Devil's Lair (Molotov Obsession #1) - Anna Zaires Page 0,69

slept through the night.

God, I can’t wait to talk to him.

Hurrying over to my bed, I sprawl on my stomach and grab the laptop, willing him to call at this very moment.

He doesn’t. I guess my mental powers aren’t up to snuff.

Sighing, I go into my inbox to check for any replies from the journalists. There’s nothing, naturally—though there is a quote from one of the PI firms, detailing their hourly rates and retainer fees.

I skim it and wince. It’s a lot, way more than I can hope to cover with my first week’s paycheck, at least given the number of hours I anticipate they’ll have to spend. I’ll need at least a couple weeks’ pay for the retainer alone. Maybe the other PIs will be cheaper, but they haven’t responded yet, so I have to wait.

Like I’m waiting for Nikolai, who’s still not calling.

Taking a breath, I remind myself to be patient. He said he’d call me around the same time as yesterday, and it’s nowhere near that. For now, I need to distract myself with something, so I begin researching my mom’s friends and co-workers again on the off chance I missed something the first time.

I’m scrolling through the pictures of her manager’s daughter’s quinceañera when the call request pops up, sending my pulse skyrocketing.

Beaming, I smooth my hair and click “Accept.”

38

Nikolai

Chloe’s smile is so radiant I feel like I’ve stepped out of an underground bunker onto a sunlit beach. “Hi,” she says, slightly breathless as she sits back against a stack of pillows and places the computer on her lap. “How’s it going? How’s your nuclear bidding thing?”

I smile back at her, pleasure spreading through me like molten honey. “It’s good, zaychik, thank you.”

And it is. Valery’s operation has gone off without a hitch, and the Energy Commission is already swarming around the Atomprom plant, seeking to contain the fallout from the reactor that exploded overnight. The radiation leakage is minimal, as expected, but the damage to Atomprom’s reputation is significant—which sets us up well for my lunch meeting with the Commission head today.

More importantly, for the past hour, I’ve been watching Chloe’s online activities and examining her browser history from yesterday, and I’ve concluded that she’s unlikely to be affiliated with any government or rival organization. If she were a plant, she’d know everything about me already and wouldn’t need to translate Russian articles with the aid of free online tools. Nor would she be researching her mother’s friends and co-workers using nothing more than their public social media—or looking into PI firms.

Something else is going on with Chloe, something I find both worrisome and intriguing.

My best bet is to get her to open up to me, to tell me the truth, but if I press her on it now, she might get spooked and try to run—and I don’t want that. Not when I’m an ocean away. The next best option is to get Konstantin’s team to hack her Gmail; the spyware allows me to see what sites she’s on but not the content of them, like individual emails.

Either way, I’m going to get the answers. I just need to be patient a little longer.

“How was your day?” I ask, settling more comfortably into my chair. “What did you and Slava do?”

Her smile turns impossibly brighter, and she tells me all about my son’s amazing progress, her small face so animated I can’t take my eyes off it. She sounds as proud as any parent, and for the first time since I’ve learned of Slava’s existence and Ksenia’s death, my chest doesn’t feel as painfully tight when I think of him and the future that awaits him because of the tainted blood running through his veins. Instead, I feel a sliver of hope as I picture Chloe with Slava, playing with him, cuddling him, loving him… giving him what his mother can’t.

What I can’t.

And that’s part of it, I realize, part of why I want her so badly. I want her not just for myself but for my son. I want her sunshine to touch him, to warm him… to keep away the darkness of his heritage for as long as possible. I want her the way I’ve seen her through the cameras in Slava’s room, gracing my son with her radiant smile, making him feel like he’s the most important person in the world to her.

And I want him to be that.

I want her to love Slava even more than I want her to