Chapter Twenty-One #2
I cross-referenced the firm against every database I could access, working backward through dissolved entity records and old regulatory filings. It took a lot of work, but I found the contributor list.
It was buried in an annex to a 2003 restructuring agreement, a supplementary disclosure that would have meant nothing to anyone without the specific context I’d spent months building.
Twelve names, listed as strategic advisors to the restructuring framework. Academics, economists, former regulatory officials.
The eleventh name on the list was Bennett, Charles A.
I sat very still for a long moment, the library around me going slightly unreal at its edges.
That was my father’s name. Exactly the same arrangement on paper. I had to dig a bit more for photos of the man with this name. And to my shock, the person I found was indeed my father.
My heart sank into my stomach, my palms sweaty all of a sudden. What the hell was Dad doing with men like this?
Charles Bennett, my old man, had spent my entire childhood commuting to an office I’d never been allowed to visit. He always used to talk about his work in the smoothed-over language of a man practiced at describing things without describing them.
How was this possible?
I read the document twice. Three times. Not because I didn’t understand it, but because understanding it required a different version of my father than the one I’d had since I was born. Not to mention, my brain kept sliding off the replacement the way water slides off glass.
From what I gathered, his role hadn’t been operational. The document was careful about that—his name appeared in the advisory column rather than the execution column, the legal framework design rather than the actual movement of money.
He hadn’t laundered anything. He hadn’t committed a crime I could identify in anything I was reading.
But what he’d done—what the entire advisory group had done, deliberately—was build the legal architecture that allowed a subsequent regulatory action to freeze and expose a series of offshore pipelines that had been running quietly for years.
Bratva-controlled pipelines.
I pulled the regulatory action records. 2004. A coordinated multi-jurisdictional asset freeze that significantly disrupted the operational capacity of several Eastern Europe-affiliated financial networks with suspected ties to organized crime.
I sat back in my chair and stared at the ceiling for a very long time.
My father had helped build the legal trap that cost Rodion’s organization a significant portion of its offshore capacity twenty years ago.
The same organization I’d accidentally walked into at twenty-two.
The same one that had started watching me within forty-eight hours of that accidental entry.
The same one whose head had spent the last several weeks inserting himself into my life under a fabricated identity before having me taken from my apartment in the middle of the night.
Did he know?
Did he know that I was the daughter of the man who helped destroy what his organization had built many years ago?
At this point, I wasn’t sure I was here because I’d witnessed something at Meridian Solutions. I wasn’t here because I’d gotten too close to an investigation or because I’d become a loose end in someone’s damage-control operation.
It was starting to seem like I was here because of my father’s name on an annex in a 2003 compliance document. Because whatever debt or damage existed between the Bennett family and the Tarasov organization predated me entirely.
That debt had been accruing quietly in the background of my whole life without my knowledge. And had apparently been waiting for me to walk into the wrong building at the wrong time to become something that couldn’t be ignored anymore.
I wasn’t a journalist who’d stumbled into a story.
I was the story.
I had always been the story, from a starting point I’d never been told about.
I’d obviously been running along a timeline I’d had no access to. Arriving at exactly this room in exactly this estate with the particular, horrible neatness of something that had never actually been random was fate’s plan this whole time.
Fuck. The realization hit me hard.
My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the desk and breathed until they stopped. Breaking down in Rodion Tarasov’s library was not something I was willing to add to the list of things this situation had already taken from me.
“I’m so fucked,” I mumbled under my breath.
I used to think this whole thing had me confused. But after what I just found out, confusion was an understatement.
***
That evening, while wandering the halls aimlessly like a woman whose whole life was crumbling around her, I spotted Yelena’s door slightly open.
I knew she wasn’t inside because she was helping the chef in the kitchen. I saw them there two minutes ago. A crazy thought formed in my head, and I considered sneaking in to steal the strip.
In my defense, she’d told the other maids that she had a couple of them, so taking one shouldn’t do any damage. Right? And why the hell would she even have pregnancy strips stashed away in her cupboard to begin with?
Does it matter? Audacity said. Just get in there, grab a strip, and get out.
Don’t do it. That’s stealing, Reason chipped in.
Maybe. But it’s our only shot at confirming this pregnancy.
My voice of audacity was right.
I glanced around to make sure no one was coming from either direction. Then, without hesitation, I rushed over to the door, pushed it open, and stepped inside. My eyes fell on the cupboard beside her bed, and I hurried over there.
My heart was pounding in my chest despite knowing nothing would happen even if she caught me. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d be caught sneaking into places I shouldn’t be in anyway.
I searched the cupboard, but I didn’t find what I was looking for. “Shit.” My eyes swept over the room, landing in remote places I thought she might hide stuff like that.
Confused about where to start looking, I scratched the back of my head. My heart literally stopped when I heard her voice behind me.
“Miss Bennett.”
Fuck!
I’d been caught.
I spun around, my voice rising a little higher than I wanted it to. “Yelena, hi…”
She stared at me, something suspicious flickering in her gaze. “Can I help you with something, ma’am?”
I swallowed hard, chest heaving subtly.
I told you this was a bad idea. Now we’re caught. Don’t make this weirder than it already is—apologize and walk away now.