The Russian's Ultimatum. Michelle Smart

was make-up free. No wonder he hadn’t recognised her, not until she’d raised those dark-brown eyes to meet his.

      He would have recognised those eyes anywhere, dark but with flickers of yellow firing through them. Under the light of the function room the party had been hosted in, the colours had melded together, glimmering like a fire opal.

      Those same eyes were staring at him now, loathing radiating from them.

      He held his hand out and waited. If necessary, he would wait all day.

      It wasn’t necessary. Emily slipped her hand into her back pocket and pulled out a small silver device. She dropped it into the palm of his hand and stepped straight back, away from him.

      As he’d suspected: a memory stick.

      He strolled round to his seat, still warm from her bottom, and folded his arms. ‘Sit down.’

      After a beat, Emily grabbed the chair opposite him and dragged it to the other side of his office, literally as far away from him as she could get it.

      ‘So, Emily, it is time for you to start talking. Why were you trying to steal the files from my laptop?’

      ‘Why do you think? I’m trying to prove my father’s innocence.’

      ‘By stealing my files?’

      ‘I had to do something. According to my sources, you haven’t even started the investigation into the missing money you’ve accused him of taking. The stress of it all is making him seriously ill.’

      Emily would do anything in her power to clear her father’s name. Anything. She had to give him something that would make his life—make him—feel as if it were worthwhile again.

      As much as it pained her heart, Emily knew she would never be a good enough reason for her father to go on.

      She’d watched him go through these dark times as a child, long periods where he wouldn’t get out of bed for weeks on end. It had been terrifying. Back then, her mother had held them all together: had held him together. But now her mother was dead. The rock they’d all relied upon was gone.

      In the space of three months her father had lost the wife he’d adored and been suspended from the job he’d taken such pride in. The threat of the police knocking on his door and a subsequent prison sentence loomed over him. With hindsight, it had been obvious he would try to kill himself. He’d very nearly succeeded.

      Losing her mother had been the single most devastating thing that had ever happened to her, a fresh, open wound that couldn’t begin to heal while her father’s mental and physical health were so precarious. If she were to lose him too...

      Pascha gathered the file Emily had been reading when he’d caught her. So she had sources within his company, did she? That was something to think about later on. There was a much more important factor to consider first, namely how much of the file she’d read. He had no way of knowing how long she’d been in his office before he’d caught sight of her on the monitor. No longer than ten minutes, that was certain, as that had been the length of time since he’d left it. But long enough to read about things she had no business knowing.

      ‘We will move on to the subject of your father shortly,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, tell me what you read in this file. And don’t say you didn’t read anything, because you were engrossed in it.’

      For long moments she didn’t answer, simply stared at him, her eyes squinting as if in thought. As if she were weighing him up... ‘Not much. Only that a company called RG Holdings is buying out Plushenko’s.’

      Plushenko’s was a Russian jewellery firm whose trinkets were regarded as some of the most luxurious in the world and came with a price tag to match, the Plushenko brand rivalling that of the other famous Russian jeweller, Fabergé. At least, it had been regarded as such. In recent years the jewels had lost much of their lustre and sales were a fraction of what they had been a decade ago. Amidst the highest secrecy, Pascha was gearing up for a buyout, using a front company.

      ‘Oh, and I read that you own RG Holdings but that your name is being kept off all the official documents between RG and Plushenko’s.’ Her brow furrowed, as if she were trying to remember something, then her lips twisted into something resembling a smile. ‘What was the phrase I read? Something along the lines of, “it is imperative that Marat Plushenko does not learn of Pascha Virshilas’s involvement in this buyout”. Was that it?’

      Only with the greatest effort did Pascha keep his features still. Inside, his stomach lurched, his skin crawling as if a nest of spiders had been let loose in him.

      Her brown eyes held his, as if in challenge, before her lips curved upwards—amazing lips, like a heart tugged out at the sides. Her eyes remained cold. She leaned forward. ‘It’s obvious this buy-out is important to you and you need to keep it a secret. I suggest we make a deal: if you agree to withdraw the threat of legal action towards my father, I will keep the details of the Plushenko deal to myself.’

      Pascha’s fingers tightened on the document in his grasp. ‘You think you can blackmail me?’

      She raised her shoulders in a sign of nonchalance. ‘You may call it blackmail but I like to think of it as us making a deal. Clear my father’s name. I want it in writing that you’ll exonerate him from any potential charges or I will sing from the rooftops.’

      Emily could see by the whitening of Pascha’s knuckles that he was fighting to keep his composure.

      How she kept her own composure, she did not know.

      She’d never been a wallflower, not by any stretch of the imagination, but she’d never been one for making war before either. To stand up against this powerful man—a man capable of destroying her father; of destroying her too—and know she was winning... It was a heady feeling.

      From despair and anger at getting caught and failing her father, she’d found a way to salvage the situation.

      ‘I can have you arrested for this,’ Pascha said, his voice low and menacing.

      ‘Try it.’ She allowed herself a smile. ‘I’ll be entitled to a phone call. I think I’ll use it to contact the firm Shirokov—is that how you pronounce it?—and see if they’d be interested in representing me.’

      How Pascha stopped his tongue rolling out the volley of expletives it wanted to say, he did not know.

      Shirokov was the firm representing Marat Plushenko in the buy-out.

      She dared to think she could threaten and blackmail him? This little pixie with a tongue as curling as her hair dared to think she could take him on and win?

      He’d spent two years trying to make this deal happen, had even bought Bamber Cosmetics a few months ago as a decoy to avert any suspicion.

      And now Emily Richardson had the power to blow it all to hell.

      If Marat Plushenko heard so much as a whisper that Pascha was the face behind RG Holdings, he would abandon the deal without a backward glance and Plushenko’s, the business the late, great Andrei Plushenko had built from nothing, would be ground to dust. His legacy would be gone.

      And so would Pascha’s last chance at redemption.

      Could he trust her? That was the question.

      He had no doubt her actions in stealing his files had been driven by exactly what she claimed—to prove her father’s innocence. He almost admired her for it.

      But beneath the collected exterior lurked a wildness. It echoed in the flickers of light emitting from her dark eyes. He could feel it.

      This was a woman on the edge.

      That, in itself, answered his question.

      No, he could not trust her.

      In exactly one week, the Plushenko deal would be finalised, the contracts signed. Seven whole days in which he would be wondering and worrying if she