Gold Digger by Aleksandr Voinov

Author:Aleksandr Voinov [Voinov, Aleksandr]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Riptide Publishing

“I’ll leave talking to Ruslan to you, Nikolai. You have the full story,” Tamás said while they were keeping an eye on the departures board.

“Yeah, thanks.” He was widely considered Ruslan’s best friend among the “Attis boys.” Maybe because they both came from oil or maybe because they were both technically Russians, though Nikolai had grown up in Hungary and never served in the army and didn’t intend to ever tell Ruslan that. He had a vague idea that Ruslan wouldn’t look kindly on a man whose mother had bought him out of the draft thanks to a corrupt official. He’d never expected that to turn into a stigma with other Russians—he despised the idea of military service in theory and on principle. There was no romance in it, and he’d seen what it had done to his father.

Your father was a pilot who crashed in Afghanistan and died.

Well, to Vadim, then.

There were things he’d kept even from Ruslan, and the man knew more about him than pretty much everybody.

“There’s your gate, Tamás—have a good flight.”

Tamás hugged him tight for a moment, gave him a shoulder-slap, then got his sports bag with his clothes and rushed off toward his gate. Nikolai settled in a corner of the terminal and waited for the San Francisco flight to come up, playing idly with his phone until he was bored with Tetris. He had avoided listening to the messages in his voicemail. Unknown caller. Could really only be Henri, maybe to check whether he’d gotten back to the hotel all right. He wasn’t ready to think about it, or Henri, or what that damned takeover meant for his friends and his own life or when it would happen.

He dialed Ruslan’s number. “Hi Ruslan. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything, but LBM’s going to screw us.”

“What happened?”

“They were interested, but they wanted to use their votes to get you replaced by the junior. Henri LeBeau. Said he’d done something similar in Mali.”

“Malawi. The Saturn prospect.”

“Okay, you’re up to date.”

“No, but I did research on this Henri.”

“Well, he’d have been your successor. They were going to put you in as a senior adviser and Henri would have taken over Cybele.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“I told them both to go fuck themselves. Which wasn’t really my place. I should have waited for your call on that. I mean, it’s your baby. I should have respected that, too.” He rubbed his forehead, itchy with nervousness and residual anger. “But I was just so angry about the whole thing.”

“Why angry? Anything that made it personal?”

Well, I fucked the junior and then he turned around and stabbed me in the back. “No. Yes. I went out to dinner with Henri and he seemed like a nice guy.”

“You bond in the very old-fashioned way, Kolya.”

I’m not sure anal sex counts as old-fashioned there. Nikolai suppressed a grimace. Ruslan was the only guy on the planet who used the affectionate diminutive of his name, which oddly only cemented their bond.

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