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Drakonov case.”
    Frederica nods slowly. “You think you might have an edge with persuading the younger brother toward our cause.”
    “Might,” I stress. “He, uh . . . he just invited me to dinner Wednesday night.”
    Frederica presses her fingers to her temples. “All right. Well, then. Let’s think about this.” Her gaze flicks toward me. “You’re an intern, a junior in college—”
    “Senior,” I say. “Uh—ma’am.”
    “A senior in college, and have had zero training in field work, firearms, undercover operations, or—well, or any of our basic techniques, really.”
    “I put in a request.” I wince. “Two months ago. When I started.”
    Frederica waves one hand at me. “We don’t approve any of that for interns.” She eyes me warily. “What exactly is it that you hope to accomplish, Miss Pereira? In your career here. In your life.”
    Isn’t that the question of the year? “I wanted to be a special agent, ma’am. Finish my criminal justice degree, go through training, save lives.”
    “And how does having a one-night stand with a hockey player figure into that plan?” she asks.
    I grit my teeth. “It doesn’t, ma’am. But under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t not fit with that, either.”
    Frederica smiles, but it’s all frost, not even close to touching her eyes. “Very well. This is what I’d like to do.”
    I lean forward in my seat.
    “I would like you to serve as an informant for me in our ongoing investigation of the Bratva criminal organization, led here on the East Coast by Vladimir Drakonov. I expect you to use your, ah, unique access to his brother, Sergei, to gather information on the Bratva’s plans. You will be acting as a confidential informant, not as an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, understand?”
    “Yes, ma’am.” I nod.
    “Your duties in your internship will be the same as they’ve been before. I will try to limit the number of agents who are aware of your identity, but I must tell Chief Ha, of course, and a few others.”
    I grimace.
    “In the course of your work as a confidential informant, I may call on you to snoop on the Drakonovs, to include allowing our surveillance teams to access their private homes to install bugs, should we receive warrants to do so. Are you amenable to this?”
    Ex-fucking- scuse me ? She wants me to bug his house? “Persuading Sergei to inform on his brother is one thing,” I say. “But I’m not—I shouldn’t be the one snooping on him—”
    “It can be you, or it can be another member of our team. But I’d hate to tell your internship coordinator that you’ve been uncooperative. I’d certainly hate for you to do anything that might appear like obstruction of justice.”
    My head is spinning; I can’t see straight. No. I can’t lose my internship—my job prospects. I’ve spent the past three years of my life building toward this—a career with the FBI. Oh, my god. I am so far in over my head. Damn me and my need to be honest with Frederica. Damn Sergei and his stupid, hot, mesmerizing ways.
    “Let’s hope it won’t come to that. Do a good job persuading him to tell you what we need to know, and it won’t be necessary. Are we understood?” Frederica asks.
    “Perfectly,” I spit out.
    She smiles again. “Excellent. Then you can begin by informing Mister Drakonov that you’d love to join him for dinner. I expect a complete writeup of your interactions with him thus far on my desk before you leave for the day.”
     
     
     
     
    I spend the rest of the morning filling out my foreign persons contact form, then drafting a personality assessment of Sergei for Frederica. The way he acted at the Red Star, the way he acted in private with me (leaving out the details of the amazing sex we had, which I’m hoping will remain none of her business) and what little he shared with me about his mother and brother.
    Then I pull out my phone while I head for the gym. No new texts from Sergei. I open up