When the meal was over and our bill was paid, he escorted me back to the car with a hand in the small of my back, which made me melt inside. It felt like a possessive move, but I tried to tell myself that he’d act that way with any girl he had to be a bodyguard for.

  Inside of my dad’s box at the ballet, there were snacks and cold beverages. I was grateful that there was something to nibble on, because it was supposed to take a while.

  I knew that people were here to see and be seen. I was way younger than a ton of the people who had boxes at the ballet. Sergei seemed so confident in his own skin. I wasn’t yet there.

  The ballet was a lot more emotionally moving than I thought it would be. I thought that a lot of people thought of ballerinas as always being en pointe, and only some of the ballerinas bothered. There was a story being acted out on stage with music and dance, and there was a dramatic climax where one of the actors died. I burst into tears. Sergei pushed a cloth handkerchief into my hand.

  On an impulse, I leaned over and hugged him. I whispered, “Thanks,” in his ear. Before I could stop myself, I dropped a light kiss on his mouth. He stiffened, but he didn’t push me away. For a moment, our mouths were touching. He pulled his head back and told me, “We should go home.”

  Sergei didn’t talk to me for the entire ride home. I guessed that he didn’t like being kissed by his boss’s daughter. I was only nineteen, after all. I had no idea if he would tell on me to my dad. I had zero clue if Arseny would punish me for crossing a boundary.

  My dad was sitting in the kitchen, drinking a bit of brandy. The bottle was next to him. He looked at me, and he said, “You look so much like Dianna.” The tone of his voice seemed much sadder than usual. “Would you like to spend some time with your old man?”

  I looked around, and Sergei was already gone like smoke dissipating. “Yeah.” I poured myself some lemonade from the container in the fridge.

  My dad was staring at his brandy. “You know, it was your grandfather who interrupted my plans.”

  “Oh?” I didn’t know much about my grandfather. “Was he part of the reason that you and my mom never married?”

  “My dad didn’t approve, but I knew that Dianna’s decision to leave me was her own. You should come with me.”

  Without waiting, Dad went into his study. There was a painting there that moved. Behind it was a small safe that he used his thumbprint to open.

  “Here’s the engagement ring that I bought for your mother the day after Dianna told me she was pregnant.”

  He and I both looked at the ring. It was an emerald, rather than the more common diamond.

  “Wow, you knew Mom’s middle name.” Mom’s middle name was Emeraude, the French world for emerald.

  “She left me before I could propose. I had a date night where I had everything set up, with local musicians and everything, but she was beaten and mugged on her way to the restaurant. I knew that I had to wait until she felt good before I popped the question. But a week after the mugging, she disappeared from my life.”

  “Why did you never look for Mom after she left you? Did you not care about me as a baby?”

  Arseny pulled another envelope from the safe. “I have photos from that time to jog my memory. I know why I don’t trust women.” Dad handed them to me.

  Frowning, I opened the envelope. I gasped as I saw that my mom had walked through the doors of an abortion clinic. The date on the photos showed that it had been when she was pregnant with me.

  “My dad was having Dianna followed. The investigators got those pictures. I knew she had aborted you and left me, deciding that she couldn’t handle being with me.”

  “Tell me more about her decision.”

  Dad was starting to shut down. “I’ve taken enough of a walk down Memory Lane for now.” Arseny touched a button on his desk. “Sergei, make sure my daughter gets to bed.” My dad had a bunch of liquor bottles in his study. He put away the ring and photos and poured himself another glass. I knew that I had been dismissed. I wondered if I should push it and ask more questions, but he was drunk and I had enough to chew on.

  9

  FIRST TIME

  SERGEI

  I saw Cleo wiping away tears from the corner of her eyes as I escorted her back to her room. I wasn’t good at dealing with emotions, so I just ignored it. Arseny must’ve said something that hurt her feelings.

  When we got to her door, she turned to me and asked, “Can you come inside?”

  I stepped in and closed the door behind me. I figured that she wanted to ask questions about what was going on.

  “What’s up?” I asked her.

  “Can you talk to me about my dad? I got the feeling that my grandpa didn’t think that my mom should be part of the family. I saw the photos that my dad had of my mom going into an abortion clinic when she was pregnant with me.”

  I wasn’t about to tell her about being a dual agent, but I told her, “Your grandfather calls the shots when it comes to the business that your father works in. Your mom might not have agreed with what they were doing. In her shoes, a smart woman would run.”

  Cleo thought over the details I had given her. “I would consider myself smart, but maybe that’s just book smart. I can see signs that I should probably stay away from my dad like my mom wanted while she was alive. I’m not going anywhere, though.”

  “Stupidity and bravery can be close cousins,” I said to her.

  “I’m ready to do something stupid.”

  I let her put her hands on the back of my head and guide my lips down to hers. The first time that we had kissed, it had been really light.

  This time was different. I felt like she was trying to eat me alive. I could feel the emotions roiling inside of her. She might be nineteen, but she knew what she wanted.

  Despite knowing that my position was at stake, I could not make myself stop her from tugging on my belt. My breath hitched when her hand settled on my erection. She started stimulating me to full hardness. When I was ready, I told her, “Arms out.”

  I took off her new dress. She really was stunning in it, even if it wasn’t sewn onto her body as it might have been if she’d gone to one of the normal boutiques that Arseny’s women liked to shop at in Los Angeles. I left her dress on the floor and made sure I was naked. I pulled her into my lap and started kissing and biting her jaw and neck.

  She made noises that told me that she was enjoying herself. I could feel a little burst of seed at the tip of my dick. I tried to calm myself down to make it last. I knew that she didn’t have much experience. Arseny might murder me for sampling his daughter, but it was a problem for another day.

  Her thighs were around me. She was grinding her hot core against me with every moment. My eyes rolled back in my head. Every moment was just getting better.

  Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. I pushed her on her back and shoved her thighs apart.

  “Are you ready?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she told me.

  I slid the tip of my dick in. It had been a long time since I hadn’t wrapped up when I was with a lover. In my position, I couldn’t afford to be vulnerable with a woman for long.

  I looked at her breasts moving as she panted. I strummed her clit, which startled a cry out of the back of her throat.

  “Do it,” she told me. “Stop teasing.”

  I rammed my entire length inside of her nineteen-year-old body. Her mouth fell open.

  I gripped her hips with my hands and made sure that I couldn’t get even a millimeter further inside of her.

  “You’re too big,” she told me.

  “You can take it,” I responded. I pinched her nipples, which made her close her eyes.

  I shifted us so that she was on top. “You set the pace.”

  I put my hands on her hips so that she knew the rhythm that I wanted. She was hesitant at first, but soon she caught the beat. I felt the tension rising in my body. As I got ready to climax, I closed my eyes. My body exploded into a white-hot inferno, unleashing semen inside of her. She cried out on top of me.

  As we floated back down to Earth, I knew that I hadn’t used a condom. I could have easily gotten Arseny’s nineteen-year-old daughter pregnant.

  10

  MEETING VLAD

  CLEO

  ONE WEEK LATER

  After Dad showed me the engagement ring that he’d bought for my mom, we reached a turning point in our relationship. Somehow, he managed to be working on a laptop in the kitchen when I came out for breakfast. I didn’t expect to see him for the rest of the day, but I got the impression that he had cleared his schedule of morning meetings so that he could spend more time with me.

  Dad wasn’t that easy of a guy to get to know. He didn’t volunteer all that much information about himself. I shared my portfolio with him, since I did some work with intentional documentation and personal knowledge management. I did small contracts when it came to setting up systems for other people to capture things, and Dad was impressed with my integrated system.

  I had a whole folder on Mom, and he didn’t stop me from showing him pictures of her over the years. Yes, money had been tight. I was lucky that I was raised in an age where having a smartphone was totally normal, so documenting a big chunk of my childhood wasn’t expensive. There were cute videos of my dance recitals when I was a kid as well as my doomed years as a violinist. I didn’t even want to play violin, but my mom had overly romantic ideas of what it meant to be a musician. I’d switched to choir by the end of middle school, and that was that.

  One morning at breakfast, Dad cleared his throat as soon as I got into the room. “Vlad would like to meet with you on the weekend.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “That’s my grandpa, right?”

  “Yes,” Arseny agreed.

  I chewed on my lip. I wasn’t sure what to do. “Okay, I’ll show up at whatever time you want.”

  Arseny filled me in on the details, but I was staying in his house. He’d made it pleasant to be here, but I knew that he was keeping tabs on me.

  “Buy a suitable outfit,” Arseny warned. “My father is formal.”

  I didn’t have anything really formal. I wasn’t the kind of woman who wore pant suits or anything.

  Quietly, I ate a banana and left the kitchen. I worked on some homework until Sergei knocked on my door mid-morning.

  We’d rolled around a few more times, so I was sore between my legs. If my dad knew about it, he hadn’t taken either of us to task.

  “Did you hear that I’m supposed to meet my grandpa?” I asked Sergei.

  “Yes, I’m supposed to escort you to shop for something suitable for meeting Vlad for the first time.”

  I didn’t like the idea of changing myself for someone else. “Do I need to wear something different from what I’ve been wearing? If Vlad can’t accept me as I am, I don’t really care about having his approval.”

  “He’s a man that you’re going to need to impress.” Sergei was silent for a few moments. “I think it’s good that you’re standing up for yourself.”

  After I picked up my purse, Sergei took me to the car. He drove me to a place I’d definitely never shopped before. I tried not to count the money that my dad had spent on me so far. He hadn’t given me an unlimited credit card, but there was some sort of unspoken agreement that Sergei could spend whatever kind of cash he wanted on me.

  Sergei was the one who picked out staid outfits that made me wrinkle my nose.

  “You know that I’m nineteen, not fifty, right?” I asked him.

  “If you want to be part of the family, you need to dress up. Your casual clothes are fine when you’re at home. When you’re representing your father, he wants you to look the part.”

  I didn’t want to rock the boat when it came to my dad. My hope was that we’d have a relationship going forward, even though I planned to move out of his house at some point. I really had thought it would be a short time period, but he hadn’t mentioned having me move out. It was nice not to have to pay rent.

  Sergei walked with me into the dressing room, hanging everything on the rack inside. I tried not to talk, but he tugged my clothes off. His hand was inside of my panties as his mouth came down on mine. It gave me a thrill to be intimate in public.

  “Excuse me, we only permit one person to be in a dressing room at a time.”

  “My bad,” I called. “I needed help with my zipper.”

  I wondered what things would have been like if the retail employee hadn’t interrupted us. I’d never gotten it on in public before. I tried on all the outfits that Sergei had given me. We bought the ones that mostly fit.

  I was wearing an ivory pant suit the first time that I met my grandfather. My dad had made sure that I had lemonade and snacks while I waited. As he entered the room, I flowed to my feet and extended a hand.

  “Hi, I’m Cleo Dawkins.”

  He didn’t shake my hand. “You look a lot like Dianna Dawkins.” His eyes swept over me and found me wanting. “You bear no resemblance to the Staseviches.”

  “On the first day, I told my dad that I’d be willing to take a DNA test.”

  Vlad snorted. “Like I’d ever permit that to happen.” He was acting like I’d just asked them to fly to the moon.

  “You need to calm down.” My dad’s voice cut across the room. “She believes that I’m her father.”

  “There’s no proof,” Vlad told everyone. “I will not accept her as my grandchild.”

  Arseny cleared his throat. Sergei walked me out of the room. I had finally met my grandfather, and now I knew why my mother had stayed away from Arseny for all those years. I was biting down an angry retort, but I could also feel how tears in my eyes.

  11

  DIANNA’S APARTMENT LEASE

  SERGEI

  I walked her back to her room.

  “I hate these clothes,” she muttered. “I’m getting out of them as soon as I can.”

  She looked more polished in the clothes that her father’s money bought, but she wasn’t being true to herself. I could see that Vlad had no intention of welcoming her into the family. Arseny had given it a shot, but the initial meeting had failed.

  When we got back to her room, I helped her get out of her clothes. When she was naked, I crushed my mouth to hers, trying to make her forget what had just happened. I ate her out so that she would be pulled out of her mood. She fell asleep soon after her orgasm.

  I cleaned up in the bathroom, still looking the part of Arseny’s bodyguard. I knew he knew at this point that I was sleeping with Cleo, but he’d also wanted either Yuly or me to get close to her. I figured he thought I was following orders.

  I went back to Arseny, who was drinking brandy. I could read the tension in his shoulders. I wondered if Vlad had gotten inside of his head.

  “Is Vlad gone?” I asked him.

  “Yes, Father is gone.” Arseny drank some more. “He pointed out that Cleo could come and go just as easily as Dianna did.”

  “Cleo is not the same as her mother.”

  “Right.” Arseny drained his glass. “I’m not sure that she’s my daughter.”

  “Why don’t we have one of our labs run the DNA test?”

  “Yes, I should have considered it before. You should take Cleo to our clinic next week for a full checkup and lab work. I don’t think we should try a cheek swab. It’s too blatant.”

  I felt a moderate amount of guilt about deceiving Cleo, but Arseny seemed to be willing to accept that he might really be her father. “I’ll take her.”

  ONE WEEK LATER

  We had scheduled some time for her with one of our doctors. We sent kids from various families into med school, with the understanding that they’d work for us during their whole careers. Some worked in our own clinics, while others worked in normal clinics so that we could also have them keep an eye out if we had people show up in the normal emergency room. Staffing and funding an entire hospital wasn’t necessary. We only wanted to make sure that we had key people in the right places to protect our people. When we came in, we were given a huge number of pieces of paper to sign. One of them was the waiver allowing Arseny to view her entire health record at the clinic. I held my breath, but she signed it along with all the other paperwork.

  We were inside of an exam room and looking at the posters on the walls.

  I asked her, “Do you think that it’s odd that your father asked you to get a full checkup and blood drawn?”

  Cleo laughed and replied, “I know it’s his backdoor way of getting a DNA test, so I’m glad that I’ll have confirmation of what I’ve thought ever since I saw those letters and photos.”

  I thought that she was smart.

  “I think Dad doesn’t want his DNA slung around, and it’s pretty clear that he lives a really restricted life under Vlad’s thumb. Getting a paternity test at all is a sign of rebellion.”

  She was pretty perceptive for a nineteen-year-old girl.

  “I think Dad might be involved with something shady, but I’d rather have a dad than not have a dad.”

  It hurt me that someone her age was throwing away the carefree life that she should be living. As someone who worked for the FBI, I wanted to keep her on the straight and narrow. But I had to keep my cover, so I could never tell her the truth.

  When the doctor came in, Cleo talked to her about everything. She seemed to be in good health. A tech came in after the doctor left to draw her blood. One way or another, we’d have an answer about Cleo’s paternity within a few days. I drove her home, and she took a nap, exhausted by what we had done. Establishing her paternity was a hard hill to climb.