“Anyone will be involved in anything for the right price,” he says, crunching on a piece of bacon. “Hang around with me long enough, and you’ll learn that first-hand.”
I don’t plan to hang around with Yuri any longer than possible. One day, and I already feel a little corrupted. “I know my father, and if you trust me, I’ll prove it to you.”
Yuri leans back in his chair, a piece of bacon pinched between his fingers. He points it at me. “What do you mean?”
I reach across the table and grab his bacon. He opens his mouth to argue, but I’m already eating it. When he frowns, I grin. “I said you’d have to trust me.”
He crosses his arms, but I can tell he’s interested.
***
Yuri parks the SUV in the back lot behind my father’s office and then kills the engine. “Okay. You officially have to tell me what you’re planning before I agree to go any further.”
The dress I had on the day before is now laundered, courtesy of the hotel, and I’m glad to be in my own clothes again. Mostly, I’m glad to be covered up. I turn towards Yuri. “Fair enough. I told you my father wouldn’t work with criminals, and now I’m going to get proof.”
“How?” he asks, looking doubtful. “By marching in and demanding his staff tell me the truth?”
“No.” I bite my tongue and barely resist the urge to roll my eyes, something I do frequently in his company. “I worked as an intern in my dad’s office over the summer, so I have a log-in and can get into his accounts.”
Yuri shakes his head. “They change those passwords all the time. There’s no way yours still works.”
“First of all, I’m his daughter. I doubt they were in a rush to delete my log-in. Second, I also know the name and password of his previous chief of staff who just retired last week.”
He looks back up at the building and purses his lips. His stubble has grown in thicker in just the last day, shading his square jaw. It’s funny to think about Yuri grooming himself. He looks like the kind of guy who wouldn’t bother with it, but his neck is clean-shaven, so he must have a daily grooming ritual. I want to ask him about it, but it’s very unimportant, and I have a strong suspicion he wouldn’t tell me what it was anyway.
“It seems unnecessary,” he says, grabbing the car key from the console and starting the car. “Why do you care about proving your dad’s intentions to me? He worked with us, and we both know that. Are his intentions really that important?”
I lunge for the keys, but Yuri grabs my hand out of the air. I expect him to squeeze until I cry out, but he just holds my hand, his eyes curious. “Tell me why this matters.”
“It matters to me,” I admit, sliding my hand out of his, ignoring the tingling in my fingertips. “I want to know who he is. What kind of person he is. Besides, we don’t even have to go inside.”
He furrows his brow. “Then what are we doing here?”
“Did you bring your laptop?”
He reaches into the back seat and hands it to me. I open it up, turn the screen to him so he can enter his password, and then open the internet. “For being a politician, the security at his office is miserable. I liked taking the occasional long lunch while I worked there, and I discovered that I could lock my office door, connect my phone to the Wi-Fi from the parking lot so I’d receive all of the office messages, and get paid to watch reruns of sitcoms.”
I click the office’s Wi-Fi, enter my old password, and cross my fingers it will work. When the message box appears telling me my device is connected, Yuri curses under his breath.
“I didn’t really think that would work.”
“Truthfully,” I say, smiling at him. “Neither did I.”
I connect to the shared drive in the computer folder and watch the loading bar inch across the screen. I can connect to the Wi-Fi from the parking lot, but that doesn’t mean it works well.
“You don’t seem like the slacking type,” he says, looking at the screen over my shoulder. “You seem too ... proper.”
“Thank you?” I shrug. “It was a summer job with my dad. Senator or not, it was boring. When he was out of town on business, no one really noticed whether I was around or not.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Yuri says. When I look at him, he sits back in his seat and stares out the windshield. “It’s just hard to imagine anyone not noticing you.”
“Quit. You’ll make me blush,” I say sarcastically, though I hope he doesn’t see the very real blush coloring my cheeks. Thankfully, the loading bar pings just in time to distract from our conversation. “I’m in.”
As soon as I click on the file folder, another password box pops up. Everyone in the office had varying levels of accessibility. If I enter my password, I’ll see a few to-do lists, my father’s event schedule, and everything related to his charity work. But if I enter the chief of staff account password, I’ll see everything. So, I try it.
A wah-wah sound comes from the speakers, and the password bar shakes.
“Wrong password,” Yuri says.
“No shit,” I hiss. I squeeze my eyes shut trying to think. “I only have three tries before I have to reset my password with IT.”
“Didn’t you study IT?” he asks.
I spin around, forehead wrinkled. “How in the hell did you know that?”
Yuri looks genuinely uncomfortable, and I’m ashamed at how happy it makes me. His forehead goes red, and he shifts in his seat. “I had to ... learn things ... about you. To follow you. It was part of my job, and—”
“You stalked me,” I say,
