She shoved him back. “I thought you were working for the government! That’s a normal job. These people…” She looked down at herself. “Even me now?—”
“Vampires.” He smiled a little bit. “Yes, I know.” He slipped into Ukrainian. “My mom worked for them too. For Wallace Hotels, back in the day.”
“So did you grow up knowing about all this?” Tatyana was gobsmacked.
“Oh no, but when the government took me?—”
“What do you mean,tookyou?”
“I hacked the Defense Ministry’s secure website when I was fourteen,” Grimace admitted. “I was going to go to jail, but instead, they told me I could work for them.” He shrugged. “Easy choice really, but after the sixth year of work with no end in sight…”
“They didn’t give you an end date?”
“Does any government?” Grimace shrugged. “I basically worked for free until I turned eighteen, and then they paid me a little bit, but I was still under surveillance all the time. Except for gaming. They never caught on to that.” He grinned. “That was good thinking, Pidge.”
“Governments.” Tatyana shook her head, but she wasn’t surprised.
“Eventually my mom got in contact with Gavin Wallace, who worked his vampire contacts and got me out of there.”
“How many years ago?”
“Four years.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’ve been working for myself for four years now.”
Nearly as long as she and Oleg had been married. “I’m glad your parents went to Wallace.” She saw Sándor looking at them sideways, and Tatyana knew he was annoyed that he didn’t understand what Grimace was saying. “We should switch back to Russian unless you speak Poshani.”
“Oh sure.” He started speaking Russian again. “After working with Wallace for a while, I started to see the patterns, and I had a feeling that mysterious boss you talked about might have been a vampire, but I had no idea he wasthevampire, you know?”
“Yes, well…” She shook her head. “Now he’s basically my husband. Ceremonially, of course.”
“I know. Now I’m just annoyed that I didn’t charge him more.”
“Is that the contract that you signed? What did you promise?” She narrowed her eyes. “If he took advantage of you?—”
“I mean, I’m not going to make much money for a couple of years off of his business, but I was the one to suggest it.” Grimace shrugged. “So it’s my fault. I just was so worried about you?—”
“I’m sorry.” She truly was. Grimace had been a lifeline when she was running from Oleg, and she’d basically dropped out of his life. “I thought it would be easier if I disappeared.”
“I tracked your mother, so I was hopeful you were out there and safe, just in hiding. But you?” He shook his head. “It was like you never existed. You don’t even have a birth certificate on record anymore.”
Tatyana had never realized how thoroughly Oleg had wiped her existence from the human world. “It’s safer that way. I have documents now, but they’re all under different names.”
“No, I get it.Now.” He shook his head. “So you’re like… the Russian vampire queen or something?”
Sándor snorted in the corner.
Tatyana glared at her security chief. “It’s a political marriage. I’m one of the leaders of the Poshani clan now, but for the next hundred years, I’m married to Oleg too. It solidified an alliance.”
“So fucking medieval.” Grimace’s voice was awestruck. “That’s so cool. I mean, as long as you weren’t forced into it or anything. That would suck.”
“I wasn’t forced. I volunteered. Sokolov is not my favorite person, but I’ve worked with him in the past and we both survived” —sort of— “so that’s probably as good a foundation for vampire marriage as anything else.”
“Yeah, I heard about the big wedding next month.” He smiled. “Think I could negotiate an invitation to the event into my shitty contract with Oleg?”
“Do you really want to come?” It was nice to think she might have another friend there since her first wedding was a secret and her second was all for show.
“It sounds pretty badass, Pidge. You’re getting married in a big ceremony and are gonna live in a palace in Saint Petersburg. Even all of Wallace’s people are talking about it.”
Tatyana sighed. “I suppose it’s become the social event of the year.” She spread her hands. “So… why not?”
