“I still have my doubts whether this woman can find the money Zara stole,” Mika said, taking Tatyana’s seat in the back of the Mercedes and heading toward Oleg’s private penthouse near the city center.
His home in Odesa was a small but secure apartment complex that suited him during the rare times he had to be in the city for an extended time. Mika had a room there, along with Elene when she didn’t want to make the commute from her house outside the city. There was no sea view, but Oleg wasn’t a water vampire who needed to see the ocean every five minutes or he would expire.
“You have doubts,” Oleg said. “I have doubts. Elene has less doubts and she’s the only who’s been trying to figure out how Zara did it, so why don’t we trust the smartest woman we know, huh?”
“Not as smart as Tatyana, according to your little wolf.”
Oleg chuckled. “You caught that.”
“I like a woman with ego, but this feels more like bravado.” Mika shrugged. “Still I have an idea.”
“Which is?” Oleg made a habit of hiring smart people and then listening to them. It helped him get ahead in life.
“The human finds the money, she doesn’t find the money, either way, we can use her to draw Zara out.”
“Use her as bait?” Oleg was intrigued.
Zara taking up with Laskaris meant his own child was out of his aegis, because the old Greek was wealthy, influential, and powerful with the old guard in Athens and Rome. And since vampires were slow to come into the modern world, the Athenian immortal court still held an enormous amount of sway among immortals.
“As long as she stays in Istanbul, we can’t touch her, but the moment she steps back into your territory…” Mika shrugged. “Laskaris might complain, but there would be nothing he could do.”
“Zara’s left the woman alone this long. Why do you think she’d bother to come after her now?”
“Before now, Tatyana Vorona wasn’t revealing all her secrets to you.”
“I like your thinking.” Oleg nodded. “Instead of keeping Tatyana’s identity a secret, we make it known that she’s working with us. That Zara’s secret bookkeeper came to us and is helping us track her money.”
“She has her financial settlement from you, but she knows she can’t touch it.”
Oleg smiled. It was one of his finer ideas. No sire in the immortal world would send their progeny off without some kind of financial settlement, usually something around five to ten percent of their wealth, which in Oleg’s case was a treasure gathered over a millennia of conquest along the richest river cities in Europe.
And fully ten percent of that immense wealth was sitting in two nondescript trunks in his mansion in St. Petersburg, the heart of Oleg’s business empire.
All Zara had to do to claim her inheritance was to come to Oleg’s territory in St. Petersburg.
Mika continued, “With your permission, I will put the word out among the immortal gossips of the world that Tatyana is our new favorite human and she has all the information we need. Whether it’s true or not, it will draw Zara out.”
“It could put the human at risk.”
Mika frowned. “Do you care?”
“An excellent question.”
Oleg kept strict standards on who could be subjected to harm in his world. Mundane humans simply living their lives were a resource. They created the economies that fed his wealth and produced the blood that he needed to live. To harm them was as foolish as salting his own fields.
Humans who willingly entered into the vampire world were another matter, which made Tatyana a bit of a conundrum. She had been working with vampires, but he was fairly sure she had no idea what Zara was, which should have made her immune to immortal violence by his own rules.
But…
“Put her name out,” Oleg said. “We’ll keep an eye on Miss Vorona, but getting Zara away from Laskaris is more important. Once she’s not whispering in his ear, we’ll be able to negotiate more reasonable tariffs for our shipping partners.”
“And Zara will finally be under your control.”
“Exactly.” He glanced at Mika again. “Hang Tatyana Vorona out the window and let’s see who comes after her.”
“Done.” Mika smiled. “I’ll start making calls tonight.”
He called Elene on the video chat system built into his office at the penthouse. She must have already arrived at her residence, because he could see her husband in the background mixing a drink and she was dressed in a blue housecoat.
A maid was hanging his coat and gathering the papers Mika handed her, stacking them silently on the console table.
“Thank you for calling Marina and filling her in,” Oleg said. “I told her to put the woman in the employee’s suite.”
“I’ve already sent a note over so she won’t be confused when she wakes up.”
“She’ll be confused, but I don’t think she’ll run.” Oleg remembered the firm handshake the woman had offered before she was triggered by his use of amnis.
Elene said, “I have a good feeling about Miss Vorona.”
“You think she can find the accounts?”
Mika lifted a hand to wave goodbye before he departed the room.
Oleg nodded at him, the returned to Elene.
Elene continued. “I think she’s a meticulous record keeper—from what I could see of her paperwork—and with the reports she has and the reports Zara submitted from ZOL, we should be able to figure out not just how much money was actually taken, but how Zara was doing it.”
“I know that’s been bothering you.” He snapped at the maid who was just about to leave the room, and motioned her over. “I haven’t fed,” he said to Elene. “Do you mind?”
“As long as you don’t.” She reached for the glass of red wine her husband handed to her.
The maid began to unbutton her collar, but Oleg shook his head and pointed to her wrist.
“I had a conversation with Mika on the way home,” Oleg began.
The woman pushed up the sleeve that covered her left wrist and wound a kitchen towel around her arm. Then she held it out to Oleg, who grasped it in his left hand.
Elene sipped her wine. “What did Mika think of Tatyana Vorona?”
“He thinks we should put her name out.” Oleg licked along the maid’s wrist, squeezing the flesh and plumping the blue vein visible under her pale skin.
“Do you think that’s wise? This early, I mean. We don’t have all her records yet.”
“It will take time for word to spread.” Oleg brushed his lips along the maid’s arm, and felt her body relax as his amnis took hold. His fangs grew long in his mouth and his breath heated the woman’s skin. “How much are we losing every month in bribes to Laskaris?”
Putting his lips to the woman’s wrist, he bit down and felt her flesh give way. Her iron-rich blood flooded his mouth and sang for his senses, flooding his body with pleasure as he tried to concentrate on Elene’s side of the conversation.
Elene sighed. “The taxes are the same, but the bribes are double what we used to pay before Zara moved in. I spoke with Radu the other day and he claims she’s taking three times as much as Laskaris did.”
Oleg took four strong pulls on the woman’s wrist before he stroked her arm in appreciation and pierced his tongue to heal the small wounds he’d made in her flesh.
“Now, Radu loves to exaggerate,” Elene said. “But it’s not out of the question that she could be bumping the price for our allies even more than she’s gouging us.”
Oleg glanced up to see the woman’s mouth flushed and parted. Her eyes were fixed on his fangs, but he placed a light kiss on her wrist before he used the towel to wipe his lips and then wrap her arm.
“Find Mika if you like,” he murmured. “I’m finished.”
Sexual arousal was a common response to feeding in humans and if he wasn’t on a call with Elene he might have offered the young woman some release, but his mind was occupied with other matters.
“Radu exaggerates, but he’s not the only one I’ve heard stories from,” Oleg felt the living blood flood his system. He was alert. Primed for action that he couldn’t take.
At least not at that moment.
“We put Tatyana Vorona’s name out,” he said. “We use her as bait to draw Zara out, and then we take control of the situation. Laskaris is an ancient, but he’s not a god.”
“You don’t want to go to war with Athens,” Elene said. “That won’t end well for anyone.”
“We shall see,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve fought an ancient. Water vampires have their vulnerabilities.”
“As do you.”
“Nonsense.” He smiled a little bit. “Don’t you remember, Elene? I’m the monster in the night.”
“You’re going to be a monster to Tatyana if she gets hurt.”
“If she had come to you asking for her pay and nothing else, I wouldn’t have even noticed her. She’s hunting now, and she knows there are others predators in the forest.”
“You know she has no idea what she’s getting into.”
“She struck a bargain, Elene.” His mind flashed the the clear blue eyes and the direct challenge on the young woman’s face.
Bold. Tatyana was bold and he admired those who took chances. “If this all works out the way I want it to, Zara will be neutralized, you and the bookkeeper will recover my money, and Laskaris will have to calm down.”
“And Tatyana?”
Oleg shrugged. “She’ll walk away with what I promised her. Ten percent of anything she can recover. I told her earlier tonight: I don’t steal from my business partners.”
“She’s human.”
“So are you.” Oleg brought his hands together, steepling his fingers and resting them against his chin. “I’ve learned more than a little over a thousand years, Elene. Never underestimate a human.”
Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Hunter All rights reserved.