Chapter 38

Chapter Thirty-Eight

O leg returned to the house before dawn, just in time to see Lazlo slipping into the forest and a carful of human guards pull up to the house. Though it was unwise for mortals to be around Tatyana during the night, he refused to leave the house unguarded during the day.

He walked into the entryway and looked for Mika, who was waiting for him.

“Is she locked away?”

“She drank the rest of her blood and locked her door half an hour ago,” he said.

“I’ll give them the signal.” Oleg walked back to the front door and waved at the van full of humans before he ducked back inside to avoid the swiftly lightening horizon. “I’m sorry it took so long. Did you tell Tatyana that I needed to go into town to meet with Ivan’s men?”

His brothers in Moscow were growing more and more arrogant, and steps would have to be taken to clamp down on them soon.

Soon, but not that night.

“I told her you were gone. She was working with Oksana.”

“Ah.” Oleg nodded. “Good. That’s an excellent idea.”

“The others are saying that the bookkeeper catches on quickly and has good instincts.”

Oleg nodded as he walked down the hallway toward his office. “Her mind is keen, and that matters more in immortality than muscles or strength.”

The corridors and rooms near his day chamber were light safe with heavy metal shutters that would allow him an extra couple of hours before he needed to rest. He was old enough that dawn didn’t pull him under immediately; he just needed to avoid daylight.

“I should ask her what kind of weapon training she wants,” Oleg said. “She doesn’t know her own strength yet.”

“She said her weapons of choice are a computer and a smartphone.”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “Amusing, but no.”

Simply by virtue of wielding amnis, Tatyana was faster, stronger, and had better reflexes than the most athletic mortal on Earth. She would be able to lift weights that would rival an Olympian, run faster than a sprinter, and take out a human commando with very little effort, but she needed to learn how to use her new body to the greatest effect.

Her new body that he was craving again.

“Clear my schedule for tomorrow night,” Oleg said.

Mika was walking behind him. “Fine. I should follow up with my informants in Moscow. What did Basil say?”

“He was blustering, as usual.” Oleg threw out his hands. “Ivan is testing my patience.”

“He’s a problem you’ll need to deal with eventually.”

“After Zara,” Oleg muttered. “One problem at a time.”

His brother in Moscow was the head of the Sokolov crime family, and Oleg had done his best to separate himself from their activities while still keeping the worst of their instincts in check.

Oleg couldn’t stop them from running drugs, smuggling weapons, or collecting protection money from human and vampire criminal rackets, but he’d cracked down on as much of the human trafficking as he could. The fact that some of it was still going on—while Ivan proclaimed innocence—was an ongoing problem.

“Things seem quiet right now,” Oleg said. “Fly to Moscow and talk to people. It may be time to take Ivan out. Or make an example of him to warn the others.”

Oleg had been choosy with which of his horrible brothers to keep alive. He didn’t want to face a full-scale mutiny when he took out his sire, so he’d allowed Ivan and some of the others to live even though he really didn’t want to.

Hundreds of years later, he wished he’d made a different choice.

“I don’t want to leave here until Zara is gone,” Mika said. “It doesn’t seem wise.”

Oleg paused at the threshold of his office door. “Do you doubt that I can deal with her?”

“I don’t know how many people she has working with her now. Don’t be foolish. She knows you’re here. Even you could be vulnerable if she storms this house with enough cannon fodder.”

He put a hand on Mika’s shoulder and pulled his old friend in, kissing his cheek before he patted it and pushed him away. “I appreciate the concern, but she has no money and no more loyal soldiers. Even the Albanian mob won’t work for her if she’s not paying them.”

“Oleg—”

“Clear my schedule for tomorrow night. Then go to Moscow. I want to know what Ivan is plotting and I need your ears.”

“Fine, but I’m telling Lazlo and leaving Ludmila with you.”

“Good idea.” He walked into his office and shut the door behind him.

He wanted Tatyana’s blood and sex, but she was sleeping, so he poured himself a few fingers of vodka and sat in a leather chair near a shuttered window that overlooked the garden.

In the distance, he could hear the pigeons cooing in their cote, and the sound made him smile. Such a little, domestic thing. Why did it give him so much pleasure?

The rotary phone on his desk clanged with a metallic ring, and Oleg reached for the black plastic receiver. Only a few people had this number, so when he put the phone to his ear, he was expecting someone from the citadel. “I’m listening.”

“Hello, Papa.”

Zara’s voice made him freeze.

He allowed the silence to drag across the line.

“Papa?” Zara sounded slightly nervous.

Good .

“Hello, daughter.”

“Ah. You are there.”

“You know exactly where I am.”

“Hmm.” She laughed a little bit at the back of her throat. “Did you like the present I left for you?”

Oleg had no way of knowing what Zara knew about his and Tatyana’s relationship. “You left me a mess. The newborn killed the gardener.”

“I would say sorry, but I am not.”

“I liked that gardener.”

“I know. It’s difficult to find good employees. I appreciate that you didn’t fire our chef in Sevastopol. She was the only one in her family who was worth a damn, and she had four grandchildren to feed.”

“I know; that’s why I kept her employed at the house.” Oddly enough, Oleg sensed that Zara’s concern for the chef was entirely sincere. That was his daughter. She could be surprisingly generous until she wasn’t, and it was impossible to predict when her generosity would hit.

“I’ve been meaning to call since the unpleasantness in Odesa,” Zara said. “This is really your fault, you know? You shouldn’t have stolen all my money. I worked hard for you, Oleg. That money was more than fair.”

He managed not to crush the phone receiver in his grip. “The unpleasantness? You mean your killing Elene?”

“ That was an accident. She fell over and she was old, Papa.”

Zara’s voice was whining and childish, a tone she’d used with Luana when she wanted something. Hearing it brought a rush of memories to his mind.

“It’s not my fault that she broke her neck,” Zara continued. “I was just asking her questions.”

Oleg closed his eyes, picturing Elene’s battered face in his mind. “It was entirely your fault, Zara.”

“If you were so fond of her, you should have turned her!”

“I should have…” He let out a twisted laugh as his fangs lengthened. “Is that why you turned Tatyana?”

Zara was quiet.

Oleg snapped at her. “Speak!”

“She looks like Luana.” Zara’s voice was still childish. “I didn’t want her to lie there and rot when she looks like Luana.”

Oleg said nothing, but a sick, twisting guilt curled in his belly. Elene was dead because of him. Tatyana had lost her mortal life because decades ago he had created a monster to amuse his mentally unstable mate.

All of this was his fault, so he would have to make it right.

He swallowed the bitterness at the back of his throat. “Where are you, Zara?”

“Not close to you.”

“You should come back to Sochi.” He picked up a pen on his desk and dragged the tip along a piece of paper Mika had left, sketching out a sunflower in the margin of a spreadsheet. “You could spend some time with Tatyana and collect your inheritance.”

Zara was silent again. “You brought my gold to Sochi?”

“Maybe I’ll give Luana’s jewelry to Tatyana instead of you. After all, she’s your child and you abandoned her.”

“You bastard!” Zara screamed. “You fucking bastard!”

Ah, there she was. The childish pouting was gone, and the sociopath was back. “The sun is rising here, Zara. You should be sleeping, so I think you are to the west, huh? Am I right? How far away? Are you hiding in Kyiv? Playing with your friends in Bucharest?”

A second later his daughter hung up the phone.

He hung up the handset, then quickly lifted it and dialed a different number, waiting for his office at the citadel to pick up.

“Listening,” a voice said.

“The call that just came into the Sochi office,” he said. “Trace it.”

“I will make sure it is done, and I will call you at nightfall.”

“Thank you.” Oleg hung up the phone.

Then he stared at the sunflower he’d started only to realize the round center of the flower had morphed into a sketch of Tatyana’s face.