Chapter 9 #3
Varen remained still, face ever unchanging. “I told you she was a classmate of mine. We were good friends.”
“Uh-huh.” They were totally boning. Nala didn’t believe in the goodness of others that well. Varen wouldn’t still be so invested if it weren’t for Desirée being that close to her. “Anyway, that’s quite the ordeal. I don’t envy you in the least feeling that way.”
Varen sat back, almost as if she were offended. “And you? What do you want him for?”
“Even after hearing that, I still don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
That commanding grate in her voice caught Nala off guard.
One moment she was thinking about this Desirée woman, and the next she was back in her shower, blasting herself between the legs to images of Varen fucking her.
The first fantasy I’ve had since before…
Nala still didn’t know how much she could trust Varen.
“My sister. I told you that she died.”
Those set lips barely parted when she spoke. “Yes. You didn’t mention anything else.”
Nala considered the red wine swirling in her glass. Anything to avoid looking at the woman sitting across from her. “She was a medical researcher for Black Crow.”
“Go on.”
“You ever hear of Tasha Nazarov?”
“Not off the top of my head, no.”
“I’m not surprised. You probably wouldn’t have unless you read research papers and magazines. She was becoming fairly famous in the world of cancer research.”
Yena still kept every clipping, from both print and online, mentioning her daughter’s progress in the world of medicine.
She doesn’t keep anything about me. Nala had nothing to show for her life thus far.
“She was hired at Black Crow right out of college. Worked her way up until she was researching specific cancer cures in the main lab up in Seattle.”
Nala stopped, bile in her throat. “She would come home for holidays and say that she was close to a breakthrough. There were promising trials. The science made sense, she said. The more the months went on, the more excited she became. Until…”
“Until she became paranoid.”
Nala sat up with a start. “Yes,” she said, trying to contain the first bit of excitement she felt in so long. “Men following her, like Desirée.”
“What happened?”
“Heart attack. In her late 20s.”
“Let me guess… the trials magically stopped, the notes disappeared, and nobody spoke of what your sister was up to again.”
“That’s right.” Nala wished she had her sweater back on.
Everything was frigid in that room. “I didn’t understand. I still don’t. It wasn’t until I was surfing the internet one night when I came upon a conspiracy theory that pharmaceutical companies don’t actually want cures for things like cancer and HIV.
They’d rather make more money keeping those poor people alive than cure them and lose customers.”
“Yes. I’ve often wondered about that as well.” Varen shook out her sleeves, those cufflinks needing more love. “I’ve done a lot of research into his companies…”
“So have I.”
“…And the thing about Black Crow Pharmaceuticals is that they talk a lot. They pump a lot of money into many things, but they never, ever have anything to show for it. It’s a multi-billion-dollar setup thanks to, as you said,
the medicines they provide to keep millions around the world alive but never cured. Xan Ravenwood would lose most of his foundation if a cancer cure came around. Even a specific one, like breast cancer or colon cancer. Your sister must have come too close to becoming the woman who would cure cancer.
”
The woman who would cure cancer? That didn’t sound like something that would happen in the Nazarov family.
Isn’t that why my parents came to America?
For those opportunities for their daughter?
Nala hadn’t existed yet. Tasha was already a promising science student back in Russia.
Some people were like that, Nala guessed.
“Why would he hire her if he doesn’t want to find cures? You’d think he’d hire researchers who are middle-of-the-road in achievement. Less likely to dirty his hands that way.”
“Because PR. It’s always PR. I guarantee his stocks went on huge upswings whenever there was great news of some kind. Not merely hiring your sister, who must have shown great promise out of college, but every step she took toward finding a cure, short of actually finding it,
would have meant more money in his pocket. It looks great to investors.”
“You’d think he’d take the credit for the cure, take the money, and use it to expand his real estate hobby.”
“Real estate is too risky, which is where he gets the thrill, but he’s not stupid. People may go homeless, but they will still get sick.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Unfortunately, that’s capitalism.”
Nala’s throat betrayed her when Varen said that. “You’re not like that, are you?”
Varen smiled, slightly, enough to assuage Nala’s nerves.
“Money is nice. Money means I’ve paid off my debts and can live comfortably for the rest of my life. But even if apps stopped being a thing tomorrow and I never moved on to the next big tech thing, I would be content with how much I have.
It takes a certain type of personality to make it as far as I have… but it takes a completely different one to make it to Xan Ravenwood’s level. I am only one of those personality types.”
“The successful kind. Not the sociopath.”
“I hope so.”
Their first course arrived. French onion soup, with a side of freshly baked bread.
The scent took Nala on a journey far, far away from her fears and dread over her sister.
She hoped Varen felt the same way, if only for a bit.
I don’t know who this Desirée woman was to her, but she clearly cared enough about her to want vengeance like I do.
It almost seemed too coincidental. Two women taken down by Ravenwood’s cronies.
How many other people were there? How many had fallen because they got too close to something or someone?
What had Desirée done to “deserve” such a gruesome death?
When the waiter departed, Nala lined her lap with a napkin and broke off a piece of bread to dip into her soup. “So, here we are,” she said, watching the bread turn dark from the broth. “Two people trying to take down Xan Ravenwood.”
“Is that what we’re doing?”
“Well, I suppose. What else do we want besides justice? Have you thought through what we’re going to do?”
“The first step was the easiest. We got into his club. The whole point of getting in, for me, was to gather evidence to take to the authorities.”
“Me too!”
An uncharacteristic smirk appeared on Varen’s face. “What a formidable pair we make. Now, let’s start with the basics. Where did we meet?”
Over dinner, Nala and Varen concocted a story surrounding their supposed romance.
They had met at a convention, at which Nala temped.
Well, one thing led to another, and wouldn’t one know it, they were taking vacations to Vancouver (the Canadian one, not the one across the river,) and exploring the finer points of a heated BDSM relationship.
Before their previous conversation, this would have been awkward at best, but after knowing Varen’s real motives and their shared pain and frustrations, Nala felt free to be more open with the woman she called her fake girlfriend.
Not that they were sudden bosom buddies or anything.
More like business associates who were about to go down a very dangerous path, now that they knew what the other was about.
I can’t believe we’re doing this. They had played at being a couple before, but now they felt more like a unified force hell-bent on revenge and all its trappings.
Or maybe that was Nala feeling the surge inside her veins.
Who knew what Varen was thinking? The woman was as easy to read as an ancient Sumerian text.
It almost felt… fun. Until she remembered the rules of The Aviary’s game. Eventually, she and Varen would have to take their lying to a new, uncomfortable level.
“What is it?” Varen asked over their main course. “Is the food making you sick? You don’t look well.”