Part Two
The benefit of Oleg’s citadel was its remote location, which was also its liability when it came to business matters. Luckily, Elene had come by the same car that took her back to the small airstrip where a plane waited for her and Oleg.
While they were flying to Odesa, Elene handed him a file. “Tatyana Otsana Vorona.”
Oleg flipped the file open and his eyes arrested on the image of the woman in the photograph. She was blond and blue-eyed, a pale beauty with delicate features and a wide mouth set in a firm line. Faint lines surrounded her eyes, more from stress than age, because the woman looked to be in her late twenties at the oldest.
“Miss Vorona attended the national university in Kyiv and graduated with honors with a double major in accounting and mathematics. She also studied computer science during an internship and Mika’s sources say that she was casually involved in the Kyiv hacker community when she was in school. She’s currently unemployed.”
The resemblance to Oleg’s late mate was unmistakable and Elene had to have seen it, but she didn’t say a word.
“Where is she from?” He couldn’t take his eyes off the photograph. The twist in his his cold heart was unwelcome and felt his fangs aching in his jaw.
“We’re not sure. Her mother is from the Crimea, but the parents are divorced and her father wasn’t involved in her life past putting his name on her birth certificate.”
Crimea, where Luana had died but not where she was born in her human life. Maybe it was all a coincidence. Maybe he was seeing ghosts where none existed.
“You said she knew about Zara?” Oleg had numerous vampire children, but none as maddening or problematic as Zara.
“Don’t rush the story.” Elene muttered.
Oleg snapped the file closed. “Then get to the point.”
“She worked as an entry level accountant for a financial firm in Kyiv for a time—very typical job—then it appears that her mother started having health problems after her grandparents passed away. She moved back home and there is no record of work for about a year. Then…”
Oleg crossed his arms over his chest as the plane bumped over some turbulence in the mountains. He could feel his skin heating as he waited. “The point?”
“She started working for an import and export company in Sevastopol a few years ago. She was a bookkeeper.”
“The firm?”
“A small company called ZOL Enterprises.”
“Fuck.” ZOL was the subsidiary that he had set up for Zara to run after Luana’s death. It was supposed to be something to keep her busy but had turned into a front for any number of schemes that his daughter had used to undermine him.
“Yes, and even better, the official records we have for ZOL don’t have Miss Vorona anywhere on them.”
Oleg frowned. “What does that mean?”
Zara had disappeared two years ago, leaving Oleg with a financial and political mess in a region that was quickly becoming even more unstable because of human politics. He and Mika had been trying for years to sort out all those she had offended and the human and vampire victims she’d left in her wake.
Though technically, Zara hadn’t disappeared. She’d fled to the protection of a powerful vampire lover in Istanbul, taking millions of dollars of Oleg’s money with her.
Elene continued, “She wasn’t on ZOL’s books because she was keeping Zara’s real books, not the official ones with the reports she was sending to us.”
“So Zara was skimming money,” Oleg said.
“Not a surprise.”
Oleg picked up Tatyana’s file again, paging through the school records, tax receipts, and credit reports, all very typical, law-abiding documents from a woman who looked like she was very accustomed to following the rules.
How had this rule-follower become involved with his criminal daughter?
“Well….” Oleg pursed his lips. “As Zara’s sire, I would have been disappointed if she wasn’t skimming money.”
“You were always too lenient with her.”
“Luana loved her.” It was all he had to say to make Elene stop her chiding.
“Still.” Elene looked out the dark window. “She left a lot of chaos, Oleg.”
“I know that.” And he would clean it up. Eventually.
The vampire world didn’t have governments like the human world. What it had was a complicated network of secret fiefdoms and territories run by powerful vampires and those who served them. Trusted people were often placed in human governments to protect secrets the vampire world wanted to remain hidden.
Zara had used Oleg’s connections to fool and humiliate powerful immortals. She’d used his connections to cheat him and others, only to run away to a new protector.
Oleg was powerful, but he wasn’t the only dangerous vampire in the world. Zara had seduced Laskaris, a water vampire who ruled a territory that stretched from Athens to Istanbul and controlled the Bosphorus, which was Oleg’s only access from the Black Sea to the larger world.
“You know Zara is probably cheating the Greek now that she can’t cheat me.” The idea gave him perverse pleasure.
“I imagine you’re correct,” Elene said. “No matter how much your daughter had, she always wanted more.”
Oleg had been diverting some operations to his export subsidiary in St. Petersburg, but the human government in Moscow was a constant headache with delusions of empire that regularly got in the way of his business dealings.
The Black Sea ports were more central and far more lucrative. So for Elene to grow his legitimate operations, Oleg was forced to pay millions to Zara’s lover Laskaris to obtain access to the Mediterranean Sea.
If he failed to pay the bribe, then the ancient Greek immortal would sic human authorities on his largest company, SOM International, forcing Oleg into the light or out of business.
He hadn’t worked for centuries building careful alliances and eliminating rivals to have all of it taken away by one errant and vengeful child.
Oleg would find Zara and he’d find the money she’d stolen. And once he found her, he would teach her a lesson that all his children and the entire vampire world would witness.
He flipped to the front of Tatyana Vorona’s file again. “If this woman worked for Zara, why is she coming to us?”
“Zara didn’t pay her,” Elene said.
Oleg looked up from the file. “You are joking.”
Rule number one of a criminal enterprise was to pay your accountant on time.
“I’m not joking. Tatyana Vorona worked remotely for three years, sent all her work to Zara directly, and then Zara didn’t pay her for six months. She claimed that there was something holding up her accounts in Sevastopol—”
“I was holding her accounts,” Oleg muttered as he looked back at the human’s file. “But Zara always had money.”
There were school pictures in the file, along with copies of awards Tatyana Vorona had won. An early dance career had been abandoned when the mother couldn’t pay for classes. Anna Asanov was a government clerk who had grown up in the country, graduated from local schools, and hadn’t attained entry to a university. She had a government pension and no particular skills of note.
Tatyana Vorona didn’t come from a family with money or power. A human who didn’t come from wealth was not going to abandon six months of wages without trying to recover it.
His daughter had made a dangerous mistake.
“Zara thought she could cheat the human out of her wages.” The corner of Elene’s mouth turned up. “Luckily for us, Tatyana doesn’t seem to be an ordinary human.”
Oleg narrowed his eyes. “She knows about our kind?”
“About vampires?” Elene shook her head. “Not that I can tell.”
Elene had been raised by humans already involved in the vampire world. She’d known about and worked for immortals her entire career, and Oleg had stolen her from a rival decades ago. After a short romantic relationship, they’d decided that they were much better suited to be friends and business partners instead of lovers.
“She doesn’t know about the immortal world,” Elene said. “But she did manage to connect ZOL to SOM when she realized Zara had cheated her.”
“You said that would be difficult to do.”
“It was difficult to do.”
“So she’s intelligent.” Oleg shrugged. “She can’t find Zara or she wouldn’t have come looking for me. So why is it so important that I meet her?”
“Because according to the assistant that met with her, Tatyana Vorona claims to have her own copies of all of Zara’s books, even though Zara told her not to.”
“The real books?” Oleg asked. “Not the doctored reports she sent to us?”
“Exactly,” Elene said. “If we play this right, Tatyana Vorona might give them to us in exchange for six months of wages.”
“I’d get my money back,” he muttered.
“And if there’s something in the books that proves Zara is cheating Laskaris, we might even get the Greek to abandon her too.”
For the first time that night, Oleg smiled.
Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Hunter All rights reserved.