Red Alpha: A BWWM Russian Alpha Billionaire Romance
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Authors: Cristina Grenier
Tags: #An BWWM Russian Billionaire Romance
Chapter Nine: Necessary Measures
Red Alpha
Cristina Grenier
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He didn’t understand. But, then again, Demyan had never been very good at understanding things. His father had always called him thick, while his mother preferred to label him contemplative.
The truth was that the young boy was neither of those things. However, Demyan was careful. Even at the tender age of eight, he knew that there were certain things that he couldn’t do and say in public, regardless of what people thought.
He and his sister were always at odds that way – arguing over what they could and couldn’t say. Of course, as she was three years his senior, she usually won. But, in the moment, Demyan wasn’t sure how much that mattered. All he knew was that he was utterly confused, and Elisaveta seemed to know much more about what was going on than he.
Why there were men with huge, gleaming black guns in their living room, and why those guns were pointed at their parents…
Demyan wanted to stop them. He wanted to run up to the men and grab their guns – to point them away from his mother and father, but Elisaveta wouldn’t let him. She stood in front of him, her hand holding his tightly, her expression shielded from view by her long blonde hair.
The hair that their mother had so lovingly brushed that morning.
Because she held him, there was nothing Demyan could do but watch as the tall, stiff soldiers asked their parents a deluge of questions that neither of them seemed to know the answer to. The young boy didn’t think he’d ever seen such terror on his mother’s face.
Just that morning, she had sung him his favorite song to coax him out of bed – the one Elisaveta insisted he was too old for, and teased him when she heard. But Demyan gladly endured her cruelty if it meant that his mother’s low, sweet tones pulled him from his dreams rather than his sister’s loud chattering. Now, tears stained his mother’s pale skin and her dark blonde hair hung around her face limply.
One of the black-clad men hit her and bloodied her lip.
A cry of outrage escaped Demyan as he leapt towards his parents in distress. Elisaveta, however, maintained her hold on him – only tightening it when he attempted to escape. “Veta!” He screamed, tugging madly at her wrist. “Let me go, Veta!”
“
Hush!
” His sister snapped in return almost immediately. “Or you’ll die too!”
Die
? Their parents were going to die?
Almost as if Veta’s words had brought the action into being, the apartment was suddenly filled with the deafening sound of gunfire. Demyan might have screamed, but his breath was stolen from him. Veta shoved him onto the floor, and tears streaked down the dark-haired boys face as he listened to his mother’s cries, his father’s
pleas
for mercy.
And then, all at once, everything went quiet.
The guns, along with the terrible sound of his parents’ suffering, stopped.
With his head pressed into the carpet, Demyan couldn’t see what had happened. All he knew was that, moments later, strong arms were hauling him to his feet, and Veta was once more beside him. Whereas he couldn’t stop crying, barely able to breathe beneath the combination of fear and grief that weighed down on him, Veta’s face was eerily stony for an eleven-year-old.
As one of the black-clad men steered them out of the apartment, another spoke on a radio to some unseen comrade, and Demyan heard him say something about militants. He had no idea what a militant was, but somehow, the term sounded worse than death itself.
He and Veta left their home that day – and with it, any vestiges of their childhood that might have remained.
Cadence didn’t think she’d ever been more on edge in her entire life.
She sat, stiff backed, in a chair outside of her superior’s office, as she waited for those within to make one of the most important decisions of her life.
Something she had wanted for close to ten years.
Taking a deep breath, the young woman gazed around the small waiting area in which she was seated, trying to clear her mind. When she got nervous, she tended to fidget- and that hardly reflected well on her professionally. She had worked far too hard for the entirety of her career to make a mistake now.
Cadence closed her eyes, trying to employ the breathing techniques she’d been taught for yoga. In through her nose, out through her mouth. Regardless of the way her heart hammered against her ribs or the tension in her long legs.
She needed to be
calm
.
A low buzzing from inside her bag made her arch her brow, and she reluctantly opened her eyes to retrieve her phone. At the sight of the text-message displayed across the screen, she smiled, shaking her head, as a measure of her nervousness melted away.
You’ve got this in the bag. Relax.
-G
At least Geoffrey had the utmost confidence in her. It helped when she herself wasn’t quite sure that she had what was required to be sent on this mission.
At that precise moment, the door to Myles Branch’s office opened, and Cadence leapt out of her seat as if she had been burned. The man himself emerged – a ramrod straight column of muscle that represented every obstacle she’d ever had to go through to get where she was – and he was speaking softly with someone that Cadence knew by face and reputation only.
Everly Cresseda – the head of the Russian Intelligence sect of the FBI. She had the final say in agents who went overseas – and into the belly of the beast. Of course, conditions for agents sent to Russia had been far less dangerous in the past twenty years, but that didn’t prevent Cresseda from being a stickler for regulations.
She didn’t like agents who had minds of their own – a single rule infraction in the past five years took you out of the running to join her team.
Luckily enough for Cadence, she had been operating with the intention of joining the Russian unit ever since she’d obtained her desk job. Straight and narrow was her middle name – and why wouldn’t it be?
After all, disregard for regulations had been Alessia’s downfall.
At her elder sister’s memory, the young woman frowned. She was doing this
for
Alessia. Both for her, and for the country that allowed both of them to meet aspirations they’d had since they were young.
“Director Cresseda, this is Agent Cadence Freedman.” When the two finished speaking discreetly, Branch gestured in her direction, and Cadence thought her spine might snap from the effort it took to make herself look taller. She was already five nine as it was, and atop that, today she was wearing her power heels.
Which made her almost as tall as Director Cresseda herself. Not that the severe blonde woman was giving her any points for that. As she shook Cadence’s out-stretched hand, she gave the dark-skinned woman a once over that spoke volumes of how she felt about her recommendation. “Freedman. Are you, by any chance, kin to Alessia Freedman?”
And there it was. Out in the open.
The one thing standing between her and the assignment she so desperately wanted.
How many times per year did Cadence face this issue? It had all but taken over her career, let alone the life she lived outside the office. It felt like she would be “the younger sister of Alessia Freedman” forever- and damn any attempt she made at notoriety for her own name.
“She was my sister.” The young woman grudgingly admitted, cursing her dearly departed sibling even as her heart ached at the sound of her name. Even though it had been a full ten years, she felt Alessia’s absence as powerfully as she had the day she’d found out about her sister’s death.
Which was why she
had
to get to Moscow.
“Of course.” Cresseda replied, as if she’d expected no less. “I’ll have you know, Ms. Freedman, that I’m not running a unit built for vengeance. We stay well within the guidelines put forth by the department. You complete the mission assigned to you and then you’re brought home.”
“Pardon my frankness, Director Cresseda, but this
organization
isn’t about vengeance. I knew that the day I signed up.” It was a gamble, she knew, to speak so strongly. In essence, to lie. But Cadence had been waiting ten years for this. She’d do just about anything to get to Russia.
The director gave her a long, hard look. One that Cadence estimated might have cowed a woman with less conviction. As respectfully as she could, she met the director’s gaze, and, looking on, Branch arched a brow at the silent battle of wills going on before him.
It seemed like an eternity, but in reality, a minute might have passed before Cresseda spoke. “You’ll take the exam.” She demanded crisply, “Both physical and mental, and when the trials are finished, then we’ll speak again. Are we clear?”
Five years ago, Cadence would have leapt into the air with a whoop of excitement. But, age had mellowed her. Her twenty ninth birthday was fast approaching, and she anticipated celebrating in private rather than making a scene.
“Thank you, Director Cresseda.” She shook the other woman’s hand again, her expression carefully neutral. “I look forward to it.”
The blonde woman’s smile was thin. “I’m sure.” With that, she turned on her heel to stride down the hall and out of the department.
Leaving Cadence standing beside Assistant Director Branch as her nerves turned to elation. The tall man stepped up next to her, unable to suppress a grin of triumph. “I had to admit Freedman, I didn’t know if she would bite. That woman’s a hard nut to crack.”
“You don’t know how much I appreciate this, Myles.” For the first time since she’d received Geoff’s text message, Cadence allowed herself to smile. The hardest part, the young woman reminded herself, was over.
The exams would be cake – and then, she would only have to deal with Cresseda once more before she’d be on her way to Moscow.
And into Alessia’s world.
“What’s there to appreciate? You’ve worked hard for this, Freedman. You deserve it.” Her mentor extended his hand to shake and Cadence took it warmly. When she’d first started at the bureau, Myles had been the one to show her the ropes. He’d been hard on her – but it had been his strict nature that had helped to mold her into the agent she was.
And Cadence was proud to say she thought she was ready for anything Director Cresseda could dish out.
It wasn’t until she left the office later on that day that Cadence finally allowed herself to celebrate. On the way home, she bought a pint of her favorite pistachio almond ice cream as well as an entire pecan pie. She planned on treating herself this coming weekend, as there would be none of that when she started training.
Once she was safely in her apartment, she took off her suit, methodically hanging the jacket and skirt she’d painstakingly pressed that morning in her closet before throwing on a pair of sweats. That done, she sank down on her sofa, closed her eyes, and took a moment to let it all sink in.
She was almost there. Russia was within her grasp.
It seemed like only yesterday she and her sister had been watching the news on television, lamenting over the state of the world when other children were busy with Barbie dolls and dress up clothes. From a very young age, both she and Alessia had been interested in the world around them. For Cadence’s older sister especially, tales of conflict in foreign lands and the people trying to make the world a better place had always been more interesting than anything their parents bought them.