Page 4 of Blood Mosaic

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 am 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?—”

“Iwas holding up 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. A promising dance practice 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 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 SMO when she realized Zara had cheated her.”

“You said that would be difficult to do.”

“Itwasdifficult 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 accountant that met with her, Tatyana Vorona claims to have her own copies of all of Zara’s books.”

“The real books?” Oleg asked. “Not the doctored reports she sent to us?”

“Exactly.”

So the human woman was suspicious. Oleg approved.

“If we play this right,” Elene continued, “Tatyana Vorona might give Zara’s bookkeeping records 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.

Chapter Two

Tatyana Vorona sat in the waiting room of yet another corporate office in downtown Odesa. The chairs were immaculate and far nicer than any office she’d worked at. There was little attempt at looking new or modern. SMO was clearly a firm backed by old money, with rich wooden doors, warm gold lamps, and hardly a fluorescent lamp in sight.

She tugged on her black pencil skirt, trying not to be intimidated and knowing she looked like a poor country mouse in this luxurious office. The woman delivering coffee around the office was better dressed than Tatyana was.

Then again, she wasn’t accustomed to paying close attention to her wardrobe. At her first job, she’d worn smart wool slacks, white shirts, and a few different sweaters to work. It was a medium-size firm in Kyiv that employed mostly young people, many of whom wore sneakers to work instead of heels.

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