“What else is in there?”
“Nothing,” she replied, bundling the bag up quickly. “Just… you know. Lady stuff.”
“I’ll keep the condoms,” Vlad said, “if you promise to keep some in your office.”
“What, like at work? At the gallery?” Madison groaned as they came back out together from behind the bookshelves. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Deadly.”
“That’s the problem with you Karevs,” she muttered as she rose up on her toes to bequeath him his kiss. “Well, most of you Karevs,” she amended, pulling back to glance off toward Dmitry, who was rearranging the pencils in his desk cup. “You’re deadly. And I’m… shit, I’m going to be late for a meeting. I wanted to stop by home first.” She cursed as her brown eyes fell to the men’s watch that dwarfed her wrist. “Why don’t you come by the gallery later and see for yourself how well-stocked I am?”
Vlad’s cock twitched aggressively at her words. He enjoyed watching her walk back out the front door of the bookstore, observing the hitch and slide of her tight rear end; Madison paused on the sidewalk outside to throw him a knowing look over her shoulder, grinning as she dialed a number on her cell phone. Back to work, and back to real life… for the both of them.
“You guys even have the same phone,” Dmitry noticed from further back in the store. “Was that intentional?”
“Shut up.”
“Vlad,” his brother said more seriously this time. “You can’t have ‘just sex’ with a woman like that. It isn’t possible.”
“Like you’d know.”
Dmitry huffed in exasperation. Finally, he said: “All right. Tell me about Maxim.”
Madison never thought she could hate a color as much as she hated the color pink.
She sat outside the O’Connor Fine Arts Gallery, hunched over like a gargoyle on the steps, thinking about all the ways she could eradicate pink from the displays and even from the outfits of the people passing by on the street. Savannah was perched on her shoulder as usual and speaking rapidly through the receiver.
“It was pink? Are you sure?”
“Positive.” Madison groaned as she switched the phone to her other ear. “Oh God, don’t make me say that word again.”
“Have you told Vlad?” Savannah demanded. Madison would have shrugged had her friend been sitting across from her. It was how she would have preferred to deliver the news… not that she was especially good at delivering the news.
“It didn’t come up,” she said lamely, shifting a strand of hair back behind her ear.
“Well, clearly someone has been coming up.”
“You know, I really thought I could depend on you not to do the whole ‘I told you so’ routine,” Madison snapped. “I messed up, and now I’m in a bind. My parents aren’t the only ones unwillingly tied to the Russian mafia these days.” She put a hand over the receiver unnecessarily as an elderly couple passed her by; they stared openly, and hurried in their steps when they noticed her looking.
“Unwillingly tied?” Savannah scoffed. “You can’t be serious. I may not be there in person, but I’ve got eyes on you, Maddie. If you’re in love with the guy, just say so. I’m not going to judge… much.” Her best friend sighed on the other end. “At least say it to him of all people. And while you’re at it, you might consider saying a few other extremely important things.”
“I didn’t expect to fall for him. Savannah, what am I going to do? The whole point of this was to free my parents from this whole mess; not tie them tighter with a grandchild. But he and I and it just happened. Many times. It happened many times and in many places. What have I done?” Madison couldn’t help sounding despondent even though she knew she should be happy. She was going to have a baby.
“Well… sounds to me like you’ve fallen in love with a mobster.” Madison could hear her friend’s amusement in her tone and she wanted to bristle at it but she knew she wasn’t making sense. How had things gotten so out of control?
“I…”
Madison watched as an unmarked black car drew up to the sidewalk. She heard the cascade of familiar shoe heels behind her, and turned to spot her father hurrying down the front steps of the gallery. “Savannah? I’ll call you back,” she said, hanging up with a quick key of her thumb.
It was Igor Ivankov, tall, bland and non-threatening, that her father had descended so rapidly to meet. Madison watched as the pair entered the gallery together; she waited until the car had pulled away and disappeared down the block before rising to follow.
“What are you up to, Dad?” Madison murmured to herself. Her father did not look happy, and she didn’t blame him; prolonged contact with Igor Ivankov had a similar effect on her mood. Not only was he boring, he was often lewdly patronizing to her; to the point that she suspected he did not have a high opinion of professional women. The unassuming man with the tasteful pocket square collection was Sergey’s brother, wasn’t he? That meant he was Vlad’s uncle… yet Madison couldn’t think of two people more different from each other. She would have to remember to ask Vlad for more details on his uncle later; whether her lover would be forthcoming with them was something else.
Madison scowled to herself. Well, if no one was going to be forthcoming with her—and if she had no idea at the end of the day just who her allies were anymore—she was going to have to set her moral compass aside and inform herself.
She watched as her father disappeared with Igor into the east wing; then, she quietly slipped down the back hallway toward his office and unlocked the door.
His computer password was the same as ever: ‘camillepasswordo.’ Madison snorted as she was admitted immediately to his desktop, feeling a bit guilty now for spying on the innocent, almost endearingly naïve man who had raised her. But this is for his own good, she reassured herself as she clicked through to his e-mail client. If Sergey was out of the picture and her father was still in over his head, she needed to know exactly who the enemy was.
A quick search for ‘Igor’ and ‘Ivankov’ through her father’s inbox revealed no more than the usual correspondences, all of them one-sentence confirmations to business scheduling on Igor’s part.
When Madison sorted by most recent e-mails, something far more interesting came up. She sat back, considering the name that appeared repeatedly in her father’s inbox; then she hit print.
She had not expected to see nearly fifty e-mails originating from Peter Franklin within the past month. Then again, Peter always seemed to appear these days when she least expected him.
“Peter?” Madison was in the process of stuffing the stolen e-mails into her briefcase when she came upon her family’s lawyer standing before a new display in the west wing. Peter leapt back as if she had activated a laser field around the picture. Maybe she should think about getting one installed; he was standing awfully close.
“Careful! You’ll knock one of the sculptures over!” Madison protested as he wheeled near the display.
“Oh yes, the sculptures! Sorry. Marvelous… marvelous work,” Peter stammered. He raised his hand as if to pat the leg of the nearest sculpture, before drawing back and seeming to think better of it. “I was just on my way out. Financial meeting with Carson, you know, but I’m afraid we had to postpone it.”
“Dad’s double-booking himself these days,” Madison noticed.
Peter nodded distractedly. He was still gazing at the picture, but then his eyes cut to her.
She sensed an opening and pounced. “Peter, would you mind meeting me here tomorrow morning before the gallery opens? Nothing official. I just have some… documents I want to go over with you.”