“Yes. For science, you understand,” she adds quickly.
“For science.” I nod. “Would you like to begin now? Or another time?”
“Can we do it now?”
“Of course. But let us choose your bedroom first.” I do not want Aleksei to walk out into the living room as I am fucking Naomi, because I do not know how it will end. Will I be able to pleasure her? Will this bring me closer to my goals?
She frowns. “Why will we need a bedroom?”
“What do you think will happen after I tell you about what I want to do to your body and what I want you to do to mine?”
“But you said you don’t like to be touched. I don’t like it either. Why would we need a bedroom?” she repeats.
I stare at her and this time it is I who needs time to process her statement. She is absolutely right. I do not like to be touched. When I have sex, which is infrequently, I do not kiss a woman. I do not lick her body. I stick my cock in her hole and rut like an animal to my release, usually from behind. Naomi is an aberration. I wonder what her scientific mind would make of that.
“Even if we do not touch, I think the things we would say are better kept between the two of us unless you would like to be observed.”
“I don’t know if I’d like that. I don’t think so but I’ve never tried it.” She shrugs. “I’m not interested anymore. Why am I here?”
Her quicksilver change of subject takes me by surprise, and I struggle to adjust. “Because I am in need of your services.”
“My computer skills?”
“Yes. I need you to find someone for me. Have you heard of the Madonna and the Volk?”
“I’ve heard of many things referencing the Madonna, otherwise known as Mary, mother of Jesus. Are you religious?”
“No. I do not like the idea that a power higher than me directs my life. But others believe. The Madonna and the Volk is a triptych. In some circles it is much revered but considered blasphemous. It is of the Madonna birthing a volk, a wolf, rather than the Christ child. In the second panel, the two are making love, and in the last the volk is eating the Madonna.”
“That’s kind of gross. It’s a religious painting?” She frowns.
“Yes, by Caravaggio. It is said to either be punishment for Mary having marital relations with Joseph or the act of a jealous, oedipal son.”
She scrunches up her nose, which is surprisingly enticing. “Shouldn’t he be eating Joseph, then?”
I smile wryly. “I believe the eating of Mary by the volk is metaphorical, a sexual interpretation.”
“Oh.” She chews on that for a moment. “But you haven’t said why I’m here. What do you want me to do?”
“The Madonna was once owned by my organization but was sold many years ago. Recently it has surfaced and was resold to another individual. I want you to locate the owner and ideally, the painting itself.”
“Why?”
“Will you not simply accept payment for this project?”
She shakes her head. “I like to know why.”
Naomi had been in captivity for two years serving someone else’s whims. I understand the need for her to know why. I ruminate for a moment. I can lie to her. Tell her that I am interested in retrieving it for a church or higher cause, but I think that she’d deal better in the truth, in absolutes.
“I want the Madonna because it will help me consolidate power. If I have enough power, I can protect the people I care about as you tried to protect your family.”
“Are you a soldier like my brother?” she asks.
“I was but now I have a chance to lead.”
“Are you a competent leader?”
My lips curve up. Competent rather than the moral word good. It is like an interview of sorts but instead of being demeaned, I feel compelled to convince her of my worthiness. “I am. I know how to move people to act, which is why I seek the Madonna. It will convince the doubters that I am the correct person to lead the . . . organization. I am clearheaded and make decisions without emotion. I do what is in the best interest of the . . . organization, even if those actions are unfavorable to others.”
I leave out that I may have to give the painting to another man in order to save my sister. It is a fact that must remain secret, for a whisper of Katya’s existence would jeopardize her life.
For the first time since I’ve met Naomi, she glances at my face, but before our eyes can meet, her gaze slides away until she’s fixated on my cheek or perhaps my ear.
“That does sound like you are competent.” Her soft words sound like a compliment. “Will I have to work for you long then?”
“Only as long as it takes. While you search for this person, I will provide everything. Food, equipment, entertainment. Once it is over, I will fly you back to your family and handsomely reward you monetarily.”
She waves her hand. “I don’t need money. I have plenty. Do you have a workstation?”
“What do you need? Aleksei will obtain whatever it is that you desire.”
“Oh no, I like to buy my own things, but I can get started if you have a laptop. It needs to have a good processor. At least quad-core extreme. No netbook. Those things are shitty. I don’t know how many scripts I’ll have to run.” She’s walking around looking at things and has already forgotten me. She’s forgotten my interest in her body. My story about the Madonna and the Volk. My leadership test. When she stops in the middle of the room, she asks the question I’ve been waiting for.
“Where did you hear the transaction took place for the Madonna?”
“Why do you think I sought the Emperor, Naomi? It was on your creation. The Emperor’s Palace.”
CHAPTER FOUR
NAOMI
I study Vasily as he speaks words that should not be spoken aloud. My face is calm, but my mind is whirling, calculating things. He knows about the Emperor’s Palace. He knows I run the website, and therefore have connections to crime and information that no normal person should have. This makes me dangerous, and it makes him even more dangerous that he knows about it.
Vasily knows a lot more about me than he lets on, which means I will have to be careful. He mentions the Emperor’s Palace in such a casual voice that I almost miss it. It is the same way, minutes ago, that he described thrusting his cock between my breasts and fucking my chest.
I . . . don’t know how I feel about this. I’m not good at feeling things. Give me a task and something to do with my hands, and I’ll get to work. Diagnose my feelings? I will be lost.
I’m visualizing you on my bed, nude.
I lose focus, because then I picture it, too. I picture him devouring me with that intense gaze, the utter focus of his attention, and my lips part. But then I think about all the fluids and horrible unclean things that come with sex and shake the thought away. I must focus on understanding what Vasily wants—what he’s saying he wants and what he’s not saying, too.
I should not be surprised that he knows of the Emperor’s Palace. I set it up to be untraceable by most, and for nothing to lead back to me. Masked IP addresses, borrowed server space, nothing points back to me. Somehow, though, things got messy. I blame Hudson. He never let me take the time to properly cover my footsteps. It was always “create a script to take money out of this account” and “hack into this Swiss bank tonight.” Proper dark web transactions take time and stealth, and I was allowed neither.
I’ve become sloppy. This displeases me.
I refuse to let this stranger know, however. I study him, thinking hard. This is a big man. The set of his mouth is firm, unyielding. He is not smiling. He does not look as if he likes me.
And yet minutes ago he talked of my breasts as if they excited him. And his breathing escalated, like mine is doing right now. At first, I assume I am panicking. Hyperventilation is always one of the symptoms, and when I get overwhelmed, I can panic easily.
But there is not the accompanying spiral of anxiety. There is no tingling in my extremities as if my blood flow is constricte
d. My stomach does not hurt from stress. This isn’t anxiety, then. It’s something else entirely.
Excitement?
“You do not speak,” he says, and his voice is calm, soothing. “Tell me what you need. I wish for you to find this transaction on Emperor’s Palace and tell who has purchased Caravaggio.”
He’s dropping his articles of speech; it’s a habit of speech of those that speak some Slavic languages. There are no articles of speech. There are also no articles of speech in Hindi, Japanese, Indonesian, and Latin. I read that on a Snapple cap once and researched languages for a week afterward, fascinated by the vagaries of language. Partitives in French are especially fascinating, because—
“Naomi,” he says again, drawing me out of my thoughts about languages.
“Hmm?” I’ve forgotten what we are discussing. “Do you know French?”
“Un peu.”
I brighten. “Fascinating. I’ve always wanted to learn French. I find the feminine and masculine gendering for nouns to be quite interesting. After all, what determines whether or not a lake is actually masculine—”
“Naomi,” he says, interrupting me again. “The deep web. The Emperor’s Palace. I want you to check the records.”
“Oh. Right.” I blink rapidly, trying to get my brain off the language rails it’s been racing down. “I need my preferred setup—”
“Nyet. Start now.”
Hmph. “Fine. Do you have a computer I can use?”
He inclines his head in a nod and gestures at a nearby doorway. “Aleksei has brought one for you. It is in the diplomatic suite.”
“Excellent.” I bounce to my feet and notice his gaze follows my breasts. That makes me feel odd again. I’m fascinated that this man is clearly interested in my body. He finds something about me sexually arousing, when all most people see is a freak. I don’t think of myself as a freak, naturally, but I’ve been called one often enough to know that more people find me disturbing than not.
I think this man is attracted to me. Is this how most women feel? I’m giddy with the thought of it, and I tug at the neckline of my shirt to expose my cleavage like I have seen other women do.
His gaze goes there, and then narrows.
A change in his expression. Interesting. I wonder how most women flirt with men; I’m woefully absentminded when it comes to social cues. I should research this. In the meantime, I wonder if I should touch myself between my legs, like I sometimes do to relax, and see his reaction? My mother told me when I was a girl that it was improper for me to cup my privates when in public, but I’m not in public now, and I get the idea that this man would enjoy seeing it.
“Do you distract me, Naomi?” Those narrowed eyes focus on my face.
I look away, disconcerted. That isn’t the look of appreciation he was giving me earlier. I’ve done something wrong to change his look to one of distrust. Frustrated, I run my fingers along the bill of my cap, soothing myself. My cap is safe to touch. “Computers,” I say, refocusing. “I need a computer.”
“In that room,” he points out.
I move to it and sit down. There’s a desk and some chairs and an ugly painting full of colors on the wall, but all I care about is the computer. I flip open the laptop. Immediately, my lip curls. Windows 8. Really? “Kiddie shit.”
He barks his companion’s name. A moment later, a man comes striding in, his brows furrowed. He says something in Russian, a question, because his inflection goes up at the end of the sentence. Vasily barks out something angrily. The man nods and grabs keys, then heads out the door. Vasily turns back to me. “We will get you better computer.”
“Oh, I can work with this for now,” I say, taking the mouse in hand and giving it a little shake. It’s like settling in with a pair of my favorite pajamas, having a mouse at hand. “But I’m going to put a new GUI on your computer before I go any further.”
“GUI?”
“Graphical user interface. This one is not conducive to running scripts. Plus, you have a lot of bloatware. I need to strip things down to run more efficiently.”
“Just access deep web,” he says, sounding a bit impatient. “I wish to follow buyer of painting. The longer we take to find him, the colder trail gets.”
I hear Vasily’s words but I’m ignoring them. Working with an unfamiliar GUI is like trying to work with my fingers coated in ice. I’m already at the DOS prompt, uninstalling his hard drive. We’re going to erase everything and start over. It’s a project. I love projects. “Please keep your backups in a safe location,” I tell Vasily absently as the computer goes to work reformatting. “Also, I have voided your factory warranty.”
He makes a soft noise that might be amusement.
—
Hours pass, and I busy myself with installing programs on the laptop I’ve appropriated. I pick the strongest Wi-Fi signal and tap into it. They’ll never notice I’m in their Internets, stealing their bandwidth. Then I add a few of my other favorite scripting programs and tools that will allow me to move through the web without being traced. I work for hours, fine-tuning and tweaking things to how I like them. At some point, someone hands me a bottle of water and an avocado and cheese sandwich on wheat bread. I look at it for any other colors—I don’t like eating things that are not white, green, or brown—and when it passes muster, I remove the orange cheese slice on the sandwich and eat the rest without pausing in working. Vasily moves about the room, silent. At one point his phone rings and I glare at him for interrupting me with his noise. He leaves the room.
Then I’m in the deep web and I’m the Emperor. Trillions of bits of data flow at my fingertips, much of it illegal. I’ve never been interested in merely pirating movies and songs. Not when I can take on—and control—darker information. Morality has no play in such things for me. If I don’t know someone personally, I’m not affected by thoughts of them, so I turned my talents to more dangerous information. It’s a game for me, to see how far I can push myself. I control more information than anyone else on the web, and it’s a heady feeling. I don’t do much with the information other than hoard it, but there’s a fierce pleasure in the possession of so much knowledge. I access my server records and do a search for Caravaggio, and easily find the information Vasily is seeking.
Then, I delete the records from the archive.
I know after years of being a captive that I am only useful until my job is done. This man knows that I am the Emperor and doesn’t seem to mind it, but I do not trust him any more than I trust Hudson, who threatened to kill my family. I know these men are dangerous.
No one is getting my information until I let them. Not even if he stares at my breasts and makes me wonder what it’d be like if he touched me.
So I sit back and begin running an SQL query that looks very intricate but is, in truth, garbage. I finish my sandwich, drink my water, and wait for Vasily to return to the room.
He comes back a short time later and approaches my chair. One big hand presses on the back of it. “Do you find my information?”
“I’m executing a query,” I tell him. I’m a good liar because I’m not emotional. I can lie to anyone with a straight face. “I’m cross-referencing these three tables looking for particular sales references. Each table has over two million rows and—”
Vasily pins me with his gaze. “How long?”
“Three days,” I lie. In three days, I will have a better idea of what this man wants.
He swears something in Russian. “We must stay here three days?”
“Yes,” I lie. “I can’t unplug from the network or I have to start my query all over again. You wanted the Emperor. This is how I work.”
“We must continue on. We cannot stay here.”
I wipe my fingers with a Wet-Nap and poise them over the keyboard. “Shall I abort my query—”
“Nyet,” he says, and reaches for my hands. His fingertips brush over my skin and I instinctively flinch away. My skin prickles a little, but I remember drinking his vodka. I delibe
rately placed my mouth where his had been, feeling euphoric. I think of him spreading his germs on my skin with the touch of his fingers against mine. For some reason, I’m not revolted like I normally am. Is it because we’ve already shared germs?
I think of the stories he told me earlier. He wants to push his cock between my breasts and have me lick it. I picture the scenario, but in every mental image, there are bodily fluids involved. And I’m not sure if I like that.
I had sex once, and it was highly unpleasant. Most think I am a virgin, but I’m not. Like everything, I used the scientific theory. I formed a hypothesis—can I enjoy sex? I had caught Daniel with one of his girlfriends in the barn at my parents’ ranch, and they both looked as if they were enjoying themselves immensely. Therefore, I’d wanted to try it. I’d selected a college classmate I thought was pleasing to the eye and asked him after a study break if he wished to copulate. He had, and we’d found a hotel room. I’d been so distressed by the blankets and the germs that were sure to be crawling on them that I had a hard time concentrating. My memories of sex were him grasping my breasts a few times, then shoving his dick inside me. It had hurt, and there were copious secretions on his end, which had alarmed me more than anything else. I’d screamed at him for leaking on me and ran for the shower.
And that was the end of that.
After that horrifying experience, I’d done more research on sexual activity and now knew that the penis ejaculating semen was normal. However, I did not find any of it pleasant. No touching, because the human skin secreted oils. No kissing, because mouths were filthy things full of germs. And no penises. No penises at all.
But I did like it when Vasily told me what he wanted to do to me. I will allow him to look at me, but not touch. I’m not fond of touching.
“We will stay here,” he says. “For now.”
I blink at him. I’ve been thinking about sex and I don’t remember our conversation. “Stay where?”
“Here. In this hotel. Tivoli Mofarrej. We will have to be careful. People will be looking for you.”
Ooh. I brighten. “Can we have disguises? If we mask our exterior appearances, it will be difficult for people to find us. In one study of police sketches, more than eighty percent were found to be inaccurate—”
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