“For work,” he clarifies.
“And how did my knowledge of IT assistance come into play in your job exactly?” I ask.
He crosses his arms and looks out the window. “You never know what will come in handy.”
I can’t exactly argue there. “True, considering the password I’m trying to remember is one I memorized after the old man asked me to type it in for him. He said his eyesight was going and he needed help typing it in, but I’m pretty sure he just wanted me to lean over his desk so he could stare at my chest.”
Yuri chuckles. “I can’t blame him.”
I roll my eyes and then go still. I take a deep breath and try again. Wah-wah.
“Shit.” I bang my fist on the keyboard, and Yuri snatches the computer away.
“Easy,” he warns. “No need to damage the hardware. What’s the password?”
“I think it was ‘bewtee68’.”
Yuri stares at me, the corners of his mouth turning up. “You sure it was 68?”
“It was sixty-something,” I say. “Give me the computer back. I only have one more try, so—”
Before I can finish, he types something in and hits enter.
“Hey!” I slap his arm. “Why did you do that?”
“Do what?” he asks, turning the computer towards me, a smile spreading across his face. He looks even better when he smiles. It sharpens his jawline, makes his eyes sparkle. It’s distracting enough that I’m almost not mad at him. Almost.
I’m about to continue berating him when I realize the password bar is gone and the folder is open. He got in. “How did you do that?”
“Bewtee,’” he says, shaking his head. “Have you ever said it out loud?”
“Bewtee. Bootee. Booty.” I drop my head in my hands.
“With a password like that, I guessed the number at the end might have been sixty-nine instead,” Yuri said, stifling a laugh.
I grab the computer from him. “That pervy son of a bitch.”
I scroll past the calendars and security protocols and head straight for the financial documents. I open a spreadsheet and scroll through what seems to be an endless stream of business expenditures and charitable donations. A new fax machine for the office, lunch with campaign donors, and travel expenses. I’m starting to lose steam, and Yuri is clearly bored, sighing once every thirty seconds, when I notice a second tab on the bottom of the spreadsheet. I click over and groan.
“More numbers?” Yuri groans. “Can you save that and look at it later? I’m hungry.”
“I’m not saving anything to your computer. Just calm down and give me a second.”
I expect Yuri to push back at my harsh tone, but he just reclines his seat and closes his eyes. For a second, it feels like we’re a normal couple in a relationship, bickering back and forth and snipping at one another. I push the thought from my mind and start scrolling through the numbers. It feels like I’m looking at the same things over and over again. Until I realize these aren’t expenses. They’re payments.
“Shit,” I whisper, studying each line. Every month like clockwork, payments are entered, but unlike the expense spreadsheet, this document is vague. No descriptions of what the payments were for or who they came from. Just initials. So many different initials that I start to wonder whether there could really be that many different people he was accepting money from. Then, I see ‘IP’ next to a payment the month before.
Yuri sits up. “Did you find something?”
I turn the screen to him. “IP. Is that your dad?”
“Those are his initials,” he says, squinting at the screen. “And that’s the same date I deposit the payments.”
The reality hits me like a punch to the chest. I close the laptop and flop back in my seat.
“You knew he was working with us,” Yuri says more softly than I expect. “This can’t be that much of a surprise.”
But it is. My father has always been my hero. In third grade, I wrote about him as the person I admired most, and my feelings hadn’t changed until today. In my eyes, my father was sacrificing himself—his time, his energy, and his talents—to do what he thought was right for his state and his country. But now, all of that is gone. Instead, I learn he was doing everything to line his own pockets. And the reality of it is too much to comprehend all at once.
So, I don’t respond to Yuri. I toss his laptop into the back seat, put on my seat belt, and curl against the window. After a minute, Yuri starts the car and pulls away.
Chapter Ten
Bella
I sit on the bed and stare at the wall, not really seeing anything. Not really thinking about anything.
My brain is tired after the last two days, and I wish I was like an overheated electronic that could be unplugged and put to rest. I need rest. Badly.
“Do you want room service?” Yuri pokes his head in the room and waves the room service menu in front of me. I can tell he’s trying, but I can’t muster up the energy to speak. I shake my head, and he sighs and disappears back into the living room.
He didn’t try to talk to me on the drive back to the hotel, and he has given me my space. But it has been almost an hour, and I’m sure he’s getting worried. Or, if not worried exactly, then at least concerned. Concerned that his hostage won’t be worth much if he returns her catatonic. Because that’s what I’m, after all. A hostage. Because of my father’s dirty political deals.
It still doesn’t feel real, and I feel like the dumbest, most naïve girl for thinking this whole thing could have been one big misunderstanding. I actually believed, on some level, that Yuri and his father had grabbed me by mistake, or misunderstood a conversation they had with my father, leading them to believe they were in business. I expected my
