Page 59 of Vienna Bargain

“When I was thirteen my mother died. I ran rather than be in a foster home. The foster home was perfectly lovely. I was simply angry at the world.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it isn’t a game. In games, no one gets hurt.” Alena sighed and went to sit on the couch, but stopped and pushed herself back up.

Alexander winced. He’d beaten her so badly she couldn’t even sit.

“There is no excuse for what I’ve done to you,” he said again.

“I was looking forward to making you feel bad, but it’s not as much fun as I thought it would be.”

“Wha—why would you think I would feel bad?” The longer the conversation went on, the more the darkness within him retreated.

Alena knelt on the couch and braced her elbows on the arm, leaning over the edge. “Once you know who I am, you were going to feel soooo bad.” She tsked.

Alexander took several steps towards her, feeling less guilty with each step. “Who are you?”

“Ah, ah, ah. You have to hear the whole story.”

Alexander’s lips twitched.

Damn, he loved her.

Alexander went to the small bar and poured two glasses of Moldovan wine, bringing one over to her.

“Thank you, Alexander.”

“You’re welcome, Alena.”

They sipped, and Alena looked surprised at the quality.

“They make very good wine,” he noted.

“They do.” She took another sip, then shifted slightly so she was facing him as he took a seat in the armchair. “Back to our story. I was thirteen. On my own, doing what I needed.”

“Stealing?” he asked gently.

“Nothing so pedestrian,” Alena declared with a wave of her hand. “You see I’d figured out who my father was. I watched the news, saw him and his perfect family. I wanted that. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be rich and powerful. I went to work.”

“Doing what?” Alexander looked at her and had a feeling that even at thirteen she could have done anything she put her mind to.

“I called myself a problem solver. I did whatever people needed. There was this little shoe store. The owner wasn’t good with numbers, and I taught myself some accounting software and set it up for him.

“I found lost bikes for kids in the neighborhood. I wrote essays, did other kids’ homework. I kept going to school though all of this.”

“The people who should have been taking care of you didn’t look for you?”

“I’m sure they would have, if I hadn’t pretended to be the social worker and called them to tell them I’d been placed in a group home instead.”

“You were still just a child. You shouldn’t have had to take care of yourself.”

Alena shrugged. “Teaching children that life is fair is a disservice. Still, I realized when it was time to learn to drive that I couldn’t make it without a legal adult to handle things I couldn’t. I reached out to my father.”

“When you were sixteen?” Hadn’t she said he only acknowledged her after college?

“I blackmailed him. I made him take me out to lunch once every few months and bring me cash. He always had an assistant with him—proprieties must be observed of course—so he’d secretly hand me this envelope at the end of the meal.

“Each time we met, he had a different person with him, and told a different lie. I’d won the local essay contest and the prize was lunch with him. I was part of a mentorship program to get young women interested in politics. But we understood each other.”

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