CHAPTER 1

A/N – Hello everyone! After more than a month of break from the beautiful and dangerously addictive world of fanfiction writing (my fellow authors must surely know what I'm talking about, heh) I am back with a new story for a new pairing. To be honest, I've had this is mind for a long time now, but Hell, I swore to myself to quit starting a million things and then have them dragging about, so I postponed it until everything else was finished. Well, almost everything else. But enough tales of my poor workload management, here's the first chap, so enjoy!

Loud laughter came from the kitchen almost in the same time with the blasted alarm on her cell phone and Elizaveta kicked the covers aside already irked, even if still half asleep. Slender fingers gripped the ringing device, effectively silencing it with a long-practiced push of buttons before the brunette hauled herself up and shook the tangled locks away from her eyes. Nothing like fucking Monday mornings, she thought ill-humoredly.

A pleasant smell of strong coffee beckoned her into the small kitchen where her stepbrother Feliks and his boyfriend were sat at the table, chatting over a pile of freshly toasted bread and bacon and eggs. Hell, at least they cooked and cleaned, seeing how they weren't doing much of anything else. Technically (if that was the word) Toris was in medical school and Feliks was doing some obscure art and fashion major, but neither had ever had a permanent job or something from which regular income could be derived. Feliks was getting a monthly allowance from his mother, but where exactly that went apart from tuition fees was a mystery better left unexplored, so it was pretty much up to Elizaveta to financially support this essentially creepy ménage-a-trois which wasn't even a ménage-a-trois. Hell, a ménage-a-trois would have at least been fun.

The Hungarian poured a steaming cup of coffee from the filter and sat down, absently reaching for a piece of toast. She told herself that if only she hadn't been working such ungodly long hours, maybe she would have afforded having a relationship too. But that was just the excuse, the painful truth was that she took refuge in work and professional ambition to deny the ever-growing crush she had on a certain man who would probably never respond to her feelings.

In the end, as it sadly happened most days, again she hadn't been able to get ready and leave before 8:30. Leaving home early enough in order to make it to the office at 9:00 without racing up the stairs or wrestling her way into the packed elevators remained an unattainable goal and Elizaveta paused at the top of the stairs to straighten up her deux piece jacket and smoothen her long pony tail before heading towards their offices. But as soon as she looked up from her clothes, the young accountant was met with a bizarre sight – the matted glass doors which bore the name Beilschmidt, Edelstein& Karpusi – Accounting, Audit and Tax Advisory in large embossed letters were wide open and there were even some scattered papers visible inside down onto the carpeted hallway.

What could have possibly happened, today of all days? The staff came in at 9:00 A.M. sharp, but the partners didn't usually arrive until 9:30, so she had been hoping for at least half an hour of extra work on the project Ludwig had assigned her, but now… the place looked oddly deserted and upon checking her watch Elizaveta noted that it was already 9:10.

"Vee, maybe I'll have your access card blocked one of these days," a familiar voice said, nearly making the Hungarian jump. The unpleasant remark had come from none other than Feliciano Vargas, Ludwig's personal secretary. The little Italian who was always impecably dressed and always on some sort of diet to keep in perfect shape threw a disdainful and purposeful glance at her last-year shoes and sighed with a scowl.

"What's going on?"

Feliciano crossed his arms, sporting a sour look. "The police was here earlier, they took some files and stuff…"

"WHAT?!"

Elizaveta felt an icy pang in her stomach. The police rarely showed up in the tall, fancy office buildings of the City, but when they did come… it was bad. "B-But why?!"

"Some shit happened with Turkish-French Tobacco Exports and their custom tax returns," the auburn-haired young man replied boredly. "There's something up with the figures they declared, smells like a little fraud to the HMRC."

Turkish-French Tobacco Exports had been one of their major bookkeeping clients in the past, but recently they'd centralized all their accounting in a service center in Ireland, so Beilschmidt, Edelstein& Karpusi was now only involved with preparing and submitting their tax returns.

"How little…?"

"Around eight million pounds, and they said-"

"Feli, get Roderich on the phone and tell him to come to the office, NOW!" the German partner shouted from his office, interrupting, and the secretary hurried back to his desk.

Drawing a shaky breath, Elizaveta walked slowly towards her own small office, only to discover that her laptop was gone and the shelves were mostly empty of files. The two desk drawers looked like someone had gone through them as well and the brunette felt tears pricking her eyes. She had nothing of particular value at work, but in three years with the firm she'd gotten used to her tidy little corner and it felt too much like an intrusion. Dropping her bag onto the now empty desk, she did her best to compose herself and turned towards Ludwig Beilschmidt's office.

The Accounting Partner, the most confident man she'd ever met, was now slumped over his desk, head in his hands and looking uncharacteristically disheveled.

"Is it true, sir?" Elizaveta asked, causing the cerulean blue eyes to look up at her tiredly.

Ludwig nodded. "Yes. We've been accused of tax evasion, together with our client. The contract makes us jointly liable…." He drew a breath, making an effort to sit up straight in his chair. "Miss Hedervary, I don't know how to tell you this… it's true that Heracles Karpusi is the Tax Partner, but since the files were uploaded on the firm's intranet, like everything else we usually work on, it means all of us had access to them and anyone could have manipulated the data. That is to say, we are all involved and going down at the deep end. We are effectively facing prison time unless otherwise proven."

The Hungarian was petrified, at a loss of what to say.

"What am I going to tell the juniors? They came here to work and learn and… they'll find themselves faced with a criminal record. Verdammt!"

"But… Mr. Karpusi was in charge of the TFTE contract! What does he say?"

The blond sighed. "Heracles Karpusi is gone, Miss Hedervary. He can't be reached and Feliciano discovered this morning that the lease contract on his apartment here in London has expired two weeks ago. I can only assume that he was planning to disappear for a while now…"

She hadn't had a smoke in quite a long while, but now it really wasn't the moment to hold back. Elizaveta stepped out on the balcony of the small kitchenette and lit up a smoke still numb with shock, proceeding to take a long drag.

"But I thought we were checking all the figures given, as well as the supporting documentation…"

"All the juniors have ever done was to put some figures together and make some correlations at most. He was reviewing everything, including the documents! Hell, he even had connections at the damned customs!" Ludwig was yelling, while the Audit Partner – Roderich Edelstein – was cowering behind his desk, as if attempting to make himself smaller in his seat. "And I don't buy this bullshit that Bonnefoy and Adnan didn't know what was going on! They must have paid him to do this!"

Edelstein shook his head, helpless. "And we thought he was lazing around, sleeping…."

"No! He wasn't sleeping, he was fucking us! Hard!" The German slammed his fist on the polished surface, knocking over a fancy pencil jar. "Roderich, I know you have some high-up connections and now's the time to pull some strings!"

But the blue-eyed brunet appeared terrified by the suggestion. "Oh…I-I couldn't… I don't believe-…"

"Then get used to the idea that you won't be playing any more piano where you're going!"

Edelstein burst into tears and buried his face in his hands, making Elizaveta's heart sink in turn. She couldn't bear to see him like this, it was too much. Goodness, not him! It had been a year before, at a charity gala jointly funded by the firm when she had seen the Austrian partner play the piano, his long, elegant and ethereally pale fingers ghosting over the ivory keys with infinite skill, eyelids hooding those dark blue, amazingly intense eyes, and she had realized that she'd fallen in love with him. Totally. Completely.

That was why the brunette could hardly believe when she saw him getting up from his desk eventually, crossing the hallway with steady steps and walking to where she was still standing, smoke forgotten and early autumn wind ruffling some stray hairs from her ponytail, and motioned towards her pack of cigarettes.

"May I have one too, please?" Roderich asked, voice hoarse and faltering slightly.

Elizaveta handed it over without hesitation and even helped him light up, because his hand was shaking too badly.

"Mein Gott, what will I do now?" he asked suddenly, gaze trained absently somewhere in the distance, at the cloudy sky over the rooftops. "What will my family say? What will my husband say? Gott, what will I tell Vash?!"

Husband.

The word hit her in the face like a violent punch. He was married. To a man. Three years and only now she would hear of this! Her eyes flicked to his pale hands, but there was no wedding band to be seen. Obviously, in the uptight and often conservative finance world it must have been something better kept under wraps. Of course, none of this mattered. She felt horribly inadequate all the sudden, and something collapsed irremediably inside of her being, just as Roderich laid his head on her shoulder, whimpering softly, and wrapped his arms around her in a mindless search for comfort.

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Edelstein."

Yet Elizaveta wasn't able to fully grasp the gravity of what was going until she actually went home and gave the awful news to her stepbrother.

"But how can they accuse you of something you've not done?!" Feliks protested. "Shouldn't they be after that missing bastard? The fact that he's gone isn't proof enough that he's the guilty one?!"

"It is, but to the police and the HMRC that doesn't mean he's worked alone. They need to determine who else may have helped him and until the investigation is over everyone is a suspect."

"Elizaveta, promise me that you didn't get yourself involved in something you shouldn't have," the blond said seriously, crossing his arms.

The Hungarian blinked, dumbstruck. "How can you ask me that?! How can you fucking think such a thing?! Thanks a lot for the support, Feliks!"

She stormed into her small bedroom and slammed the door so hard that tiny crumbs of mortar fell from around the frame. Ungrateful little prick, how dared he? But she was more hurt than angry, horribly hurt, everything was so damn unfair! Indeed, it was hard to say which was worse, because as absurd as it may have sounded, this absurd and overwhelming feeling of being unloved was momentarily more dreadful than the possibility of doing time and having her career prospects utterly ruined after so many years of hard work.

Her brooding didn't last long. It was cut abruptly when something akin to a smaller-scale explosion was heard outside her room, and loud shouting erupted immediately afterwards. The brunette sprang from the bed and rushed to the door, cracking it open cautiously, but enough to see the front door of the apartment ajar and to ascertain that the noise was coming from the kitchen (everything always happened in that fucking, miniscule space for some fucked-up reason!).

With light steps, Elizaveta made her way down the short hall to see what the fuss was about. And what she was faced with was the sight of a gun muzzle pointed at Feliks by a silvery blonde girl she recognized as Natalya Arlovskaya, their infamous landowner's sister. Both the man and his two younger sisters had a vaguely sinister reputation, but they'd lived untroubled so far, so the Hungarian would never have imagined-

"You will pay, or I'll blow your pretty little sister's brains out! How about that?" the blonde said, shifting the focus of the deadly object in her dainty hand towards Elizaveta.

"I'll totally pay, I'll give you the money, I swear! I fucking swear! Just-…" the Pole pleaded, helplessly gesturing for her to put the gun away.

'What money' his sister mouthed, inaudibly and ignored by everyone. This was unreal, after all the shit of today, now a gun in her face.

"So you've been saying, but time's up, pretty boy," Natalya replied, fingers adjusting their grip on the gun and thumb pulling back the safety demonstratively. "Maybe you don't understand this one thing: you don't screw with Ivan Braginski and get away with it. If there's fault, there will be damage!"

"No! No, please-"

"How about I take her upstairs?" the Belarusian suggested. "Putting her ass to work won't pay up the whole amount but it'll pay something-"

Then everything happened in a sort of sick slow motion, or so the brunette's brain registered it. Just when Natalya was giving her a thoughtful, assessing once-over, the steel muzzle lowered somewhat, Feliks suddenly moved, grabbing a chair by the backrest and shoving it at Arlovskaya with full strength. She was violently propelled through the imitation of French window which happened to be open and disappeared through the fluttering curtains with a bloodcurdling shriek. Elizaveta had dropped to the ground on instinct, or maybe shock was at fault, her forehead colliding painfully with the tiled floor.

"I think someone should call an ambulance…" Toris said, peering over the small, rusty railing.

"God, is she-"

"Nah, she hit the trash cans. And it's only the second floor."

Elizaveta blinked, hands moving down absently to rub her aching knees as she stared at the window in disbelief. Did they just-…?

"How much?"

"What?"

"How much money do you owe Ivan, Feliks?" she asked again, fully straightening her back and turning to face the younger sibling. His hands were still clutching the backrest of the metal chair, as if ready to swing it again if need be, and he worried his bottom lip in search of the right answer, only there wasn't such a thing.

"Uh… about 7000… It wasn't that much on the principal, but they charged interest or something. We bought some stuff, okay? I, like totally need inspiration, I cannot work, cannot create without… whatever, and Toris has so many exams to study for and stuff. I'm sorry, Eli, I never thought things would get out of hand like this-"

"Out of hand?! You owe Ivan fucking Braginski 7000 fucking pounds for drugs?! Not that it matters now, because you just pushed his fucking sister off the window so WE'RE FUCKING DEAD!" the brunette yelled. "HE'S GOING TO FUCKING KILL US!"

"Guys, we have to leave! W-We can't stay here anymore, we need to get out of here and we have to get out of here like fucking now!" Toris pointed.

"Yeah, but only if you weren't under police investigation, we could like even leave the country! We could go back!" the blond added. "Now we're like totally stuck here, aren't we?"

Elizaveta snorted, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "Go back?! Back where, Poland? Hungary? Braginski is part of a fucking francize, do you think there's any place where he wouldn't find us?!"

The two boys fell silent at this and indeed, not much left to be said as things were. They were completely, utterly fucked.

To be continued