Dark Desire Lauren Smith (books for 8th graders .txt) 📖

“I’m listening.”

“Call Wes Thorne and tell him I need five tickets to the United Nations gala that’s happening in New York soon. I also need a dress for her.”

“A dress?”

“Yes, a very specifically designed one. I’ll text you some images. Maybe you could put Kenzie on that if she wants to help.”

“Sure. Send me the details.”

“Thank you, Royce.” He ended the call and stood still in the silent house, thinking. There was one more thing to do, and he would need to call in every favor he was owed. He checked his watch. It was after two in the morning. He dialed another number and waited.

A British-accented voice answered. “Edgeworth here.”

“It’s Razin,” Dimitri said. “Is she awake?”

“Yes, but she is not taking calls, even from her favorites.” The British Private Secretary chuckled.

Dimitri smiled a little. Edgeworth’s boss did have a soft spot for him. “Please give her this message. I need access to a certain tiara.”

“Which one?”

“The large diamond diadem of Alexandra Romanov.”

Edgeworth drew in a deep breath. “There is only one person she would give that to.”

Dimitri kept his tone quiet. “Its rightful owner.”

“You can’t mean . . . My God, after all this time . . . The stories are true?” Edgeworth now knew just what was at stake.

“Yes, and we need to send the Russian ambassador a message. The biggest one we can.”

“Only the royal jeweler knows that she has that tiara. If she sends it to you, there could be questions about how she acquired it.”

“Acquiring a piece like that at a private auction is not something to be ashamed of,” Dimitri promised him. “And we need never say where it came from.”

“Very well, I will convey your request to her when she wakes. If this means what I think it does, you had better be careful.”

“I will.”

Dimitri stood still in the hallway a long moment before he returned to bed. Then he took Elena’s body in his arms and finally got some rest. Knowing Maxim, Leo, and Nicholas were watching his back gave him a chance, for the first time in days, to dream.

“Sir, Ivanoff hasn’t checked in.”

Vladimir Andropov spun his chair to regard the man who stood nervously at his door. Normally he didn’t let any of the lower-level intelligence agents bother him. They knew to stay in their cubicles in the nondescript building at the edge of Moscow’s city limits, but it seemed today, he was going to be pestered by them. He cursed his corner office being on the same floor as these fools.

“How long has it been?” Vladimir Andropov demanded. He didn’t know the man’s name. It didn’t matter. The man, like any other agent handler, could be replaced.

Viktor’s handler pushed his thick glasses back up his nose and shifted on his feet. “It’s been about six hours since we expected him to send us flight details.”

“Six hours?” Vladimir didn’t yell. He didn’t have to.

“We assumed he had a delay, but his last check-in said he was on time. He didn’t confirm mission completion, at least not with the code he was assigned.”

At this, Vladimir leaned forward, his chair creaking in slight protest.

“Are you telling me you haven’t confirmed his kill?”

By the pallor on the man’s face, the handler could tell that the answer might just get the underling killed. “We were certain when he checked in. He promised to send more with his flight details, but we haven’t received anything . . . ,” the man stammered.

“Bring me everything on his assignment, now!” Vladimir took no small amount of satisfaction in watching the man trip as he rushed away.

When Vladimir was alone, he stared at the wall of his office where his service medals awarded by the president of Russia hung in decorative window boxes. Beside one was a framed picture of him as a young man, barely twenty years old, and his partner, Viktor Ivanoff. They had both been young back then, but they’d worked well together and had taken to the grim nature of their work.

As the years had passed, Viktor had wanted to stay in the field, but Vladimir had craved the comforts of power and had worked his way up the ladder of the intelligence sector. He was officially Viktor’s boss now, but he always assigned someone else to be Viktor’s handler on missions. Now he sensed that had been a mistake.

The man returned in a flurry and placed a file on Vladimir’s desk. “This is all we have.”

Vladimir shooed the man away and began to sift through the papers. It was a new file, yet there were dozens of pieces of yellowed paper that were tucked haphazardly between crisply printed new reports. He removed all the older pieces, examining them closely. His heart stuttered to a stop as he recognized the date and the location.

Maine, the United States. Twenty years ago. He reached up to touch his neck where a jagged scar marred his skin. He and Viktor had shared an assignment in Maine to kill a woman named Tatiana Anderson.

It should have been easy. Yet it had been anything but. He and Viktor had barely escaped with their lives. The woman had help escaping them. She had been with a man who knew his way around weapons. In the end, they had killed him, but she, the actual target, had gotten away.

They had been forced to seek medical aid and had agreed to say they had killed the woman. She had been nine months pregnant and wouldn’t have gotten far on foot in the winter storm she’d escaped into. Most likely, she’d died in the woods. They had been too far from any hospital for her to get help, and Vladimir had been certain her water had broken during the fight that night.

Vladimir dug through the file, his hands trembling now as he pieced together something he never could have imagined.

Tatiana Anderson had made it to a hospital and had given birth before dying. A child now fully grown. Vladimir examined the photos in the file. A pretty