Page 71 of The Wrong Monster

We stare at one another, neither of us willing to concede the floor. Which is ridiculous, since he’s the one being kept behind bars. I’m the one here to save his ass.

For someone facing years in prison, he’s remarkably calm.

“Do you regret working for him?”

“Which part?”

“Vasily. Knowing where some of the money comes from.”

He leans back slightly, unnervingly calm for someone so young and in such dire straits. Not that he’s young, necessarily, because he’s older than me, but younger than his boss. I know from the Deep Waters documents I’ve been combing through that Vasily is forty-eight; surprising, given how much stamina he has. Mikhail must be somewhere between us, too young to go to prison for the rest of his life, but old enough to know better.

“Do you believe the companies you worked for before me were honest?”

“That’s not relevant.”

“It is to me.” His voice remains mild. “Before Deep Waters, I worked for three Fortune 500 companies. Very respectable businesses. Very legitimate.” He makes quotation marks with his fingers. “Do you know what they did?”

I don’t answer, feeling annoyance and anger starting to bottleneck inside me.

“They buried environmental violations. They manipulated financial reports to protect executive bonuses. They laid off thousands of people while executives awarded themselves compensation packages worth more than most towns earn in a year.”

I shift in my chair. “That doesn’t excuse the choice you made.”

“No.” He doesn’t argue, which catches me off guard. My eyes narrow.

“I made a choice,” he continues. “I chose money over morality. I won’t pretend otherwise. But don’t tell me legality and morality are the same thing.”

I close my notebook. I want to disagree, but I can’t.

Outside the courtroom, I’ve spent years putting people into neat categories because it makes my own life easier to manage. Good people. Bad people. Victims. Predators.

Mikhail refuses to fit into any category. Vasily Borisov doesn’t fit either. I should’ve done everything I could to fight my way back to NYC and have the Bratva leader arrested for kidnapping, but here I am. Sitting in front of one of the most important men in this crime syndicate, who is unapologetic.

Somehow, that makes Mikhail more interesting than I expected.

“You know what the prosecution thinks happened?”

His eyebrows lift. “I imagine they think I stole money.”

“They think you knowingly approved fraudulent payments.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then help me prove it.”

For the first time, his expression changes. He squints, then looks at me with slight surprise. There it is, hope.

Small, cautious.

I lean forward. “I have a plan.” Sliding the folder across the table toward him, I continue, “This is where we’re going to start.”

Mikhail looks down at it, then back at me.

“The warrant?”

“Too broad.” I tap the first page. “The investigators requested access to more financial records than they had probable cause to search. If the judge agrees with me, some of what they’ve collected can’t be used against you.”

His eyebrows lift. “Beaumont never mentioned this.”