Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

S he looked sick. When Seban had dropped the woman off at the Admiral, she had looked sick to her stomach. Was Oleg repulsive to her now?

He should probably give her a few nights to recover before he resumed his pursuit, but a voice inside Oleg told him that would be a mistake.

He stared at the round blue tesserae he’d set into the mosaic at his house. The color of the tile mirrored the ocean in sunlight, a sight he only ever saw in paintings or on screens now.

What color would Tatyana Vorona’s hair be in the sunlight?

He pressed his fingers against the cool concrete wall and heated it very slowly with his amnis. He was out of patience with this project and with the entire situation. Tatyana Vorona should be grateful. He was going to make her a lot of money.

The water in the sea air slowed the rate that the concrete set and clung to his skin. “Seban?”

His driver spoke from his chair by the door. “Yes, boss?”

“Where is Mika?”

“Probably at his place. He said he and Oksana had a bunch of calls to return at nightfall.”

Mika’s calls could wait. “Fetch him for me.”

“Yes, boss.”

Seban walked away, and Oleg continued slowly curing the cement he’d used to affix the new pieces of the mural. After those pieces were secure, he picked up a handful of pebble-like glass pieces in a greenish hue and began to imagine how he would place them in the emerging seascape.

“Seawater at dusk,” he murmured to himself. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the exact hue, but his imagination flew toward the woman again.

Interesting.

Oleg was over a thousand years old; he didn’t question why his mind became preoccupied with certain people or subjects. Perhaps it was indulgent, but he’d lived long enough at the mercy of others’ whims.

If he wanted to fixate on a mural, he would. If he wanted to seduce a human, he would seduce her. If he wanted to shower her with gifts, he had more money than he knew what to do with.

“Is there a problem?”

Oleg didn’t turn around when Mika walked into the room. “You and Oksana have the Vorona woman under surveillance, correct?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“Good.” He spread a thin skin of cement over the wall. “Find a picture of her in the sunlight. I need to see the color of her hair.”

Mika walked closer. “You interrupted an important call with Radu because you want to see a woman’s hair in the sun?”

“It won’t be exact, but it’s the best I can do,” Oleg muttered. “Video would be better.”

“You’re obsessed.”

“I’m interested.” He glanced over his shoulder. “There’s a difference.”

“You’re intent on making her your new mistress?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Because I thought we had agreed that she is my bait to catch Zara.”

He delicately placed the smooth glass pieces in a starburst pattern. “She can be both.”

“And if it comes down to it, will you choose to neutralize your daughter or protect the woman?”

Oleg paused and turned slowly to face his second-in-command. “Are you saying you’re incapable of protecting the woman?”

Mika pursed his lips. “I’m not saying that.”

Oleg felt his neck heat. “Then are you incapable of neutralizing Zara?”

“You told me that I’m not allowed to kill her. That she belongs to you.”

“You know what I mean.” His eyes bored into Mika. “Well?”

The water vampire lifted his chin. “I will not fail you, Knyaz.”

“Good.” Oleg turned back to the mural. “If you’re doing your job, I won’t have to make any choices like that.”

“There has been a development.”

Oleg let him stew in the silence for a good ten minutes as finished placing the green tiles into a star, then oriented seed pearls into the space between. “What is the development?”

“Zara has left Istanbul. It has been confirmed.”

Oleg blinked, set his tray of tesserae down on his worktable, and slowly turned, crossing his arms over his chest. “Are you sure?”

“Radu said his informants in the palace confirm she has left. He doesn’t know if Laskaris threw her out or if Zara left on her own.”

“But the timing coincides with your Albanian rumors.” Then he remembered who Mika had been talking to. “Radu gave you this information?”

“He offered it in exchange for discounted passage for the camvasa when they travel through our territory.”

Oleg smirked. “That’s what I thought.”

The Romanian vampire was one of three leaders of the Poshani, an itinerant clan of humans and vampires who roamed across Eastern Europe and Southern Russia.

Though they had various lucrative businesses in Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Belarus, the Poshani clan’s main source of income was a moving safe house they ran for immortals called the Dawn Caravan. They guarded vampires by day and by night. They were smart, brutal, and most of all, secretive. If a vampire wanted to thoroughly disappear, the Dawn Caravan was where they would go.

And if Zara had been allowed in, Oleg was going to murder someone.

Possibly Radu.

Oleg gritted his teeth and felt his fangs aching in his jaw. “Is she in the caravan?”

Mika shook his head. “According to Radu, she isn’t.”

“But if she was, he wouldn’t tell us.”

Secrecy was the key to the Poshani.

The Poshani took hospitality to a supernatural level, telling no one who was traveling under their protection, not on threat of death and not for a bribe.

Vampires had tried to manipulate the minds of human Poshani to get information and were found with their heads taken off for daring to violate their honor. Few ever attempted to cross them, knowing that someday they might need that safety themselves.

“They wouldn’t allow Zara in the caravan,” Mika said. “She’s cost them too much money since she moved to Istanbul. They have to let you in, and I guarantee Radu hates Zara far too much to allow it.”

“So she’s missing.” Oleg’s mind started to whirl. He turned and picked up his tesserae palette again, stepping back to look at the pattern as a whole. “You’ll increase the guards around Tatyana and her mother of course.”

“Obviously,” Mika said. “She’s our bait.”

This was an opportunity. His daughter had soiled his name in the vampire world, and Oleg had taken a hit to his reputation because of it.

Immortal progeny usually attained a level of independence from their sire at some point, but a bond remained, usually an affectionate one. Stronger than that of biological children, it was a relationship of shared blood and elemental power.

Zara had been Luana’s lover, but Sokolov blood ran through her veins.

There was one brutal lie he could tell that would shore up his reputation and isolate his daughter at the same time.

“Tell Radu that I’ve killed her.” He started placing a new row of square blue tiles.

Mika blinked. “Who?”

“Zara. I want you and Oksana to tell everyone you know, everyone you’ve met, everyone you can think of, that I have killed my child.”

Mika took a step closer. “That you killed her? Personally?”

“With my bare hands.” His extended clan would be horrified.

The Sokolov clan that their sire had left behind was bonded—despite all their internal rivalries—by the trauma of surviving Truvor. Killing those outside the clan? Expected. Completely reasonable in fact. Killing anyone directly related by blood?

Heinous.

It was something not even his own sire would have done, as brutal as Truvor had been. He would capture his sons, keep them captive, set his children against each other, make them battle and brawl—even provoke them to walk into the sun to end their own life, which many of them did.

But not even Truvor had killed his own blood.

Vampire children killing their sires on the other hand?

Technically it was forbidden—as taboo as killing a child of your blood—but there were ways around it. Oleg had personal experience with that.

Mika asked, “Are you sure you want to do that? It will make allies question their trust in us.”

Oleg’s organization didn’t have a kind reputation, but they were considered trustworthy. A wolf would always eat their kill first—that was the nature of things—but they left plenty on the bones for the ravens who came after.

Killing his own child might call his character into question, but it would make Zara desperate.

“It will isolate her. Even if she shows her face, people will question her. It will sow confusion, and many of her former allies will cut her loose.”

“And Laskaris?”

“He either threw her out or she left him.” Oleg smiled. “He won’t take her back.”

“They’ll call you a monster,” Mika said. “Beyond the Sokolovs, we might lose some goodwill in our legitimate channels. Your brothers will cut you off.”

“Cut off by a gang of thugs with concrete for brains in Moscow?” Oleg drawled. “How terrible.”

Mika persisted. “Let me do it. I’ll say that I fought her and?—”

“No.” Oleg picked up a blood-red tile and placed it on the wall. “Dead by my hand, Mika.”

His second was quiet for a long time. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.” Oleg stepped back and stared at the lone scarlet tile in the middle of a sea of blue and green. “She’s dead to the immortal world anyway,” he said. “Because once I find her, she’ll never see the sky again.”

Oleg went into the office against Mika’s advice. He wanted to see Tatyana, and he knew she was working with Elene that evening.

While Elene didn’t exactly keep vampire hours, she usually worked in the evening and went home at midnight, leaving her time to supervise both the human and the vampire employees of SMO.

When Oleg walked into her office that night, he saw the door to Tatyana’s office closed, but Elene’s was open.

He strode past a fluttering Marta and tapped on Elene’s door.

She kept her eyes on the file she was reading but waved him in. “I didn’t think you were coming in.”

He closed the door and took a seat in the chair across from hers. “Zara is in the wind.”

Elene looked up. “When?”

“Two nights ago. She’s left Laskaris.”

“Does Mika know why?”

“Maybe because we are looking for the money. Maybe she was stealing from him too. It’s Zara, so it could be anything.”

Elene’s expression was grim. “Do you have any idea where she is?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have increased all your security.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You and Dmytro should move into the compound here in town.”

“You know he won’t agree to that.”

“Does your husband know how much Zara hates you?”

She shrugged. “My children are grown. I’m not that concerned about my life.” She glanced to the right. “What about Tatyana?”

“How successful do you really think she’ll be?”

“Well…” Elene flipped over the file to show him. “She’s already discovered how Zara was skimming the money.”

“How?”

“She programmed an automation to skim random percentages off incoming receivables. Always under one percent. Nothing regular, so it was very easy to miss. And in addition to that, there were other minor scrapes. Ninety-nine cents skimmed here. Overcharges for travel. Nothing big enough to raise flags.”

“Smart.”

“And because ZOL and SMO’s software was linked, she didn’t just skim from ZOL but from SMO too. Thousands of microtransactions every day added to accounts with high interest rates that banks offered based on their relationships with you. At the end of the day the total amount was probably closer to fifty million than thirty.”

“So she stole from her own business and from mine?” Oleg scanned the documents but knew he’d have an easier time reading Ancient Greek. “I don’t understand any of this.”

Elene rolled her eyes. “You would be sitting in your castle, stacking gold coins like a dragon if you didn’t have me.”

“You’re correct.” He handed the file back to Elene.

“Zara was greedy.” She set the folder to the side and leaned back in her chair. “It’s hard to hide that much money. Tatyana is smart, and she has relationships with specialists who can find hidden things online. We’ll find the money.”

“A fox is most dangerous when she’s cornered.” Oleg stared at his old friend. “Stay at the house.”

“Focus on Tatyana.” Elene jerked her head to the side. “I’ve had three people from rival organizations ask me if we really have Zara’s bookkeeper. Apparently Zara bragged about the bookkeeper’s skills even though your daughter had no idea what Tatyana was doing.”

“She managed to help Zara skim money for three years without your discovering it.”

Elene scowled. “Sometimes I hate that I’m…”

“Human? We could have fixed that years ago.” Oleg smirked. “But you wanted to have babies.”

“I wanted Dmytro,” Elene said. “And I like my children well enough. As their godfather, I would hope you like them too.”

Oleg smiled, and eventually Elene smiled back.

“My friend,” he said softly. “I would feel much better if you stayed at my house. Just until I have taken care of this problem. Think of your family.”

“I have work and you have people,” Elene said. “Mika’s guards are ruthless and very discreet. Worry about the new girl. She’s…” Elene shook her head.

“Still panicking?”

“You turned her head and then turned her world upside down,” Elene said. “What did you expect?”

“I expected to seduce her before I told her about my fangs.” He lowered his voice. “There was some unfortunate violence after our last dinner.”

“Ah yes, your business dinner. Mika told me about that.”

“There was an interruption. I will still seduce her.”

“She reminds me of myself when I was younger, so you might have a chance, but she’s even more cynical than I was.”

“A delicious challenge then.”

“Are you going to tell her Zara is missing?”

“Yes. There is no point in lying to her now. She realized Zara is a vampire as soon as she realized what I was. And she knows we’re using her as bait.”

Elene’s eyes flew open. “You told her?”

“I have no interest in lying to my future lover. It would insult us both.”

“You’ve never lacked confidence, but this is extreme. Even for you. Why her?”

“She’s beautiful.”

“Ordinary beauty bores you.”

That was true. His most interesting lovers had rarely been conventionally beautiful, and while Tatyana was very beautiful by human standards, it wasn’t her looks that he found intriguing.

“I appreciate her loyalty to her family,” he said. “She’s clever and bold even when she lacks confidence.”

Elene leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “You like bold.”

“I do.” Oleg glanced toward her office wall. “If she was listening in, I wouldn’t be surprised or offended.”

“She might be too smart for you.”

“Immortal minds process faster than human minds. It is highly unlikely that she is smarter than me.”

“I didn’t say smarter than you, I said too smart for you. As in she will be too smart to get involved with an old man like you.”

Oleg leaned forward and leaned his elbows on Elene’s desk. “If I recall correctly, I had enough youthful vigor to keep you satisfied when you were younger than her, kitten.”

“Stop.” Elene shook her head. “Digging up ancient history to prove a point.” She waved him away. “Go and seduce the girl, Oleg. Just remember that you have to keep her alive until she finds all this money.”

Oleg rose. “It’s fifty million. It won’t break us.”

“Spoken like someone who is not the chief financial officer of your company. Go.”

He tapped on Tatyana’s door and waited to hear her footsteps on the other side.

She opened it and looked up. “You.”

“May I come in?”

“What a nice captor.” She opened the door wider. “Of course. How polite of you to ask.”

“I’m not your captor.” He sat in the chair in front of her desk and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “But if that’s a fantasy of yours?—”

“Absolutely not.” She waved a hand in his general direction. “You may have flirted with me before all this happened, and I might have even entertained it then, but now?” She shook her head.

“You need a job more than you need a man?”

“Yes.” She narrowed her eyes. “I need to find all this money, return it to you, and try to forget all this ever happened.”

“I also like most of those goals, but I do want to point out that I am not a man.” Oleg spread his arms. “So your reasoning doesn’t hold up.”

“You are a man in every way that counts.”

Oleg lowered his voice. “Very glad you’ve noticed.”

Tatyana’s cheeks burned. “Of course you think a vampire would be less trouble than a man.”

She had looked sick when he’d dropped her at the hotel the night before. Now she was spitting fire and he loved it.

“I told you I like your teeth. Do you really think you can find my money?”

“No.” Her eyes went wide and innocent. “You should probably just let me go back to Sevastopol and forget all this ever happened. Would you like to wipe my memory? Please. According to Elene, you’ve done it before.”

Damn that woman for telling his secrets. He reached back and pushed the door closed, giving them even more privacy.

Tatyana’s eyes went to the closed door, and her shoulders grew stiff.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “Remember?”

“I know enough now?—”

“Really? After two whole nights you know enough?”

She pressed her lips together.

“Here is what I know after barely a week of knowing you exist, Tatyana Vorona.” Oleg dropped his voice to barely over a whisper. “I know that Zara manipulated your mind. Far more than you realize, I think. I know that your brain is quite clever and it was fighting against my amnis?—”

“The glamour?”

“Call it whatever you want, but amnis is more accurate.”

“That’s a Latin word. Latin was the imperial language of the Byzantine Empire.”

Oleg smiled. “Are you trying to discover my age now? I already told you.”

She sat back and wiped the inquisitive expression from her face, putting another stiff mask in its place.

He had told her, and it surprised him a little bit. He usually didn’t do that, but she was quick and he’d let it slip.

“Your mind is strong,” Oleg continued. “It was fighting against my influence. That’s why you passed out twice when we were together.”

She frowned. “That’s why that happened? I don’t remember?—”

“Of course you don’t.”

“So you manipulated my memories already. So why am I…?” She clamped her lips shut, and her cheeks grew red.

“Still attracted to me? Still tempted ? Still having warm feelings for the monster who has captured you?” Oleg lifted his chin. “I can manipulate memories, not feelings. I can make you tell the truth, but I cannot make you attracted to me. I cannot force you to care for me. That’s not what amnis does.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Tell me, how did you feel about Zara?”

She opened her mouth, then pressed her lips together.

Oleg uncrossed his legs and leaned forward across Tatyana’s desk. “How did you feel about her?”

“I didn’t like her.” Tatyana’s voice was soft. “She could be… enthralling. It was impossible to ignore her when she walked into a room. When she was talking to you, paying attention to you, it was as if you were the most fascinating person in the world.”

“But how did you feel about her?”

Tatyana swallowed hard. “I disliked her. I didn’t trust her. I got a sour taste at the back of my throat every time she came to my house, and I could never understand why.”

“Because she manipulated your memories, but she couldn’t change your heart or your intuition. Your mind is strong, Tatyana. It’s one of the things I find so attractive.”

Her cheeks burned with red, but she leaned forward on her desk, boldly entering his space. “I still don’t need a man.”

“And as I pointed out before, I am not a man.” His eyes dropped to the perfect curve of her upper lip. “If I kissed you?—”

“I’d bite your lip so hard you’d bleed.”

Oleg was instantly aroused. His cock grew heavy at the thought. “Good. Let me know where I can bite you . It’s only fair.”

She sucked in a breath and leaned back. “Stop.”

“There’s a particular spot on the inside of a woman’s thigh where the taste of her blood and the taste of her?—”

“Stop.” She put her hand over his mouth.

Oleg parted his lips and gently took her finger between his teeth, teasing the inside of her knuckles with the tip of his tongue while his elongated fangs dug into the soft flesh.

Her heart was racing, and the scent of her arousal bloomed around her. Sweet blood. Sweeter honey between her thighs.

I will take you on the desk, fuck you with my fingers, and drink your blood when you’re coming over my hand.

He had to be careful with human women. The first time they had sex, Oleg probably wouldn’t be able to fuck her properly, but he could sate his hunger a bit and bring her all the pleasure she wanted.

Sexual novelty did not breed self-control, and he was a fire vampire.

Oleg held his hand up and snapped, bringing the warm glow of fire to his fingertips. He kept the flames light, tickling along his fingertips as he ran them over her wrist. She wouldn’t feel the burn, but she’d feel the sensation of his element.

The hairs on her forearms stood up, burning away at the touch of his fire.

He pressed his lips to her fingers in a lingering kiss before he pulled away. “I look forward to your bite, little wolf.”

“You’re manipulating me now.” Her heart was pounding. “This is your amnis. This is?—”

“It is not.” Oleg smiled a little bit. “And you know it.”

She opened her mouth as if to protest again, but he cut her off before she could speak.

“Zara is missing.”

It was as if a frosty wind blew through the room. Tatyana’s face drained of color. Her hand dropped to the desk.

Her eyes went wide. “My mother?—”

“I have already contacted her bodyguard, and Mika called in reinforcements in Sevastopol. It’s a precaution. Zara still has allies in the region, but your mother should not be a target. Her people already have the computer” —he waved a hand— “things that you stored there.”

“Files. A backup hard drive. A laptop and USB?—”

“Yes, all those things. Your mother knows nothing, and Mika has already spread the word that you are here. So your mother will be safe.”

“But not me.” Her smile was bitter. “Because I’m the bait, right?”

“The bait that is under my protection,” Oleg said. “I have no plans to let Zara get her hands on you, Miss Vorona. You belong to me now, and I’m a very possessive vampire.”