Page 122 of Control's Undoing

Everyone watched, silent, as Xavier studied the page.When he finally looked up, Annie knew from his expression what he was going to say before he spoke.“Yes, this is Wilde.”

“Where did you get it?”Colum demanded.

Eric’s face looked as if it was carved in stone, every emotion wiped clean.“Someone sent it to Nikolett.”

Everyone looked at Nikolett, who raised one brow in a cold, controlled expression.Annie couldn’t decide it she was terrified of the woman or if she wanted to fucking be her.

“Her?”Colum demanded.“Why?”

Annie hid a smile in reaction to Colum’s blunt, dismissive words.

“I have no damn idea,” Eric said.“This situation is a Gordian knot.”

“You have a connection to Wilde?”Xavier asked Nikolett.

She shook her head.“No, but we’ve had a run-in with the Spaniard.”

At that, Annie focused,reallyfocused, on the mystery they were faced with, forced to put her other feelings aside.She internally scoffed, as if a broken heart could simply be forgotten, but she had to try.

As far as their current mission was concerned, Annie suddenly felt as if she was a few steps behind everyone else in the room.Except for Xavier, who looked just as perplexed as her.“The same Spaniard who tried to take the manuscript?Wait, wait, can someone explain what’s going on?”

“We can try,” Eric said, then paused, apparently stumped about where to start.

“There’s been a longstanding history of members of both the Masters’ Admiralty and Trinity Masters being blackmailed after they visited a poly-friendly resort in Crimea,” Nikolett began.“Several weeks ago, after…” Nikolett paused for a moment.“After the Trinity Council meeting, we sent people into Crimea to find the blackmailer.”

“Before this most recent blackmail attempt,” Eric said, “photos the blackmailer took of the trinities having menage sex were being sent directly to the people involved.Pay, or the blackmailer releases the photos.That’s how it was for years.Until recently.

“A trinity went to the newly reopened resort—no one knew about the previous blackmail because no one in this damned society tells anyone anything—and once they returned home, they too were blackmailed.But this time, the blackmail demand and photos didn’t go to the individuals.It all went to one of my admirals.And the threat wasn’t to expose them for having a menage or a same-sex relationship.The threat was to expose the Masters’ Admiralty.”

Annie looked at Nikolett.“Someone blackmailed you because some of your people were caught fucking on camera?”

Nikolett shook her head.“Not my people, though the resort is in my territory.”

There was more to that statement, given the way Eric sighed at Nikolett’s words, but Annie didn’t ask, not wanting to derail the information briefing.

“The important part is that the blackmailer knew enough about the Masters’ Admiralty to not only know the people he blackmailed were members, but who their admiral was, and where to send the blackmail demand,” Eric said.

“There was a confrontation between our people and the Spaniard,” Nikolett added.“And during that confrontation, the Spaniard said, ‘say hello to your admiral.’”

“The admiral, or your admiral?”Eric demanded.

“I told you, Russian grammar makes the use of ‘your’ ambiguous,” Nikolett said.

“What’s this, then?”Colum asked.“I thought the Spaniard was talking about Hande?”

“Who’s Hande?”Annie demanded.

Xavier leaned across the table, explaining to her that Hande was the admiral of the Ottoman territory, while Colum stared into space, clearly thinking, and Eric and Nikolett remained awkwardly quiet.

“An assumption was made,” Nikolett said, once Xavier sat back, “that the Spaniard’s words were a continuation of the implied threat of exposure, implicit in the fact that the blackmail demand was sent to an admiral.”

“The assumption was made because you and Vadisk said ‘the admiral’ in the debrief,” Eric growled.

“However,” Nikolett went on, “while Hande and the Ottoman territory are investigating the Spaniard, my territory is running its own investigation.”

“You think the Spaniard meant ‘your admiral,’ and since he was speaking specifically to Vadisk, he was referencing you, not Hande?”Colum asked Nikolett.His hand slipped under the table, lightly gripping Annie’s knee, as if he needed that touch to ground him, keep him in the here and now.

Nikolett nodded once.“It’s possible, which is why we’re investigating.We know from conversations Vadisk overheard between the Spaniard and the blackmailer that the Spaniard has information about us that he shouldn’t.The blackmailer kept asking him for it, but the Spaniard was using whatever information he had about the Masters’ Admiralty to barter with the blackmailer, who is a government official in Crimea.”

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