Page 68 of Protection (Mobsters + Billionaires 2)
“The person you've been seeing—”
“My stalker?”
“Yes. Well, as it turns out, she’s more of an anti-stalker.”
His brows raise. “She?”
I nod.
“Wow. And what do you mean when you say anti-stalker?”
“I’m still waiting on confirmation of a few things, but as far as we can tell, she’s a friendly.”
“We?”
“I’ve been working with Ryder and Hopper.”
He takes another sip of coffee. “Hopper wouldn’t be involved without Luca’s approval.”
“That should tell you how seriously we’re all taking this.”
His Adam’s apple bobs, but he gestures for me to continue.
“The woman who was following you is Olga Kovalenko. She works for a black ops organization in Eastern Europe, and she has been blocking the Russians from running intelligence on you.”
Mads’ face goes gray as his eyes widen in fear. “The Russians? Does this have to do with those attacks on my server?”
“Probably some of them. As you know, Ryder has been cross-referencing your emails and the stalking incidents, and the reason we could never make those work together is because she was right all along. There was no correlation. When she does a cross review of the cyberattacks on your servers with the times that Olga has stymied a Russian operative, the picture gets a helluva lot clearer. You are being systematically targeted by the Russian government, and it’s directly related to the production facility you wish to build in India.”
He threads his fingers, fidgeting with his thumbs, his breathing a little shaky.
“Mads, I want you to know that they will not lay a hand on you. Okay? I got you covered. I promise.”
“I know,” he says, his eyes boring into mine, their sincerity unassailable. “You would never let somebody hurt me.”
“You still look very worried. And a little pale, if I’m honest.”
“It's hard to make me look pale, so you know it's bad,” he says, laughing. It's his dry laugh, and I hate it. “I…I don't know where this fits in, but you'll recall I had a bad meeting with the attaché from India, right?”
“I remember.”
I also remember exhausting all legal means of finding out more information about the participants and contents of that meeting. I hadn’t reached out to Ryder, but I wanted to.
Mads continues, “They'd sent a new attaché without telling me. I knew the old one, and even though he was somebody my father had bribed many times, I knew who I was dealing with. But the new attaché—”
Stopping himself, he runs his hands through his thick hair, making it stand on end. I bite off a laugh and pat it down to his normal level of poof, but Mads grips his coffee, deeply uncomfortable. Maybe scared.
“Mads? Who’s the new attaché?”
He takes a big breath and lets it out slowly. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I don’t think I have a choice. My father is the new attaché.”
I stitch my brows together, not sure how that’s possible. “Wait, when we were in Vienna, you met with your father? And you didn’t tell me?”
He nods. “It was a surprise. It was meant to be a surprise. They were trying to throw me off my game, I believe. My father is many things, but working with the Russians…that's a new low for him. And I didn’t tell you because I signed an NDA that implied very bad things would happen to me if I let the contents or participants of the meeting get out. I—I’m still nervous to tell you now.”
I hold up my hand, putting together a few things. “Don’t assume he’s in bed with the Russians.”
“What do you mean?”
