Page 9 of Blood Mosaic

Well, shit. “Maybe I’m just better at sorting through paperwork.”

“Don’t back away now, volchitsa. I like your teeth.”

What was happening? Was this absolutely terrifying man…flirtingwith her?

No, no, no, no, no.

That was not going to happen.

Tatyana met his terrifying grey eyes rimmed with lashes black as ink, and she kept her gaze fixed, trying to project stone-cold confidence. “I can find the money Zara hid. I’m the one who did the transfers, and I know how to find my way through paperwork mazes. If you try to use a blunt instrument, you will get nowhere. You need a key, and I’m it.”

Sokolov finally broke their locked gaze and glanced down to the chair at Tatyana’s right side. “What’s to stop me from taking that bag with all your documents and your computer and getting rid of you tonight?”

“Oleg.” Elene’s voice was a sharp rebuke.

He looked at his financial officer and shrugged. “Maybe I don’t want to give her a percentage of thirty million dollars she didn’t earn.”

Tatyana nearly choked, but she tried not to lose her cool expression.

Thirtymillion? Dollars? US dollars?

Dear God, what had she gotten herself into?

This was a mistake. This was a horrible, horrible mistake. There was no way she could find thirty million dollars anywhere. There was no way she would be able to?—

“Five percent,” Sokolov said.

“Fifteen,” she blurted.

No! What was she doing? She was negotiating for something she couldn’t do! It was decided. She was going to die. She was absolutely writing a check that she had no way of cashing.

“Seven percent, and you’ll work from Elene’s office so she can supervise you. Don’t fool yourself that you can find thirty million without some help.”

“Thirteen percent. I can find my own help, and I’m not working from here. I have family obligations in Sevastopol.”

“Sevastopol is Zara’s old neighborhood, and she probably still has people there watching you. Don’t underestimate how dangerous she can be. You’re safer here.” He leaned forward and held out a hand. “You can have ten percent, volchitsa, but I’ll be keeping my eye on you.”

Ten percent of thirty million dollars was three million dollars.

Three. Million. Dollars. US dollars.

It was enough for the rest of her life. Enough to keep her mother out of poverty. Enough to pay back every loan she’d ever taken and enough to say fuck you to her father forever.

Tatyana reached out her hand to the most dangerous man she’d ever met. “Ten percentandmy pay for the last six months of work for Zara. My mother needs it and it’s what I am owed.”

“Done.” His hand closed over hers, and Tatyana felt a wave of something… wrong. Foreign, wrong, inhuman.

She looked into Sokolov’s eyes, and there was a dark, swirling energy coming off him that caught her breath. “What are you?”

He frowned, narrowed his eyes, and then everything went black.

Chapter Three

“Did you have to completely knock her out with your amnis?” Mika Arakis, Oleg’s head of security, liaison to the Sokolov crime family, and chief boyar of Oleg’s druzhina was bitching about carrying a woman who probably weighed less than an average steamer trunk.

“Relax, Mika.” Oleg held the heavy wooden door as Mika walked the small human woman out to the waiting car in the courtyard. “I tried to use a nudge, but she resisted my influence.”

The elemental energy that fed his fire and had kept him alive for eleven centuries was commonly called amnis. It ran like an electric current under the skin and was the reason Oleg could manipulate fire, thrive on blood, and influence the cerebral cortex of ordinary humans.

---