Page 80 of Mistaken
Blyad'!My wife was delicious with that attempt at an innocent expression. “And what would I call an impudent vixen?” I murmured, kissing my way down her neck. She wiggled against me enticingly.
“I’m sure you couldn't be talking about me,?????? Morozov,”she smiled smugly.
“Oh no, of course not.” My mouth closed over her breast and there was no more to be said.
“You look better today.”
Ella’s voice is muffled, her face is pressed into my chest and she’s limp and exhausted after riding me to another orgasm. My cock is softening inside her, but she’s so warm and snug; I don’t want to leave her yet.
I look down. “Have I looked so terrible before this?”
“You looked exhausted,” she answered, “all those stress lines around your mouth and on your forehead.” My bride smiled up at me, “You look… hmmm. Less Pakhan and more Maksim, I guess.”
She’s beautiful, this woman I married. Strong, intelligent, kind. Of all the random, mistaken encounters in this universe; I had the one that gave me the perfect queen. But she’s still an outsider. Her horrified fury after finding out about Mariya’s match with Konstantin Turgenev is proof of that. But she stood up to Dante Toscano at the nightclub magnificently. Ivan was quite proud of her when he’d given me his report.
Twenty-four hours earlier…
“You would have been proud of her, Pakhan.” Ivan was bragging about Ella’s performance atGehenna.“Toscano would not take hand off Miss Ekaterina’s and Miss Ella got on his face and-”
“In,” I clarify, “in his face. On his face means something else.” I’d been having Ivan speak to me in English to improve his skill. I wanted him to be able to communicate easily with my wife as her primary security.
His brow furrowed before his expression cleared and he nodded vigorously. “Of course.” He waited to see if I would lose my temper and continued. “She told him to let go, she did not wish to see her husband throw him over another railing.”
I forced myself to not laugh, one must keep composure around the men, but I wanted to. I could so easily picture Ella’s expression and how she’d aggressively point her finger in someone’s face.
“What did he do?”
Ivan frowned, “He left, but he turned around and stared at Miss Ekaterina. He was very excited to know she was your sister.”
Allowing them to take Ekaterina out was a very bad idea,I thought, feeling another headache bloom, I knew this and I still allowed it. This was a serious mistake.
Ella…
The next day…
Tapping furiously on my chemical schematics app was giving me so much happiness right now. It felt like long-dormant muscles were warming up again, stretching and expanding as I scanned through the composition structure.
Something the mysterious Bogdan said the other day kept nagging at me. Odorless gas, unconsciousness, and lapse in memory afterward. No chemical trace left to sample… I’d logged into Marla's account at Adalen Labs; she was notorious for never changing her password and fortunately, that paid off.
“L-36 Neurology CaP can be administered in an odorless, colorless gas for patients whose swallow reflex is inadequate for tablet or liquid application,” I’m murmuring as I read through the research. I’d noticed when I read it the first time - back when I worked at the lab and had an actual professional life - that the application element seemed odd. After all, you can use an IV to administer meds that can’t be taken orally. And this research was far too expensive to have been created for patients with a needle phobia.
Looking through Marla’s notes, I found what I was looking for.
Here’s the missing piece from their original findings,she wrote,this gas is meant to be airborne and cover a larger area than would ever be needed for a medical application.
I sit back in shock. They’re testing a weapon, not a medicine.
“Which is illegal in so many ways,” I mumble, scrolling through the application structure. This matches up against everything the report Bogdan had given in Maksim’s study yesterday. Stretching my arms over my head, I looked around. I was back in the cozy alcove behind the living room and the sun coming through the window was warm on my face.
I read through the latest lab results again. This was a weapon in development and would not be utilized in a real-life setting before it passed through the testing process. Whether this was an actual medication, or the obvious weapon it is and likely something for the US government. But it wouldn’t be the first time a new pharmaceutical development - or weapons-based, in this case - was stolen during the process, no matter how good security was.
“So…” I stood up, pacing over to the window. “This could be a coincidence, but it’s unlikely. Drugs in development get stolen all the time, so there’s no reason that a weaponized drug wouldn’t be any different. The big problem here is how do you counteract the gas?”
I spent another hour pulling up everything I could on L-36, but apparently, the study hadn’t gotten that far. “Typical,” I sneered, “develop the drug without creating a counteragent.” I screen-capped everything I could and put the research in a documents folder before I logged out. The one thing the lab was good at was monitoring time spent on any research, though I suspected it was to justify hours, rather than any security concern.
My first thought was to scamper down the hall to Maksim’s office to share what I’d learned.
“Well, crap. If I do that, I have to admit that I was spying on his meeting.” My eyes narrowed. “I shouldn’t have to be spying on this??????? ???????in the first place!”
