My heart is racing as I speak.
“I’ve been with Simon Volkov for some time now, watching, learning, and realizing… You see, I thought his family was so much better than ours, but lately… things have changed.”
“What’s changed?” My father says, skeptical.
“Since my children were taken, he’s proven that he is a far weaker man than he portrays. And it’s disgusted me. The situation has driven a wedge between us. My heart is no longer with him. I understand now… what you were trying to tell me before. I see it now for myself. The Volkovs are beneath us.”
My father sneers, shaking his head. “You expect me to just believe you’ve switched sides? Just like that? And what is your plan exactly?”
I sigh, placing my phone on the desk. I press play on a short, clipped version of the fight Simon and I had the other night.
My father listens carefully, leaning forward in his chair. The way I framed the things I said to Simon… I pushed him to say certain things back to me. It sounds awful in the voice clip. It makes him sound weak, and it makes me sound furious.
My father’s eyes narrow when the recording ends.
He says nothing, so I continue.
“This,” I gesture over the phone, “Is what I have been dealing with lately. And I’m sick of it. I can go back there and resolve the issues. I could do that. It would be easy; he is so in love with me that he would fall at my feet to have me back. I could be with him and gather information to feed back to you. It would take some effort from my side… I would have to fake anyfeelings I have towards him. But I would do that… if it got my children back. Unlike Simon, I would literally doanythingfor my family.AndI have other conditions.”
“Conditions,” my father muses, smiling now. He’s finally catching on.
I smile tightly. “It turns out that I am a Mykros after all. We can’t really deny the blood we are born with, can we?”
“Does that bother you, daughter?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No, it’s just something I wasn’t expecting. I… it took me a long time to understand why you did what you did. Why you kept me locked up here. But now I understand. However, that is part of my conditions. I can be your daughter again, but not under those same circumstances. I come and go as I please. I have my own life. Not yours. I will honor the family. I will be with you. But I still need to play the role of a happy Volkov wife type.” I scowl at the last few words.
“I see. So, your condition is freedom?”
“Yes. And trust between us.”
Chapter23 - Simon
Adrian turns to look at me. “Dude. Can you stop tapping your leg like that? It’s distracting,” he grumbles.
I clench the muscles in my legs, forcing them to stop as I lean over the desk, my entire focus on the listening device streaming from Selene to us.
Adrian turns the volume louder as Alek and Selene continue talking.
“She’s doing really well,” Adrian says.
“It was a fucking risky idea,” Matvei mumbles behind us, his arms folded over his chest as he listens too.
“She is doing well, but that’s because she learned from the darkest manipulator in this city,” I sigh. I hate the fact that she is there alone. I hated the idea the moment she suggested it, and I still hate it now. But when she played just a clipping of the argument she recorded, I realized what she meant when she told me she said those things on purpose. She orchestrated the fight. A brutal fight with harsh words that set a very specific image of the kind of relationship we have.
“I’ll play this for my father,” she’d told me.
We spent hours talking that night, lying in each other’s arms and putting the plan together, perfecting how she would present herself to him to trick him into believing her.
And now she’s there. And I’m here. And every piece of me is hating myself for letting her go.
“I can agree to freedom. The trust will have to be earned, though,” Alek says, his voice picked up through the hidden microphone on Selene.
“From both sides,” she adds, sassy and confident.
“Fair enough. So, do you have anything useful to tell me about the Volkovs now?” Alek asks.
“Straight for the jugular,” Matvei snarls. I wave my hand to hush him.
