Her hands were clasped on the table and he reached across, separating them, holding them, feeling the warm smoothness of her skin.
“I’m amazed you’ve stayed with me these last four years, but I’m glad you did, Adrienne, because I love you and I want us to be married, and the thought of having a child with you is . . . it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
She smiled and squeezed his hands, but then the smile straightened out again and she said, “What did you want to tell me about your past?”
Finn nodded, accepting that it was the one thing he had to tell her, that there could be no future together unless he did tell her.
“Okay. It’s about my old job, the reason I thought it would come back to haunt me. See, I was corrupt. I used my contacts and my position to forward the business interests of someone I befriended in the course of my work. All these years, I thought my former superiors knew nothing about it, but they knew all along. The person I worked with—and I worked with him, not for him—was Aleksandr Naumenko.”
“Aleksandr Naumenko? The oligarch? The multibillionaire? You’re friends with Aleksandr Naumenko?”
“Well, kind of. I saw him last week, but before that I hadn’t seen him in three years, maybe four.” He didn’t wait for her consternation to subside, but carried on, saying, “The business was incredibly lucrative and I made a lot of money. I mean a lot of money.”
Now she looked baffled. “What happened to it? We live okay, yeah, you make good profits from your books and I have my own money, but . . .”
“I’m being open, remember.” She looked expectant. “For six years I haven’t touched it. Like I said, I thought it would all come back to haunt me. As of today, I found out that it won’t. The money’s been sitting in a numbered account here in Switzerland for all that time. It’s actually the main reason I moved here.”
“Even though you’ve never touched it.” He nodded. “How much?”
“Give or take, a hundred and eighty million dollars.”
She stared at him and laughed involuntarily, stopped herself, then laughed again. Finn laughed, too, as if for the first time he’d realized how extraordinary it was, how it summed up the desiccation of his life that he had been able to sit on that fortune all this time.
She found a frown and said, “This doesn’t change anything.” He shook his head, accepting the point. “But it means we can move, right?”
“Anywhere you like.”
She offered him another smile, seductive, as she said, “So . . . how about we move into the bedroom? It’s traditional, no, after a separation?”
“It is, yeah, and I’d love to—but, you know, I do have a book to write.”
He kept a straight face long enough to leave her doubting for a moment.
Then she saw through it and said, “So you should get to work.”
“I will.”
Slowly, he stood, but he continued to hold on to her hands, bringing her to her feet. He kissed her, but she pulled back a little, curious again as she said, “A hundred and eighty million dollars? What did you do to make—”
He put his finger to her lips and said, “All in good time.”
She weighed up his response and, to his surprise, nodded and smiled. It was true, there were other things he needed to tell her, so many other things, but they could wait, at least for a little while, at least until she came to know him for who he hoped he really was.
History—the present
Sergei saw her come out of the building and walk toward him across the quad, and he knew the intelligence was good and that this trip up to Harvard hadn’t been in vain.
He studied her as she walked—it was obvious the girl didn’t have a clue about what the future might hold for her. She was dressed casually but expensively for the late fall in New England, she was tall and fair and beautiful, with the telltale cheekbones, but this was not where she belonged.
He looked briefly at the other people traversing the quad, in and out of the college buildings, but his eyes quickly darted back to her. She was almost on him now.
The key would be in the first contact—he had to pitch it just right. He knew her name of course, but wondered whether he should use it or begin by calling her “Miss.” No, that would show him up as a creep, and calling her Katerina would at least grab her attention, stall her long enough for him to strike.
She was only a few paces away now, and he stood and reached inside his jacket. She spotted the movement and looked at him, smiling—in his head he repeated his earlier observation, that she didn’t have a clue.
“Hi, hello, it’s Katerina, isn’t it?”
She stopped, puzzled, but looked relaxed and didn’t clutch her bag any more tightly, as some people did. All those books, thought Sergei, and yet she carried it effortlessly.
“Do I know you?”