A Valuable Asset (The Decoy Series Book 2) by Chloé Archambault

Author:Chloé Archambault [Archambault, Chloé]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chloe Archambault
Published: 2023-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Life is full of surprises. Oleg and I woke up in the morning next to each other and smiled, then went to the kitchen as if this was just another morning and started to play house. I had put on a large sweater and a pair of heavy socks I’d found in his bag to wear around the apartment and he sat me down and heated me a brioche he’d bought the day before at a boulangerie.

Outside the weather was grey and we stayed in and behaved as though we’d both decided that we were a couple. Highly enjoyable, and somewhat surreal. And on my end of things a welcome distraction from the horrors of the past ten days. I supposed the two of us were agile at catching whatever happiness happened to be thrown our way, and at squeezing it for as long as it gave us some juice. A kind of extreme investment in the immediate present. In that respect also he and I were the same.

I collected my clothes to wash them after lounging in the kitchen in the black sweater of my pop-up fiancé, and as I poured some soap in the machine dispenser and selected the wash cycle, I came up with a plan for my meeting with the Service. Oleg had said earlier that he had work to do, moving money, no doubt. And while he traded tokens on the blockchain and sent them to crypto tumblers for a good mixing, I drew up a short list of venues where I could safely meet with my mystery contact over a decent meal.

“You know, I don’t even like the super-rich,” Oleg said later, after we’d had some canned soup for lunch. “Most of them think they’re the most interesting people in the world.”

“Maybe you should change your line of work.”

I was teasing him, and he knew it. He tried to pinch my thigh, then stood up and picked up our empty bowls to put them in the sink.

“And do what? No, really. I’m just a pozhiratel repy in fancy clothes, Katyusha. A turnip eater. All I know is the Internet.”

Survival was an occupation taught early in life for kids who grew up on their own. Whatever skills you had, you hung onto those for dear life. But my new beau turned and shot me the glance of a weasel. Whatever hardships he’d lived through, Oleg was no victim. And if he had been, he’d outgrown that phase a long time ago.

“Steal from the rich,” I said. “You’ll be a hero.”

He looked at me and laughed.

“Like some kind of Internet Robin Hood? Except that stealing for the poor is very dangerous. But when you steal on behalf of the rich, you never get caught.”

Oleg was an intellectual, but he was also a cynic and a mercenary. Who wouldn’t be after being raised in an orphanage? My new lover had told me that he’d been self-sufficient since the age of sixteen, first working at a state run troll farm, then recruited as a Cozy Bear trainee by the SVR two years later.

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