Page 3 of Blood Mosaic

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 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 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 before, 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 ever since to sort out all those she had offended and the human and vampire victims she’d left in her wake.

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’srealbooks, not the official ones with the reports she was sending to us.”

“So Zarawasskimming money.”

“We already suspected she was, but this confirms it.”

Oleg picked up Tatyana’s file again, paging through the school records, tax receipts, and credit reports, all very typical documents for a law-abiding 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 be disappointed if shewasn’tskimming 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 immortal world wanted to remain hidden.

Zara had used Oleg’s connections to fool and humiliate powerful vampires. 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 Bosporus, 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 Saint 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, Olegwas forced to pay millions to Zara’s lover Laskaris to obtain access to the Mediterranean Sea.

If he failed to pay the bribe, the ancient Greek immortal would sic human authorities on his largest shipping company, SMO 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.

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