Page 21 of Saving Helena
“Fine. A trade."Giving her a wink as she left, Igently tapped the deskas I thought through thefollowingsteps.We met with the Cobras this afternoon, but I needed tocheck inwith Dimitri.
I couldn't help but feel the urge to call her back. I liked having her where I could see her, which was ridiculous. Helena was perfectly safe here at the club.Not to mention that I had business to handle.The faster I could solve these issues, thequickerI could move my focus to more important things – like Helena.
Giving Dimitri a call, Ifiddled with security cameras until I could see Helena in the computer room, adjusting the angle until I was satisfied. It was shit, but at least I could see that she was okay. It settled me a little to see her swinging ponytail.
Dimitri smashed his way into the office, makingme close the computer window; hisface was setin a frown, which wasn’t a surprise. He had been pissed offat the world for years.
“You rang asshole?” He slumped into an office chair, throwing a leg up on the battered coffee tablehe’ddrug into the office specifically for that purpose a few years ago.
“Yeah. I needed to show you something.”Turning the computer towardshim, I openedHelena’s fileson the drive and flipped through the images.It wiped the smirk right off his face.
“What the fuck is that?” Putting his legsdown, he scooted the chair closer, and his eyes roamed the images. “Is this a live site or static images?”
“There’s one more image thatwas included.” I pulled it up on thescreenand showed it to him.
“For fuck’s sake, where’dyou get this shit, Maddox?” Dimitri asked, stupefied. “What’s the time stamp on these.”
The muscle tightened in myjaw.I dreaded telling him where the information came from, but there was no getting around it. Not to mention, Dimitriwas the guy I needed for this. My reticence must have shown.
“Spit it out,” he added. “Might as well get it over with. Where’d you get this from?”
“Helena,” I bit out reluctantly. He sat back in his chair in a rush of air.
“Okay, where the fuck did she get it from?” He ran his hand over his buzz cut, agitated.
“Her work. She’s a CPA at an accounting firm. They had her on some special project. I had beenwatchingher, but, at some point, a department chair changed — to Makarovich.” The more I talked, themore upset Dimitri was getting; hiseyes grew wild.
“Makarovich? Man …” he breathed out on an exhale. “Oh fuck.”
“She didn’t know Dimitri. When she was pegged for this project this month, they had her under guard in this room with this other woman. Helena started getting suspicious of these deposits and some talk of an auction. Then she did some digging.” My shoulders slumped.
“Youfucked up,” he pointed at me. “I thought you were watchingherin your own weird fucked up little way.Taking care of her andmaking sureshe wasn’t inanytrouble.”He jabbed a finger at me. “This wasn’t taking care of her. Asshole.”
“I was.” It comes out sulkier than I intended.
“Really?” His eyebrow lifted in a challenge. “Then you should have known that the business was a front, forfuck’s sake, andgotten her out of there. She had no business being there when that piece of scum was there.Digging?Jesus. What if henabbedher? Look at those people.” Dimitri gestured at the computer screen and then stood in fury and smashed through the office supplies on the back countertop, sendingthem crashing to the floor. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
“You’re right. I assumedshewas safe. That was stupid.”Thiswas one hundred percent on me. I could see Dimitri taking deep breaths; hisback rose and fell slowly as he leaned heavily on the countertop.
“Okay. Okay.” He turned around, a hand held to his temple. “Let’s think this through. This shitstorm can’tbe sanctioned– no way would the Bratva have allowed this. How far back did Helena have records of this?”
“Three months,” I answered.Thiswas the direction my brain had beenheading: Makarovich had gone off-book. We’d be ableto potentially use this information in our favor. “She has evidence of the money trail—all of it.”
“Ballsy,” Dimitri commented. He moved over to the computer screen and looked through the photos again, pausing on each screenshot. “Is this a live link?” he finally asked.
“Yeah, Helena did something with system settings.She saidit should be safe to click it without being followed, traced, or whatever.”
I gotup from thechairandmoved out of the way so he could take a look.The chair jolted as he sat, which wasn’t a surprise because Dimitri probably was over the weight limit for the thing. The guy was probably out eating rhinoceros or something. Hewas so jacked.
“Don’t break my chair, dick,” I muttered.
“Fuck off,” he retorted as he flipped me off and spun the chair. It gave an ominous creak of protest.
His hand moved to the mouse, hoveringover it momentarily before resolutely moving it forward.“Well, let’s see how stupid they are.”
Sure enough, the damn site was live. Both of us remained silent as we examined the pagesbeforeus.Dimitri took additional screenshots, but it was easy to see that the images had changed even after Helena had found thesite.Some of the individuals who were present in the screenshots that Helena had taken were no longer on the live site. It could mean that sales had gone through.
“Time for some real talk then, brother.” Dimitri shut the website down and spun the chair.