Chapter 3: Tasha

Wednesday. Rose House. Arlington, VA.

TASHA STROLLED INTO THE Washington, DC house. Every time she came here she was struck by how much she liked the place. It was a shame it was all the way down here and not up north. She strolled through the rooms, soaking up the quiet, and wound up in the formal living room with its wide windows letting in all the afternoon light.

It was time.

She'd spent years trying to get here, and now she was ready. All that work to strengthen her position, strategically maneuver herself and others. Almost twenty years, to be exact. A hell of a lot longer than she'd hoped it would have taken her, but here they were nonetheless.

After so long, she had to wonder just how much the others had changed.

Her transformation was obvious, but what about her husband? Her son?

It was hard for her to believe that either of those two had changed much. Oh, she'd gotten updates on both regularly since she amassed her own little empire. Even when she'd been struggling to get by, she'd always kept herself in the know. Knowledge was power. But this would be the first time she'd seen either her husband or son since she'd left them.

That night was still the best night of her life. Cutting those cords and striking out on her own was the absolute best decision she'd ever made. If she hadn't, she'd still be the wife of Leonid Titov, mistress of shadows who mattered to no one.

Her assistant bustled in through the front door.

Tasha smiled.

The journey to the top had begun.

"Is everything to your liking, ma'am?"

She turned to face the two men hanging back in the entry.

Nikolai looked at her with hopeful eyes. He made her think of a puppy. A very smart puppy, but still a soft, defenseless thing.

The other man, Oleg, wasn't as familiar to her. Nikolai had used him for regular updates on her son, which made him one of the more important individuals at her disposal now.

"You have news for me?" She flicked her fingers.

Tasha crossed to the sofa and sat. Some women wouldn't want to concede the height difference. It was a paltry move to retain some appearance of power.

No, queens didn't stand to assert their power. They sat on thrones.

"Tell me about my son," Tasha demanded.

Oleg nodded. "He's currently at home. His daughter's birthday is today."

"According to our data, he always spends her birthday at home," Nikolai interjected.

Tasha grimaced. She still couldn't believe her soft, idiotic son went off and got a whore pregnant. Her husband had to be involved somehow. But what had Leonid been thinking?

"He keeps two to four guards around him or the home at all time, in addition to building security. Then there's the child's security." Oleg produced his phone and showed her pictures of strapping young men with headsets and gun bulges. Not very discrete, but maybe that was by design.

"Who is that?" She frowned and pointed at the last image.

A woman held the hand of the little girl Tasha knew as Zasha Titov.

Her grandchild.

As if she was old enough to be a grandmother.

The absurdity of it all.

"That's the girl's security," Oleg said.

Tasha frowned. "She looks like she could be her mother."

Still, the longer she looked the more she saw the lines of a tight fitting protective vest. That bulge on her ankle would be the gun, if Tasha had to guess. Still, she was pretty and not likely to raise any flags unless you knew what to look for. Which only made Tasha think her son might not be as much of an idiot as he'd been as a child.

He did have her blood in him. Maybe he'd finally gotten some sense?

Oleg briefed her on Konstantin's days, the hours he kept, who he met with and so forth for another hour before she dismissed him. Much of what he said she already knew from her other source, one even Nikolai knew nothing about.

The question remained, what was her next move?

She had all the pieces and all the plans, but how to begin?

Once this started, she was going to take it all the way to her piece of shit husband. She was going to take everything he held dear, just like he'd done to her.

The link was their son. To get at Leonid, she needed to lure him out. And he'd gone off and let his greatest weakness get away from him.

What to do? What to do?