Page 68 of Blood Mosaic

Oleg wentinto the office against Mika’s advice. He wanted to see Tatyana, and he knew she was working with Elene that evening.

While Elene didn’t exactly keep vampire hours, she usually worked in the evening and went home at midnight, leaving her time to supervise both the human and the vampire employees of SMO.

When Oleg walked into her office that night, he saw the door to Tatyana’s office closed, but Elene’s was open.

He strode past a fluttering Marta and tapped on Elene’s door.

She kept her eyes on the file she was reading but waved him in. “I didn’t think you were coming in.”

He closed the door and took a seat in the chair across from hers. “Zara is in the wind.”

Elene looked up. “When?”

“Two nights ago. She’s left Laskaris.”

“Does Mika know why?”

“Maybe because we are looking for the money. Maybe she was stealing from him too. It’s Zara, so it could be anything.”

Elene’s expression was grim. “Do you have any idea where she is?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have increased all your security.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You and Dmytro should move into the compound here in town.”

“You know he won’t agree to that.”

“Does your husband know how much Zara hates you?”

She shrugged. “My children are grown. I’m not that concerned about my life.” She glanced to the right. “What about Tatyana?”

“How successful do you really think she’ll be?”

“Well…” Elene flipped over the file to show him. “She’s already discovered how Zara was skimming the money.”

“How?”

“She programmed an automation to skim random percentages off incoming receivables. Always under one percent. Nothing regular, so it was very easy to miss. And in addition to that, there were other minor scrapes. Ninety-nine cents skimmed here. Overcharges for travel. Nothing big enough to raise flags.”

“Smart.”

“And because ZOL and SMO’s software was linked, she didn’t just skim from ZOL but from SMO too. Thousands of microtransactions every day added to accounts with high interest rates that banks offered based on their relationships with you. At the end of the day the total amount was probably closer to fifty million than thirty.”

“So she stole from her own business and from mine?” Oleg scanned the documents but knew he’d have an easier time reading Ancient Greek. “I don’t understand any of this.”

Elene rolled her eyes. “You would be sitting in your castle, stacking gold coins like a dragon if you didn’t have me.”

“You’re correct.” He handed the file back to Elene.

“Zara was greedy.” She set the folder to the side and leaned back in her chair. “It’s hard to hide that much money. Tatyana is smart, and she has relationships with specialists who can find hidden things online. We’ll find the money.”

“A fox is most dangerous when she’s cornered.” Oleg stared at his old friend. “Stay at the house.”

“Focus on Tatyana.” Elene jerked her head to the side. “I’ve had three people from rival organizations ask me if we really have Zara’s bookkeeper. Apparently Zara bragged about the bookkeeper’s skills even though your daughter had no idea what Tatyana was doing.”

“She managed to help Zara skim money for three years without your discovering it.”

Elene scowled. “Sometimes I hate that I’m…”

“Human? We could have fixed that years ago.” Oleg smirked. “But you wanted to have babies.”

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