Lie to Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

Vasily. We shall be intimately acquainted before the night is through.”
    As Alexei sat, he couldn’t stop a frown. “Is she willing? Did you
ask
?” He refused to force himself on a woman.
    Saeed chuckled. “I care for her. If she had protested, I would be offering you other choices.”
    Another way of saying no, he hadn’t asked. Very well. Alexei would play it by ear. He didn’t need to fuck the woman to accomplish this mission. It had merely been the quickest, easiest option to get a little time alone with her and catch Saeed with his guard down. If she resisted anything tonight, Alexei would find an alternate solution. Even if it meant spending more time in this godforsaken city.
    “So, these connections you possess. Tell me of them.” Suddenly serious, Saeed’s smile vanished and his demeanor took on the impassive air of business.
    Alexei settled into the role he knew by heart. He’d done it too long. Let it get inside him, where it festered. Now it was ingrained routine. One he hated, but routine all the same. “The women are collected from private nightclubs where their…skills…are evaluated through their talent with dance.” Careful to adhere to Saeed’s preference to somehow dignify the act of trading women for sex, Alexei did his best to avoid the blunt truth that strippers were chosen by how thoroughly they aroused the crowd.
    “And they are all blonde?”
    “They were under your father’s direction.”
    Saeed frowned. “I suspect there was a reason for such. Did he convey it to you?”
    Alexei forced a grim smile. “American businessmen, tired of being away from home, spend money for women who
appear
to be American. European will work as well. After all, they are not required to talk, are they?”
    He couldn’t keep the bitterness down. Worse than the trafficking itself was the fact he had been integral to it. That he had preyed on trust, drugged the unsuspecting like Irina, and transported them to a despicable fate. All the while, he had fed them heroin to keep them subservient, to hook them so they only cared about their next fix, not what the revolving door of strangers wanted from them. Even all the risks he took to restore their lives, to get them treatment for their addictions, couldn’t absolve his actions, even if they were in the name of national security.
    His hand tightened on his glass, and he set it aside before he snapped the stem in two. As it always did, the thought of Irina and the likely fate she had met twisted his heart. He’d tried like hell to keep her out of his mind. Even went so far as to try to forget her for severalmonths by living life at the bottom of a glass. Nothing worked. She was a canker that wouldn’t heal.
    He’d betrayed the only woman who had ever provoked his dead emotions.
    “I suppose not.” Saeed looked like the admission didn’t sit well with him either. Then he shrugged, as if it weren’t something to concern himself with. As if this business of human trafficking and sexual slavery was apart from him. Even when he owned and enjoyed one of those very same women. “And Moscow’s
Bratva
—they are stable enough to relaunch this venture?”
    Not hardly.
“Yes. I have spoken with them directly. They are willing to put their trust in you.”
    “I find that difficult to believe in light of all the upheaval concerning my father.”
    Alexei chuckled. “Why should they care? No one will miss a stripper. Money is power. Power is influence.”
And sex goes hand in hand with both.
How well he knew that truth.
    “You make a good point.” Saeed nodded thoughtfully. “Very well, when this night is concluded, what are our next steps?”
    There wouldn’t
be
any next steps. With Dmitri Gavrikov’s arrest, the
Bratva
was in chaos trying to decide their next permanent leader. Several key figureheads were in detention, and every last person involved with the human trafficking ring was either dead or behind bars. This was all an elaborate fiction