Timur
Iwalk Kira back to the room in silence after dinner and I'm suddenly hyperaware of her.
Every shift in her facial expression, the hunch in her posture, even the way her fingers fidget and curl—it screams uncertainty and fear, and I feel like a total ass.
Never in the history of mess-ups has there been one so colossally stupid.
She's smart. That much is obvious now. And it's for good reason, too.
The niece of Sergei Belova would have to be as brilliant as his own daughter, Marina, whom my cousin is now married to.
I swear I saw the resemblance at first and dismissed it too, maybe because I just wanted to think Morin had the best intentions at heart and I refused to believe anything other than what he told me.
But my eyes are open now, and I can't unsee what I've seen.
Like the fact that she's beautiful.
I did see that right away, but not like this.
While she was talking over dinner, something shifted in the way I see her.
Before, it was a simple acknowledgement of God's creation, that a woman could have perfect symmetry of facial features or dazzling eyes that catch my attention.
Now, all I see is the body of a gorgeous woman who is very available and someone I'm ridiculously attracted to.
And if she's telling the truth about who she is, then everything about this situation shifts.
Once a problem for me to deal with, Kira is now a possibility I never saw coming.
It's left me feeling a little off-kilter and caught by surprise.
Especially after such a pleasant dinner and conversation with an attractive, highly intelligent person I find myself intrigued about.
I stop at her door and she turns to face me.
The cut on her temple has started to heal and the swelling has gone down.
Her dark eyes turn on me, though she has a calm expression now.
I'm not sure I can fulfill her request to not lock the door yet, but I'm closer than I was before.
If Sergei were to find out we locked his niece up, it would cause problems. How I treat her now says a lot about how Kuzins respect their allies.
"Thank you for dinner," she says. It's polite but not warm. She still sounds guarded and I don't blame her. She went through something traumatic and then Morin yanked her out of her life. She probably just wants to go home. This is all my fault. I should've gone with him.
"I'd like you to join me for breakfast tomorrow," I tell her. "After I've had a chance to look into what you told me tonight." My interest is more than just professional. Ms. Belova is a new curiosity, making me want to be nearer to her for some reason.
Some of the tension she carries in the set of her jaw loosens and her head dips. When she looks up at me, it's through her lashes, which bat a few times before she speaks.
"I'd like that."
I nod and open the door for her. She steps inside and stands there for a moment, looking back at me like she wants to say something else, but she doesn't. She just gives me a small nod and I close the door and turn the lock.
I stand outside her door for a few seconds, thinking about how big of a mess this turned out to be.
Maybe not as bad as a civilian we'll have to get rid of, but not as easy as a Mirov we could lump in with the bad batch of humans we have to remove from our sphere of influence.
It's sticky and in order to protect our future, I have to find a way to assure myself and my brother that Kira won't cause an eruption in an already fragile alliance.
Sonya is in the kitchen cleaning up from breakfast as I stop back in to pick up my phone.
"How did it go?" she asks softly, flicking a glance up at me several times. I know she's not fond of the situation because unlike the men in this family, Sonya didn't grow up in this world. She understands it and respects me but prefers things be on the up and up. Her gaze says as much too.
"It went really well, actually." I smile at her, lifting my phone to type in a message to Morin to meet me in my office in five minutes. He's been outside watching the window all morning with Dryden off at a check up with Dr. Levin. "I think Ms. Belova will fit in around here for a while."
Sonya's eyes widen as she hears the name, but she doesn't ask any questions other than, "How long?" The significance isn't lost on her. She entertained Sergei only once when we were in negotiations, but she knows he's an ally and she's smart enough to figure out what that means for Kira and me.
"A while... Please, if you would, bring her a fresh change of clothing, food as we've been doing, and a new bottle of vodka.
She seems to prefer it..." I turn and walk toward the hall but pause.
"Oh, and Sonya, thank you for your discretion.
" With a final smile, I accept her grunt of approval and turn toward my office.
Before I even get across the living room, I hear the front door open and shut, and when I walk in my office door, Morin's already there.
He's sitting in the chair across from my desk with his ankle on his knee, scrolling through his phone like he's been waiting a while. He looks up when I walk in and starts to say something, but the look on my face shuts him down.
I close the door behind me and stand there glaring at him.
As much as I want to completely unleash on him for his stupidity, I don't know how he'd respond.
We can't have him going off half-cocked now because he's pissed at me over something that isn't his fault.
He should've just done his homework before storming into that building.
"Do you know who she is?" I can feel the anger building in my chest like pressure behind a valve and I'm trying to keep it contained, but it's not easy.
Morin puts his phone away and lets his shoulder bob up and down. "The girl?" With dumb confusion etched on his face, he doesn't look half as intelligent as I know he really is, which makes this all the more infuriating. He's playing dumb.
"Her name is Kira Belova."
Morin's face goes through about three expressions in two seconds, cycling from confusion to disbelief to something that looks a lot like dread. The room is so quiet, I could hear a pin drop, and he shakes his head.
"Belova?" he mumbles.
"Belova— As in Sergei Belova. As in the family we are allied with.
" I scrub a hand over my face to try to remove some of the angry tension, but it's carved into my skin like tattoos.
I'm the one who is going to have to make this right, and if Roman is half as pissed as me, Morin may not have a job with us anymore at all.
He stands up. "That's not possible. She was at a Mirov location. She was sitting with Mirov people."
"She was a mole, Morin. Placed there by her uncle to gather intelligence. You idiot!" I spit the last word at him, and he flinches. Good. He should flinch. Nothing about this is good.
"I didn't know."
"You didn't check. You didn't ask her name. You didn't do your job to investigate fully who'd be in that building before you went in there shooting things up." Now my voice is raised as I begin pacing a short path between my desk and the window.
"Tim, there was no time to—"
"Don't." I hold up my hand and he stops when I spin around to glare at him.
"Don't tell me there was no time. You had all the time in the world to gather correct intelligence and you pushed this through like it was life or death.
Now look at what you've done!" I raise my hands in a huff, realizing I'm getting out of control.
He runs both hands over his face and turns away from me.
When he turns back, his jaw is clenched tight and he looks defeated.
He knows this is bad for him, and he knows this might mean my bailing him out in front of Roman again.
There are only so many times I can put myself on the line for someone before enough is enough. No matter what they've done to save me.
"What did you tell her?" he asks.
"I told her we'd verify her story and get her home. What was I supposed to tell her? Sorry my associate kidnapped you and planned to have you assaulted and murdered, but we're the good guys?" Saying it aloud makes it sound all the more absurd and he knows it.
"I never said murdered."
"You said get rid of her. What did you think that meant, Morin? A ride to the airport?"
He doesn't answer that because he can't. We both know what he meant, and the fact that he's standing here trying to parse his own words makes me want to put my fist through the wall.
"Fix this," I tell him. "Whatever you have to do, whatever it takes, you make sure this doesn't blow back on us. If Sergei Belova finds out we took his niece, our alliance is over. And it won't just be the alliance. Sergei will come for blood and he'll be right to."
"I'll handle it."
"You'll handle it clean. No more improvising. You come to me before you make a single move from this point forward. Are we clear?"
"We're clear." Part of me wants to push harder, to make him feel the full weight of what he's done. But there's no point. Morin doesn't learn from lectures. He learns from consequences, and those are coming whether I deliver them or not.
"Get out."
He walks to the door and pauses with his hand on the knob. For a second I think he's going to apologize or try to explain himself, but he just opens the door and leaves. The latch clicks shut behind him, and I drop into my desk chair.
My body is on edge now, full of anger and adrenaline, but I have to force it away to focus on the task at hand.
I drop into my desk chair and open my laptop.
There are a dozen different ways I could test Kira's words for truth, and calling Sergei would be the fastest, but to avoid letting him know how badly Morin fucked up, I have to go about this the roundabout way.
I dig into birth records in the state files, searching back a few decades to try to unearth anyone with the name Kira Belova, but I'm finding nothing.
None of my searches uncover anything for a moment, but I go after the name she gave me for her father—Nikolai Sokolov-Belova.
It's not a normal thing for a man to have a hyphenated last name and take the name of his wife, but with a family as powerful as Belova's, I believe it.
But while I don't find any hyphen in the man's name, three levels down on a branch connected to Sergei's younger sister, I find it.
Kirianna Belova.
The name isn't identical but it's close enough.
Kira could easily be short for Kirianna, and the family connection lines up with what she told me.
Daughter of a younger sister who died. She's a ghost in the system.
She exists on paper, but she's been hidden from her family too, which only makes this all the more plausible.
Of course Sergei would never send one of his family members that are well-known.
Kira has been hidden from sight, probably for her own protection, and it makes the most sense to employ her in such a covert operation.
I lean back in my chair and stare at the screen.
The anger I felt toward Morin five minutes ago doubles because now it's confirmed.
He didn't just kidnap some random woman from a Mirov meeting.
He kidnapped a member of the Belova family, and Roman is going to be livid when he finds out.
I can't hide it from him, either. This has to come out and it has to be now, or he'll come at me next.
And I highly doubt Morin will put his neck on the line for me with Roman's wrath raining down.