Page 36 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“Who?”

She shrugged again. She didn’t want to answer, or maybe she didn’t know. “Berzin also does intelligence work for Papa.”

“Intelligence?”

“Research, you might say.”

“Is that how your father knew so much about me?”

“No doubt. It’s a sign of respect that he had Berzin check you out.”

“Can’t say that I feel flattered, exactly. What’s his story, this Berzin?”

“Papa hired him away from the FSB, the Russian security service. He was a colonel. He’s Siberian—grew up outside Irkutsk. Anyway, he’s an asshole. A terrible person. But he’s been loyal to mypápachkafor a long time. So I’m . . . polite to him. He’s going to be very suspicious of you for a while.”

“Who is?Tvoi otyets?Your father?”

“No, I mean Berzin. Berzin will be suspicious. Nothing personal.”

*

Paul showered and came to bed naked, and found Tatyana already there. Instead of her lace teddy, she was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, an unmissable signal that she didn’t want to play around.

“Pasha, can we talk about something?”

“Of course.”

“I know it’s not cool to talk about your exes, but I need to tell you about an old boyfriend.”

“Why?”

“Just listen. So Charles Helmworth was,is, this Social Register type, you know? Belongs to the New York Athletic Club and the Metropolitan and this yacht club and that yacht club, and he’s a member of the Brook.” Paul knew this was often considered the most exclusive gentleman’s club in New York.

“Very fancy,” Paul said.A different kind of rich, he thought.Inherited.

“Not what you’d think. He was always just barely scraping by. His grandmother paid for all his club memberships, but he was still desperate for cash. His family had gone broke. They had the prestige but not the fortune.”

“So why didn’t he, I don’t know,work?”

“He was lazy. My father called him a ‘layabout.’” She laughed. “He must have looked that word up. He also called him ‘Astor,’ though he wasn’t an Astor. Pápachka kept saying, ‘Who was the last person in that family who did a lick of work? His great-great-grandfather?”

Paul smiled, then laughed.

“Charlie wanted us to live in keeping with my wealth. Which I paid for. Wherever we went, he wanted to stay at the Mandarin or the Four Seasons, in a suite. He wanted to go on these big, lavish vacations—a safari in South Africa, or stay in the South of France or a private island in the Caribbean. The swankiest ski resorts. He insisted on Courchevel, in the French Alps, or Verbier. He said because the skiing was better. But I knew it was really because of the scene. He kept asking me to marry him, and I kept saying no.”

Paul noticed that she was no longer smiling. She’d grown pensive. “Is this the artist with the coke problem?”

She shook her head. “Before him. Anyway, Charlie became insatiable. He wanted to go to the fanciest restaurants, the—”

“He was a gold digger.”

She paused. “My friends warned me, and I should have listened.”

“What happened?”

She paused even longer. Her eyes filled with tears. “My papa put a P.I. on him and caught him cheating.”

Was she sad or was she angry? He couldn’t tell.

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