibility and relationships?

I pull out my secure laptop and begin cross-referencing names. Pavel's known associates against current FBI personnel involved in the Bratva task force. Looking for connections, overlaps, anyone who might have survived his apparent death and continued working for him.

Three hours later, I have a list of twelve possibles. Federal agents, prosecutors, and court officials who had contact with Volkov-linked operations before Pavel's supposed death, and that are now in positions to access witness protection details.

One name stands out.

Deputy Director Harrison Cole. Fifty-two years old, twenty-eight years with the Bureau, direct oversight of the organized crime task force. He was involved in several cases that intersected withVolkov operations, always in ways that seemed to benefit their interests.

More importantly, he's Mariana's direct supervisor. The man who assigned her to the Ghost case. The man who has access to her reports, her theories, her investigation timeline.

The man who would know exactly how to frame her for a witness leak.

Clever bastard.

My phone rings. Boris again, and from his tone I know he's found something that changes everything.

"Pavel Volkov," he says without greeting. "He's not dead."

"Explain."

"The explosion three years ago. Body was never recovered, remember? What we found was just fragments, pieces. But I've been tracking financial patterns. Shell companies, offshore accounts, property purchases. Someone with Pavel's resources and connections has been very busy. Building new networks, recruiting new personnel, planning something big."

"How big?"

"Big enough to require federal protection for key witnesses. Big enough to need Ghost eliminated as a threat. Big enough to destroy Alexei's legitimacy project from the inside."

The pieces fall into place with horrifying clarity. Pavel has been planning this for three years - using his apparent death as cover to rebuild himself both literally and figuratively, planning the perfect revenge against everyone who destroyed his family's empire.

And now he's ready to collect.

"Boris, I need you to do something else. Dig into Deputy Director Cole's finances. Look for any unusual deposits, offshore accounts, anything that suggests he's been taking money from organized crime sources."

"You think Cole is working for Pavel?"

"I think Pavel has been planning this for three years. The Ghost frame job, the witness killing, Mariana's career destruction - it's all connected. All designed to eliminate threats while discrediting the legitimacy movement."

"And Agent Castillo?"

I think about amber eyes wide with shock and fear. About the way she felt in my arms, soft and strong at the same time. About the lies she's probably telling herself right now about duty and justice and professional responsibility.

"Agent Castillo is the key to everything," I say. "Pavel wants her destroyed because she's effective. But he also wants her alive because she's the perfect weapon against Ghost."

"How so?"

"Think about it. The FBI agent who finally caught the phantom killer. The woman who brought down the most wanted man in the Bratva underworld. It's a perfect story; except she'll be catching the wrong man for the wrong crimes."

"Unless she figures out the truth first."

"Unless she figures out the truth first," I agree. "Which means I need to get to her before Roman does. Before his people convince her that cooperating is her only option."

I end the call and walk back to the windows. Manhattan glitters below me like a circuit board, all interconnected pathways and points of light. Somewhere down there, Mariana Castillo is trying to make sense of what happened tonight. Trying to reconcile the man who saved her life with the criminal she's been hunting.

She's probably in her apartment right now, pacing the hardwood floors of that converted loft in Brooklyn Heights I've seen in her surveillance files. Staring at her case wall, trying to make the pieces fit. Wondering if everything she thought she knew about Ghost is wrong.

It is wrong, little wolf. But not in the way you think.