Page 7 of Blood Mosaic

Tatyana hadn’t smokedsince she graduated from secondary school, but she wished she had a cigarette as she paced in the cobblestone courtyard of SMO’s offices while they waited for Elene’s boss to arrive. Apparently the man was traveling from the north and kept odd hours because of jet lag.

Tatyana wasn’t going to question it when she felt inches away from success.

Offering to find the money for a finder’s fee was a gamble, and she wasn’t nearly as confident as she’d presented to Elene, but it was the only play she had.

Yes, she wanted to get paid, but she also needed a job, and those were few and far between in Sevastopol, which was where she needed to be. Her neighbor could only look in on her mother for a few more days before Tatyana would need to return because the woman could not take care of herself.

She felt her phone buzzing in her pocket and reached for it, knowing without looking who it was going to be. “Hallo.”

“Tatyana, are you flying home now?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “No, because you wouldn’t be able to call me if I was flying, Mama.”

“I know that. Are you still in Kyiv?”

“Odesa, Mama.”

“Odesa.” Anna Asanov whispered the word like a curse. “And are they going to pay you?”

“Yes, it’s a good company. It’s a real company, Mama, don’t worry.”

Her mother had always been suspicious of Tatyana working from home. She worried that the job wasn’t legal. That Tatyana was doing something illegal by not going into an office even after Tatyana explained that much of her work back in Kyiv was also online and could be done from anywhere.

Sadly, with things the way they were, no firm in Kyiv was going to keep paying someone who had to live in Sevastopol even if they wanted to.

“The electricity bill is due, Tanya.”

Fuck. Where was she going to get the money for it? How fast could SMO reimburse her for travel expenses? Maybe she should have taken Elene up on the offer to stay at the company’s preferred hotel and send the rest of her travel money back to her mother.

No, no, no. That gave SMO too much power over the situation. Better to be independent until some kind of contract was signed.

“Can you borrow a little bit from Karol?” Their neighbor knew the situation—a little of it anyway—and the old man held Tatyana in great affection because of her grandparents.

“I mean, I can try. He’s going to want something from me if I borrow money though.”

Tatyana tried not to roll her eyes, but then she gave in to the impulse because what the hell? Her mother couldn’t see her. “Mama, Karol doesn’t want to have sex with you.”

“Why not? I’m still a beautiful woman, Tanya.”

“And he’s a sweet old man who was friends with your father. He doesn’t see you that way.”

Her mother muttered something about old men still having balls even if they were saggy, and Tatyana let out a slow, even breath and tried not to listen because the last thing she wanted to think about was her neighbor’s balls. “Mama, just borrow the money from Karol and tell him I’ll pay him back as soon as I get home.”

Because maybe money would magically materialize in her pocket as she went through security.

You’ll figure it out, Tatyana. You always figure it out.

She told herself the same thing every time she woke up in the middle of the night, wondering how she and her mother were going to make it through the winter without Tatyana having a job.

She sucked in a hard breath and let the sea air fill her lungs. It was Friday night, and beyond the stone and wrought iron wall of SMO’s headquarters, she could hear young people heading into the night with friends. She heard faint music in the distance from a club and the pulse and retreat of pop music pumping from passing cars.

You used to have that life.

Well, not exactly that life. But she’d had friends in Kyiv. She’d had a job and a little extra money for fun on the weekends. She’d had friends she could call and boys she dated when she wanted to feel sexy and seen.

Tatyana was twenty-seven, but she felt like she was a decade older. Maybe more. She had no one but her mother now. She didn’t even have a job.

“Miss Vorona?” a voice called from the front of the office. “They’re ready for you.”

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