Page 125 of Savage Don

“Did he not know why we were after him?” Leonid asks.

“I’m not sure he did,” Maksim responds. “Not at first, at least. He had his hands in so many honeypots that I’m surprised the old man could keep track of them all.”

“But he remembered everything about his involvement with the leaks?” I ask, my brows furrowing as I focus in.

This could be it, the lead I need to finally end this charade.

“I think so,” Maksim says. “But you know how guys like him are, you can never tell if they’re trying to remember something, or simply trying to come up with a convincing lie.”

“What does your gut say?” I ask.

“That he was telling the truth. There was too much going on for him to keep track of too many lies. Whoever he was working with wasn’t important enough to die for.”

My heart thumps in my chest at Maksim’s choice of words.

Whoever he was working with…

“He didn’t tell you who he was working with?”

To my disappointment, Maksim shakes his head. “Not for lack of trying. He was still desperately trying to remember the name when I saw airport security approaching. We had to get out of there.”

“Fucking hell,” I curse. “So, we still have no evidence that Domenico is our rat?”

“No,” Leonid responds for Maksim. “But we do know that he probably isn’t.”

Those words are like a punch to my gut. Hell, I nearly keel over from the force.

“What the fuck do you mean?” I mumble, grabbing onto the rail of Maksim’s hospital bed to keep myself from stumbling backwards.

It can’t be.

All of this time, my gut has been telling me that Domenico is directly involved. If he’s not, what does that say about me? Fuck. What does it say about my plan?

Francesca….

Has my obsession for her clouded my judgement?

“From what I remember, it didn’t sound like Artuzov was working with a man at all,” Maksim clarifies.

“You think Artuzov went rogue?” I ask confused, and still reeling from the shock of what I just heard.

“No,” Maksim quickly responds, shaking his head. “He was definitely working for someone. But it didn’t sound like a man was the one who was paying him for his services.”

“How the fuck do you figure that?” I ask, fists clenching as I force back all of my doubt and growing dread.

Stay focused, Byrne.

“Because Artuzov wasn’t being paid in cash,” Leonid says, an almost amused look coming over his princely face.

“What the hell was he being paid in?”

“Sex.”

Somehow, that revelation is even more unexpected than the last.

What the fuck is going on?

“Couldn’t Domenico have been sending him whores?” I choke through the growing panic. I’ve been following the wrong path this entire time, haven’t I?