The Company of Intelligent Women

by LaDemonessa

Felicity, Lyla, and Moira face off against Isabel while Oliver learns the value of keeping his mouth shut and surrounding himself with intelligent women. Part 2 of The Tolstoy Universe

1. The Bechdel Test

Author's Notes:

So here we are yet again, my friends. First off, I would like to thank all of you for your words of encouragement as well as your cries of, 'It's about time someone wrote something with bad ass Felicity for a change!'

As you know, bad ass Felicity is my favorite but I have had my detractors, people (mostly women unfortunately) who believe that a strong woman is somehow less 'feminine' or attractive than one who lets a man sweep her off her feet. Well, I disagree. I think that every woman has a bad ass Felicity in her and I know I'm a bad ass. I once gave birth with NO contractions, and NO pain killers, in less than fifteen minutes because the doctor said my child would die if I didn't. I wound up breaking every blood vessel in my eyes and face, nearly bled out, but I did the impossible and now have a thirteen year old son who delights in bugging the hell out of me. Tell me I'm not a bad ass, I fucking dare you, and my husband happens to think I'm damn sexy to boot!

That's the thing, my little twinkees. Unfortunately you grew up in an age where there is this subversive misogynistic message being rammed down your throats that is telling you to be a feminist, be a strong woman, only be pretty while doing it and don't make the man feel like he's less of a man in comparison. That's fucking bullshit, honey. Listen to Mama Jen when she tells you that's simply not true.

I can say that, too. I have been married to a good man, a strong man, for fifteen years and we have carried each other through all the ups and downs, sometimes with him bearing the load, and sometimes with me doing it, and I defy you to find anyone with a stronger and more loving relationship than mine.

Look, a real man, one who doesn't need to measure the size of his prick to boost his confidence, wants a strong partner beside him. He doesn't want to carry a dead weight on his back; he wants to know that he has a warrior fighting beside him. Marriage is a war, honey; it's the two of you against the world. If you think the perfect marriage is him fighting and bleeding in the battlefields while you lay on a fainting couch in the highest turret?

Well, sorry baby, but ain't nobody got time for that. Real life, real relationships, are hard. Life is this constant bombardment of crap and stress and if you aren't there carrying your weight then you aren't going to be married for long.

Also, feminism isn't about apologizing to men for being strong; it's not about men at all. Feminism is about being strong on your own, it's about being strong for your sisters, not for the cute boy next door. When a man sees a weak woman, one who falls all over themselves to stroke their egos, they see a victim. This is a woman they can use and lose without a second thought because she doesn't respect herself and they certainly don't respect her. Cheating on a woman is disrespect, taking away a woman's free will by force is disrespect, putting your hands on a woman is disrespect; it is not a romantic overture.

I had one person recently accuse me of 'emasculating' Oliver by portraying Felicity as strong and independent. I responded by asking how much of a man could he be if a strong woman could completely emasculate him just by not fainting at his feet and standing up for herself?

When a woman stands up for herself, when she respects herself, when she demands that others respect her, that is a strong woman and if a man can't handle that then that doesn't make her less of a woman, that makes him less of a man.

In any case, here's part 2 of my little exercise in Bratva feminism. I would encourage all of you to see things from Felicity's perspective and keep in mind that this is a Felicity who is different from the one you know. Remember, Anatoly raised her as his daughter and encouraged the darker instincts within her so this Felicity will be more calculating, more driven by logic, but she's still Felicity at her core.

Also, I decided that the official DC Comics name change of 'Anatoly' to 'Anatoli' is stupid so I won't be doing that. Fuck it.

To all my little minions, fellow bitches, and old bats; enjoy!

-Jen

"Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women."

― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Felicity leaned back carefully in the large whirlpool tub and sighed.

"You okay in there?" Lyla called out from the bedroom.

"Yeah," she grunted as she rubbed her shoulder wearily.

The other woman walked into the room, her own hair damp as she toweled it dry. She smiled down at her and raised an eyebrow at her pained expression, "Need some help?"

Felicity looked at her for a second before grimacing, "If I say yes are you going to think I'm a wimp?"

Lyla offered her a sympathetic look, "What do you need me to do?"

"I really want to wash my hair but it hurts to lift my arms," she whined.

"Okay, I got this," the other woman chuckled and motioned for her to sit up as she pushed back the sleeves of her thick bathrobe and reached for the hand shower, "Close your eyes."

Felicity did as she asked and sighed as the almost scalding hot water cascaded over her hair and face. Lyla then cut off the water and lathered up the shampoo in her hands before methodically scrubbing it through her hair starting at her scalp.

"Oh yeah," Felicity moaned.

"Feels good, huh?" the other woman asked in amusement.

"If you ever feel like giving up the whole spy thing you should totally become a shampoo specialist," she agreed.

"A shampoo specialist, huh?"

"Well, I was going to say a 'shampoo girl' but that sounded too patronizing and sexist whereas a 'shampoo specialist' sounds kind of bad ass," she admitted.

"Lyla Michaels, former soldier, ex-spy, and current 'shampoo specialist' for the Bratva," the other woman intoned wryly before picking up the hand shower once more. "Close your eyes and lean your head back," she instructed as she began to rinse out her hair. "Do you want me to condition it, too?"

"It's that or walk into Queen Consolidated tomorrow looking like a frizzed out poodle."

"You know, I always wanted curly hair like yours when I was a kid," she said as she put down the hand shower once more and began to work the conditioner through her hair.

"You would've hated it," Felicity told her as she practically purred with pleasure. "It tangles, dries out, breaks, and frizzes at the first sign of humidity. Oh, and it's impossible to get out of the bathroom without having to use a ton of product on your hair first. At least with straight hair all you have to do is wash it and go."

"I guess the grass is always greener on the other side then," Lyla agreed as she piled her conditioner drenched hair up on top of her head. "While that soaks in do you want me to wash your back?"

"Could you?" Felicity asked gratefully.

"Yeah, I want to check it out anyway," Lyla told her as she reached for a washcloth and began lathering it up, "Lean forward."

Felicity leaned forward painfully then hissed as Lyla began to carefully wash her back starting near her shoulder.

"You okay?" the other woman asked with a sympathetic wince.

"Yeah, it's just really sore," she admitted. "How bad does it look?"

"Well, it looks like you took a .45 to the back of your vest then bounced off a marble floor a couple of times like a rubber ball," Lyla told her as she carefully ran the washcloth down her spine and across her shoulders.

"That good, huh?" she asked with a grimace.

Lyla nodded, "You're definitely bruised all to hell and back. You're lucky you didn't break your scapula at that range."

"I didn't really have much of an option," she told her.

"I disagree; you could've let me take the bullet," the other woman said lightly but there was still a note of censure in her undertone. "I had a vest on, too, you know? Not to mention the fact that, technically, I'm the one who's supposed to be protecting you, not the other way around."

"He had you lined up for a headshot and you and Helena were too busy with those other guys to notice," Felicity argued wearily.

"I know," Lyla said although she still didn't sound happy about it. She put aside the washcloth and gently urged her to sit back before rising to her feet, "Are you going to need help getting out when you're done?"

"Probably," she said disgruntledly. "I probably should've taken a shower but I just really wanted to soak."

Lyla gave her a crooked grin and flipped on the jets and heater before reaching for a towel to dry her hands, "Enjoy your soak then because after you get out of the tub I get to grease you down with arnica before icing down that shoulder."

Felicity pulled a face at that, "Why is it when you bruise something they always make you ice it when it feels like what you should be doing is using a heating pad instead?"

"Because heat feels better but ice reduces swelling," she said matter-of-factly as she sat down at the vanity and began poking around. "Do you have any more of those nail buffer things that are spongy? I tore a nail while we were interrogating those Algerian guys and I think I left the one you gave me back at the hotel."

"The four sided ones?" she asked as she began carefully scrubbing her skin. "Yeah, I have a ton of them in the drawer."

Lyla slid the drawer open and pursed her lips, "Ooh, in that case I'm stealing a couple of these things. And maybe some of these tweezers, too. Jeez, how many tweezers does one person need anyway?" she asked pulling out several. "Why did you buy so many?"

"I don't know. I don't even remember buying most of them; they just multiply in the drawer like rabbits. Go ahead and take as many as you want," Felicity invited as she continued to wash herself.

After a few minutes of scrubbing she rinsed off then lay back to relax in the warm water as she listened to the rhythmic sound of Lyla buffing her nails

She closed her eyes and breathed out slowly before asking, "So what do you make of the intel we got from the Algerians?"

"About their Quraci connection?" Lyla asked absently. "God, these buffer doohickeys are incredible," she said examining her shiny nails under the light. "It's like you don't even need nail polish."

Felicity hummed in the affirmative, "That and that 'terrorists for hire' group they mentioned…"

"Onslaught," Lyla supplied.

"They made it sound like an anti-Suicide Squad," she said cracking her eyes open slightly, "Why would Waller be funneling intel and weaponry to a group of terrorists looking to bring down ARGUS?"

"She wouldn't," the other woman said broodingly as she continued to buff her nails into a high shine, "Unless, of course, she's either running a fundraiser or trying to burn the place to the ground so she can rise from the ashes later on."

"Or maybe she's a turncoat who got tired of living on a civil servant's paycheck so she sold her country out to the highest bidder?" she suggested but Lyla immediately shook her head.

"Amanda Waller is many things; evil, heartless, a true sociopath, but she's also a patriot, even if her version of patriotism is twisted beyond all recognition. No, I think Amanda is using the Algerians and their connection to the Quraci to extend her reach. She wants Project X to work but Oversight has been grumbling about the Suicide Squad for a while now. If a new group shows up, one no one but the Suicide Squad is prepared to take on…" she gave her a meaningful look and Felicity nodded.

"Then they'll basically write her a blank check and let her do whatever the hell she wants without interference," Felicity finished for her wryly. "So she burned you because she figured you'd make the connection and ruin her 'fundraiser'?"

Lyla sighed, "I'm guessing. She's not wrong either; I've done some questionable stuff for Waller over the years, a lot of which kept me up at night, but I did it because I was able to convince myself it was for the greater good. Funding terrorists to attack American interests in order to further Waller's agenda though? No, no way. What about you?" she asked curiously, "Have you had a chance to go through the laptop yet?"

She nodded, "It's not enough to take Waller down but it's a start."

"Anything you can use for your end in there?"

Felicity's mouth tightened and she lifted her good arm to leverage herself into a sitting position, "A little, not a lot," she grunted.

"Need help?" Lyla asked.

She shook her head before looking up at her, "I recognized the coding and I can say with 100% certainty that the Calculator was definitely the hacker helping the Algerians bypass the bank's security but he's a ghost now. Any information I could get from the laptop is pretty much useless."

"So it was a waste of time then?" the other woman asked grimly.

"No, I mean we stopped the bad guys and since I was able to isolate the Calculator's virus code it'll make it easier to pin him down the next time. Also, we seized his hard assets, which is good but not great. Now that we have the bearer bonds and the gold we intercepted from the Algerians along with the other stuff from the vault, he'll have to rely on digital funds which means he's more vulnerable."

"Because if you can find his accounts and hack in you can bankrupt him," Lyla supplied.

"Yup, if I can find them anyway," she said with a grimace, "After all, I don't even know the man's real name, only that it's not Noah Kuttler. However, it wasn't a complete waste of time and, if nothing else, it gave Helena the opportunity to add to her skill set by robbing not one bank, but two, both in the same day."

"Well, we didn't 'rob' the first bank as much as we stole someone's identity then moved the stuff from one vault to another in order to bait the trap," the other woman said dryly.

"Yeah, well, Helena still got to play dress up and pretend to be an infamous jewel thief so she's happy," Felicity said with a half-shrug, being mindful of her still throbbing shoulder.

"She won't be when she gets back to Gotham and Catwoman comes after her looking for her cut of the gold and jewels Helena stole in her name," Lyla said with a smirk.

"I think she can handle it," she said dismissively, "Just in case though, I made sure to set aside a portion of the take and had it shipped to the penthouse so Helena could hand it over as a peace offering while Anatoly takes care of the rest of it. No, the only real downside is that now the Calculator knows for sure that we're gunning for him."

"He might not," the other woman argued. "After all, that was one of the reasons we set it up to look like a bank heist and pinned the blame on Catwoman."

"Yeah, and that's why dad is planning on throwing him off our trail by fencing the art and jewelry through brokers who aren't connected to Bratva but it wouldn't take much for him to figure out that the brunette in the oversized sunglasses wasn't Selena Kyle," she pointed out. "Helena and Selena are of similar build and coloring but the Calculator is going to be paranoid now, especially since we were able to get close enough to find his vault. Chances are he's probably going to do some digging and when he finds out that Catwoman robbed the MoMA in Gotham the same night she was supposedly in Paris stealing from him, then he's going to go underground until he can figure out who's after him and why. Well, at least until he gets the urge to build up his war chest again but that could take months."

"At least we put a hurt on him that he won't easily recover from, not to mention the fact that we snagged some really pretty baubles," Lyla said teasingly as she reached into Felicity's jewelry box and held up one of the necklaces she kept aside for herself.

"I actually didn't steal those, they were already mine," she said with a hint of bitterness. "Well, actually they were my mom's; she inherited them from her great-grandmother who managed to hide them from the Nazis when she fled Germany. Noah stole them from her just before he abandoned us along with all our money and anything else of value he could find."

"Oh," the other woman examined them more closely, "Well, I'm glad you got them back. Actually, I'm surprised he kept them all these years. Of course, it looks like some of the larger stones are missing on a few of these," Lyla said as she lifted up a cocktail ring that was missing its center stone before reaching for a necklace and holding it up to her throat in front of the mirror.

"That's why I kept back a few extra for parts. I'm not sure but I think the center stone on that ring used to be a sapphire," Felicity tilted her chin indicating the gorgeous diamond and sapphire necklace Lyla was admiring.

The other woman picked up the ring again and compared the two, "Well, I'm not jeweler but just from eyeballing it I think it could work," she hummed in agreement.

"Just in case I made sure to hold back a few with different cuts and stones so the jeweler can pick and choose which ones he thinks will work best."

Lyla raised an eyebrow at her, "Here's a dumb question but how are you going to find a jeweler in Starling who won't ask a lot of questions about where this stuff came from? This necklace alone has got to be worth a few million easy."

"The Bratva has a guy here," she said as she rolled her neck with a wince. "Mr. Marchak at Abramovich Jewelers on the corner of Balent and Duffy. He helps the local brotherhood out every once in a while and does excellent work, especially when it comes to recutting and resetting stones in a hurry."

"Naturally," Lyla said wryly. "And how are you going to explain to your mom how you came across this stuff in the first place?"

"I'm not, my dad is handling that part," Felicity said with a yawn. "The story we came up with is that he'd had feelers out on the jewelry for years and, when he got a hit on eBay, he bought what was left and had them reset as a surprise that way if I'm wrong about the color or cut of the stones we're covered."

"eBay?" she asked dubiously.

"My mom doesn't even know how to use Google much less eBay. She considers online shopping to be 'cheating' and says the only people who do that sort of thing are lazy shut-ins who need to get off the couch and shop like regular people do."

Lyla laughed at that, "Seriously? Well, that does sound like something your mom would say."

"Oh yeah, but then again this is the same woman refers to marathon shopping through the mall in six inch heels as 'going to the gym'," she said wryly.

The other woman raised an eyebrow at that, "She's not wrong. I've been shopping with your mother and—hey, remember that weekend when she took us all to Aviapark in Moscow?" she asked pointedly. "That thing was, what; the size of thirty-six football fields? And she took us through that entire thing…uh," she wrinkled her nose, "Damn, I know it had to be at least three times. All I know is that I walked so much that I must've lost ten pounds easy; it was more exhausting than boot camp. Even Helena was bitching about her feet and you know how she shops," she huffed. "I'm surprised we ever got around to robbing those banks because the minute we landed she headed straight for the Champs-Elysées for a Parisian mall crawl to end all mall crawls—with the exception of your mom's mall crawls, of course," she corrected herself. "As for me, I am not a shopper; never have been, never will be. I am what your mom would call a lazy online couch potato but, if I was a shopper, then Donna would've cured me of it because, I swear to God, when we got home my blisters had blisters. How your mother lives in Louboutin's 24/7 is beyond me."

Felicity nodded ruefully, "Don't ask me, I'm her daughter and even I don't know how she does it. Anyway, the backstory is going to be that the guy who originally received the jewelry was a pawn shop owner near Vegas and, after he died, his daughter found the old settings and stuff in the attic. She assumed it was all costume jewelry or paste which is why she listed it online for practically nothing. I know it sounds thin as hell but my mom will eat it up, trust me," she said rolling her eyes. "She'll be dining out on that story for years and, by the time she's done, it'll sound like some Hollywood movie about concentration camp survivors who fight the system in order to recover their stolen jewelry and art collections then fancast Reece Witherspoon into the title role since 'they look almost exactly alike'."

"Or you could just tell her the truth or something close to it," Lyla suggested. "Your mom's a pretty tough lady; I think she could handle it, especially given the fact that she's managed to tame the most feared and respected pakhan in all of Bratva."

"Yeah, well, my mom is tough and she's a lot smarter than most people give her credit for, but not when it comes to Noah Kuttler—or whatever his real name is," she said darkly. "She knows for a fact that, daughter or no, he'd sell me out in a heartbeat. Hell, he's already done it!" she reminded her. "He left us both to be tortured and killed knowing that, even if we did survive, we'd probably be taken across the border in the trunk of a car before being sold to some human trafficking ring just to pay off his debts!" Felicity's voice shook slightly as the anger she still felt towards her biological father burned through her.

She took a calming breath before speaking again.

"If she found out that I was this close to that son of a bitch she'd have an all-out meltdown—and that's skipping the part where he shot me in the back at close range. If I told her about that then she'd have my dad call his buddy, Putin, to 'borrow' a nuclear missile so she could drop it on his head," she shook her head ruefully and sighed, "No, as much as I hate to lie to my mom, it's for the best. My mom gets her family's legacy back along with a story she can tell for years, I get my revenge, and my dad gets to reap the rewards. I just hope my mom doesn't decide to share the details afterwards," she added wryly.

Lyla wrinkled her nose in sympathy, "Ew."

"Yeah," she huffed. "Besides, her birthday is coming up soon and I'm pretty sure I can get the jeweler to do something else with what's left over; maybe have him make her a matching bracelet and some earrings. I might even have a few things made for myself. Hell, the son of a bitch owes me something considering the fact that he never paid any child support. Oh, and that he sold me down the river to cover his own ass, didn't see me for sixteen years, then shot me," she said sarcastically before looking up at her with a humorless grin, "Hey, do you think my sperm donor would care if he knew that the person he shot was his own kid?"

"Well, to be fair, he wasn't actually aiming for you, he was aiming for me. Also, you did have a mask on so there's no way he could've recognized you anyway," Lyla said as she deftly side-stepped the question. "Ready to get out of the tub so we can put some arnica and ice on that shoulder?"

"Yeah," Felicity said reluctantly as she pulled the plug then winced as the other woman helped her up carefully. "Getting shot sucks," she said as the other woman handed her a towel before leading her to the vanity.

"If you think this hurts, try it without the vest sometime," the other woman said as she carefully patted the area around the bruising dry, "And no, it is not like in the movies where the big strong hero shakes it off and keeps going or takes one in the shoulder and calls it a 'flesh wound' because it's 'just' a through and through. They never take into account stuff like bruising, the burns that result from the hot bullet piercing through skin, or how much damage the shockwave from the impact can do to the body, not to mention the fact that a 'through and through' means that you have two wounds to treat; an entry wound and an exit wound and an exit wound is always a hell of a lot bigger than the entry wound," she said wryly. "They don't design bullets to leave neat little holes, after all. Bullets are intended to kill, not wound, which is why they're designed to mushroom or splinter on impact."

"So, in other words, I should just stop bitching about a few bruises and just be grateful I had on my vest?" Felicity said with a gasp followed by a sharp hiss as Lyla began to rub the cold cream on her shoulder blade.

She hummed, "Probably." When she was done she wiped her hands on a small towel and hitched her chin toward the bedroom, "Go lay down on the bed and I'll get the ice pack."

Felicity pulled a face at that even as she did as the other woman told her, "Okay," she said with a grunt as she slowly made her way into the next room.

"You can have a heating pad after, I promise," Lyla said with an amused expression as she headed into the kitchen, returning a minute or so later with a large flat cold pack in hand.

Felicity loosened the towel and rolled onto her stomach, bunching a pillow under her head to get comfortable, "How long until I get my heating pad?"

"Twenty minutes," the other woman answered and Felicity moaned. "You'll thank me later, trust me. That reminds me, I need to get you your meds," she said as she laid the cold pack over her shoulder then headed to the bathroom.

"Nothing that will make me feel groggy tomorrow," Felicity called out.

"How's Vicoprofen sound?" Lyla called back. "It'll knock out the pain but leave you fairly alert and help with the inflammation."

"Okay," she said reluctantly.

"I know you hate taking pain meds because you're a total control freak about that stuff but, trust me, you're going to need it if you want to get any sleep tonight," Lyla told her as she strode back into the room. "The only thing I'm worried about is that this stuff tends to be hard on your stomach and you didn't eat that much at dinner. Do you want me to head into the kitchen and make you a snack real quick?"

"I'm fine," she said reaching for the pill and popping it in her mouth before washing it down with a swig of water from the bottle the other woman handed her. "I ate half a quesadilla and some soup; it should be enough."

Lyla gave her a skeptical look, "If you say so but, just in case, there's ginger ale in the fridge if you get sick."

Felicity suddenly had the urge to say, 'Okay, mom,' and, despite the discomfort it caused her, couldn't help but chuckle at that.

"What's so funny?" Lyla asked in amusement as she sat next to her in the bed and picked up her tablet to scroll through it.

"I was just thinking that you'd make a great mom someday," she told her.

"Me?" Lyla asked.

"Yeah," she said stifling another yawn as she turned her head to look at her. "Did you and Dig ever talk about it; having kids?"

She shook her head, "Johnny and I…our marriage was…I don't know," she frowned as she lowered her tablet. "We were married in the middle of a warzone so it was all adrenaline and seizing the moment for us. Kids are the kind of thing people plan for when bullets aren't flying through the air and we were never good at the lulls that came in between." She turned to her and grimaced, "I mean, we were great when we had something we could team up to fight against but neither of us were ever good at living like normal people. I always thought I'd have kids someday though," she admitted.

Felicity smiled at that, "Yeah?"

Lyla nodded, "Two; a boy and a girl. We'd get a house in the 'burbs and I'd retire from the field and take a desk job while Johnny did the stay at home dad thing until they were old enough to go to school and then he'd get a job teaching and coach Little League on the weekends."

Felicity looked at her in surprise, "Dig wanted to be a teacher?"

"Yeah, he actually majored in education in college," she told her.

"Wow, I would've thought he would be more interested in law enforcement or something in the medical field."

"Nope, his plan was to eventually leave the Army and return to Starling so he could teach inner city kids," Lyla said fondly. "He and his brother grew up in the Glades so he knew how desperate they were for good teachers. He always claimed that was the plan, that he saw us settling down, doing the whole family thing someday, but he didn't. If he did then he wouldn't have kept reenlisting every time his tour was up."

"What about you? Did you ever want to just be 'normal' or was the whole nuclear family thing just a pipedream for you, as well?" she asked curiously.

"If I wanted to be normal than the last thing I would've done is join ARGUS the second I left the Rangers," Lyla said wryly as she picked up the tablet once more.

"Do you regret it; joining ARGUS, I mean?"

The other woman paused as she appeared to mull that over for a moment, "Yes and no," she admitted. "I regret how it ended and the fact that my joining ARGUS is what probably put the final nail in the coffin for my marriage but I don't regret the fact that I helped save lives and protected my country."

"But was it worth it?" she asked.

Lyla took a deep breath and let it out slowly before hitching her head slightly to the side, "I don't know yet. Ask me after I nail Waller's ass to the wall and I might have an answer for you then. What about you?"

"What about me?" Felicity asked neutrally as she turned her head and shut her eyes.

"Is this really worth it, joining Oliver's mission as Ghost Fox, getting married, getting shot at; is nailing your dad really worth all this?"

"The Calculator isn't my dad, Anatoly is my dad; that other guy just happened to loan me a few strands of his DNA, that's all," Felicity said automatically as she turned to look at her once more.

"You know what I mean," Lyla said patiently.

"Ask me after I turn that son of a bitch over to the Bratva and I'll tell you then," she said paraphrasing the other woman's words.

"Do you really think you'll be able to do that?" the other woman asked with a skeptical expression, "You know what the Bratva will do to him once they have him in their custody—if, of course, they don't wind up striking a deal with one of the other organizations and letting him go. If that happens then you'll have put yourself through all this for nothing."

"That's not going to happen," Felicity said darkly as she shifted on the bed. "I plan on turning him over to my dad to deal with personally. However, if I did think that was a possibility, I wouldn't bother turning him in at all; I'd end it myself."

Lyla hummed noncommittally at that but the expression on the other woman's face said it all.

"You don't think I could do it?" Felicity challenged.

"Do I think you could pull the trigger if you had to?" Lyla returned. "Sure."

"You don't sound sure," she pointed out.

Lyla sighed and dropped her tablet on her lap once more, "Okay, you want my honest opinion?"

"Yeah."

"I think you're one of the most bad ass women I've ever met. I mean, your brain alone is freaking terrifying. Your tech skills are so far beyond anything I've ever seen in or outside of ARGUS it isn't even funny but it's not just about what you can do with tech that makes you so bad ass; it's your skill as a tactician that really puts you over the top," she said without even a hint of irony. "Your dad likes to say that you think ten steps ahead but that is so far off the mark it isn't funny. Hell, I've been trained to think ten steps ahead. Waller…I may hate that bitch, but if I was ten steps ahead of most people, then she was twenty. You though, you're miles ahead of either of us."

"But?" she prompted.

"But you don't have a soldier's instincts," Lyla told her.

Her eyebrows drew together in consternation, "What do you mean?"

"It's not meant to be an insult, it just is what it is," Lyla assured her. "You've been trained to assess a situation then act based on the information you've been given. You're a thinker and you're constantly weighing your options before acting, and you don't look at someone and register them as a 'target'; you see them as people. A soldier though, while he or she is trained in risk assessment and knows how to process intel, relies heavily on instinct and muscle memory. They're also trained to not see human beings when they aim and fire their weapons; they see targets, and that's why you jumped in front of the bullet rather than take the shot when you had the chance."

"I don't understand what you're saying," Felicity said with a frown. "Are you saying that I hesitated to shoot because he was my sperm donor, because I didn't; I just jumped. I wasn't even thinking about that."

"I know," she assured her. "I'm merely pointing out that your first instinct was to save my life by sacrificing yourself while a soldier's first instinct would've been to save my life but by taking the shot, not by jumping in the path of the bullet."

"So I was wrong for saving you?" Felicity asked taking umbrage.

"Basically yes," the other woman nodded. At Felicity's huff of outrage she grinned, "No, you weren't 'wrong' for why you did what you did; it was actually incredibly brave, but it was also reckless and foolish," she said firmly. "The smart play would've been to shoot the fucker the second you saw him getting ready to line up his shot which is what Helena or I would've done. Then again, we're used to being in that kind of situation so that instinct to shoot comes automatically. You're not as used to being in the field or handling a weapon that isn't a keyboard so it never even occurred to you to fire your gun or kill the shooter, instead you instinctively jumped in the trajectory path of the bullet to save me because I was who you were really focusing on. While that was bad ass as hell, it was also stupid."

"Thank you for that," she said wryly.

"Eh, you're paying for it now," Lyla said dismissively. "Just be grateful you have the opportunity to pay for it with a few aches and pains because a couple of inches to the left and he would've missed the vest and gotten you in the brain stem and then you'd be on an operating room table in Paris while some ghoul in hospital scrubs harvested your organs."

"That's not fair," Felicity said sullenly. "Besides organ donation is the gift of life."

"Cute," she said wryly.

"For the record though, I won't hesitate a second time," Felicity said seriously. "If I ever come face to face with him again, sperm donor or no, I will bring him in even if it means dragging him home in a body bag."

Lyla nodded, "I never said you wouldn't, I also never said you hesitated; I merely pointed out that your first instinct was to put yourself in the line of fire rather than pull the trigger and that's something we need to work on before there's a next time. After all, it's my job to take a bullet for you, not the other way around, okay?"

She nodded slightly and Lyla glanced at the clock before gesturing for her to sit up, "Okay, heating pad time," she said helping her into a sitting position before getting off the bed and heading to her dresser. "Do you want pj's or a nightgown?"

"Nightgown," she said reluctantly. Pajamas were warmer but she wanted to wear something loose that wouldn't put pressure on her back. "I wish I didn't have to go to work tomorrow," she grumbled as Lyla helped slip the loose cotton gown over her head.

"So call in sick," she said off-handedly before unrolling the large heating pad on the nightstand and plugging it in. "I assume you're sleeping on your stomach?"

"Not much choice," she said bad-temperedly as she tugged down the covers. "Seriously though, this fracking hurts," she whined miserably as she crawled into the bed.

"Goddamn right it hurts," Lyla huffed as she laid the heavy heating pad over her shoulder and turned it on. "You got shot. Vest or not that shit hurts."

"Yeah, I know that, and I know you said it's not like the movies where people just jump up and get on with their day after getting shot, but I still feel like I'm being a big whiny baby," Felicity complained as she snuggled down into her pillow then looked up at the other woman. "I mean, Oliver gets shot and beat up all the time and he just slaps a bandage on it and keeps going. All I have is a bruise and I'm miserable."

"First off, this isn't just a 'bruise' and you are not being a baby because you're in pain and asking for help," Lyla said firmly. "In fact, I'm surprised that Bratva doctor we saw in Paris didn't send you to the hospital for x-rays because, not only did you take a blast from a hand canon at fairly close range, but you took a running leap then landed hard; so hard you actually bounced a couple of times. I'm pretty sure you did fracture a rib or two because both your shoulders, your back, and your entire left side is like one giant hematoma."

She grimaced, "Well, all I know is that, first chance I get, I'm looking into designing better body armor; some with cushioning and air bags because this is bullshit."

"Vests are designed to stop bullets from ripping through your body, not for cushioning falls against hard marble floors," Lyla told her for the umpteenth time.

"Well, they should," she pouted.

"You know, it's not too late to change your mind about going in tomorrow," Lyla reminded her. "We could always tell Oliver and the board that you ate a bad snail on your 'girl's only' honeymoon or something."

Her nose wrinkled at that and she snorted, "Right. No, I need to be there. Besides, if it was Oliver who got shot he'd be there."

"The reason Oliver can shake off bullet wounds and cracked ribs like they're papercuts is because he's a macho idiot with a crazy death wish," Lyla said acerbically. "Seriously, I've known guys like him before, I met a shit ton of them when I was in the military, and guess what? None of them made it home; know why?"

She sighed, "Why?"

"Because they were all so caught up in proving how tough they were that they wound up getting themselves killed, that's why," she said with a hard look.

"Oliver's not like that," Felicity defended weakly.

"No, he's worse because he thinks he deserves to be punished so he pushes himself to the limits of human endurance and beyond. That's not noble, or brave, or tough; that's stupid and stupid people who aren't afraid to get hurt or die are dangerous," she said looking at her steadily. "He's just a human being. He doesn't have special powers, he's not a robot, and no matter how much training he's had, the human body is designed to only be able to take so much damage before it shuts down. Pushing yourself to keep going when it is clearly telling you that you need to stop not only puts your life in jeopardy but the lives of the people around you as well. Your teammates depend on your reaction time, your ability to concentrate and keep your mind in the game. I wouldn't even go out on patrol with a guy who had a bad head cold much less one who had an open bullet wound; not unless I had absolutely no other choice. Fear of pain and death aren't signs of weakness, Felicity; it's your brain telling you to stop because this is a bad idea."

"I'm not fighting tomorrow, just going to a few meetings," Felicity objected grumpily.

"Yeah, but you are going to need to keep your wits about you and if you're more focused on your pain than what's being said around the table then you could miss something. Your choice but if I were you I'd call in and I wouldn't think twice about it," Lyla shrugged as she sat down on the edge of the bed. "Hell, unless the world was ending and I was the only person who could stop it, if I were you I'd stay in bed for a week; maybe even two depending on what was on Netflix that month."

"I can't," Felicity said as she tried to get comfortable. "I need to be there to make a strong showing but…" she let out a pent up breath, "maybe I'll go home early. After all, I may be the CTO but you're the COO and CFO so you're the one who's going to be carrying most of the weight at the meeting."

"Fine, but if it gets to be too much—"

"I'll say I had a bad falafel or something for lunch," she grumbled.

Lyla leaned back against the headboard and looked down at her, "What about Ghost Fox; is she going to call in, too, or what?"

"I don't know yet. It's been over a week since Ghost Fox made an appearance so I probably should log in but I haven't decided yet. I'll wait and see how I feel tomorrow," she said with a wince as she tried to roll over onto her side. "Damn it, there is no way I'm going to be able to sleep on my stomach. I'm a side sleeper; I just can't get comfortable that way."

"Until the meds kick in you aren't getting comfortable no matter what," Lyla said frankly.

"You are the least sympathetic person ever," Felicity complained.

"Hey, I washed your hair and patched up your boo boos; that's plenty sympathetic if you ask me. I even made you my nana's homemade taco soup and jalapeno popper quesadillas. If it had been Helena she would've just tossed a tube of Ben Gay and a couple of takeout menus into the room and let you fend for yourself."

"That reminds me, I really need to introduce you to the concept of matzo ball soup and grilled cheese," she muttered to herself.

Lyla gave her a slightly wounded look, "I thought you said you liked it?"

"I did," she assured her, "I'm just not sure that adding indigestion on top of everything else was a good idea."

"You'll live," she said unsympathetically. "Quick question since we're waiting for your meds to kick in anyway; when are you planning to come clean with Oliver about being Ghost Fox?"

Felicity paused at that, "Honestly? I don't know. I might not tell him at all, to be frank about it. After all, it's not really information he needs."

"Right," Lyla snorted.

"It's not," she insisted. "What will telling him accomplish?"

"It'll probably piss him off, for one," the other woman said wryly.

"Exactly, and I really don't feel like dealing with it—especially since I know for a fact that without me he'd be dead by now," Felicity grumbled.

"Yeah, but he's not going to see it that way, he's just going to see it as you lying to him for the last year and a half," Lyla said with a sympathetic grimace.

"Which is bullshit!" Felicity exclaimed. "I saved his ass plenty of times so he has no right to accuse me of anything much less lying to him. I mean, does he go around telling people his secret identity? No. He even slept with people and never told them who he was."

"You did marry him without telling him though," the other woman pointed out.

"Yeah, but I didn't sleep with him," she emphasized. "He told Helena but he never told McKenna and he definitely hasn't told Laurel so he has no room to talk. Also, this whole 'marriage' thing was his idea, not mine, so..."

Lyla threw her an incredulous look, "Okay, you have a point with the whole secret identity thing but we both know you had this whole marriage thing planned for a while now."

"No, I had a plan, one of several, that were based around different scenarios one of which was that Oliver would approach my dad asking for a loan that he knew he couldn't give him without there being some kind of marriage agreement attached beforehand."

"You're saying Oliver knew your dad would mention marriage before he approached him?" the other woman asked dubiously.

Felicity nodded, "Oliver was in Bratva long enough to know how things work in our world. When my dad brought up the marriage thing, Oliver didn't even blink; he just sighed and said he and his mom would fly down the next week to work out the details."

Her eyes narrowed at that, "Wait, we were in Gotham when Oliver talked to your dad so how do you know how he reacted?"

"He called from the lair workstation and when he made the call to my dad I got an alert so I turned on the cameras while I listened in," she said blithely.

Lyla pointed at her, "If you do decide to confess the whole secret identity thing, do yourself a favor and leave that part out of it."

"Hopefully that won't be an issue since, like I said, I have enough on my plate right now without having to worry about Oliver's manpain bullshit," she grumped.

"No shit you have enough on your plate," the other woman warned her. "Being CTO isn't exactly 9 to 5, you know. It wouldn't surprise me if between the two of us we're in the office a good sixty to seventy hours a week, plus travel, business dinners, and you still have the network to take care of, Smoak Tech, and our own mission. Are you really going to try to juggle all that while leading a double life as a vigilante hacker, too? And how the hell are you planning on keeping this from Oliver if you don't tell him? You have got to sleep sometime, Felicity. As it is you barely get five hours a night-I should know since I'm usually up all night with you, but something is going to have to give if you want this to work."

Felicity carefully rolled onto some pillows and made a grateful noise as Lyla helped her adjust the heating pad before speaking, "First off, the network is taken care of. I put Sergei in charge and he should have no problems but, if he does, he knows how to contact me. The same goes for Smoak Tech; it should be fine but if anything comes up I can email, Skype, or if worse comes to worst, hop a plane and be there in less than eight hours. Besides, I have a plan in the works that should solve that."

The corners of her mouth twisted into a sardonic grin, "Naturally, and what, pray tell, is this 'plan' of yours?"

"Well, it's not a plan as much as it's a possible plan," Felicity said carefully.

"Yeah, and you know how much I love it when you get those so what is it?" she demanded in a no-nonsense tone.

"I'm saving it as a surprise," she said carelessly.

"Oh fabulous, last time you had a plan like that we spent the night setting charges," the other woman said grimly.

"Well, we're not blowing anything up this time so you don't have anything to worry about," she assured her.

Lyla held up her finger and scowled at her, "For the record, whenever you get that look on your face and say things like, 'don't worry about it', my ulcer starts acting up."

"It's probably from all that spicy food you eat," she said in a deadpan.

"Hilarious," the other woman returned sarcastically.

"Seriously, it's nothing bad or potentially dangerous," she promised. "Even if it doesn't pan out though, now that we've entered into a limited partnership with QC and I finally managed to snag Curtis Holt out from under Palmer Tech, I can run them both at the same time. As for our mission…" she grimaced, "At the moment our mission is Oliver. More specifically, our mission is to keep Oliver alive and his family's business intact until Anatoly can name him his heir in front of the Family of Eleven so, for now, I'm going to focus on QC and let Tommy do the majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to Team Arrow."

Lyla raised a skeptical eyebrow at that, "So you're giving up Ghost Fox and retiring from Team Arrow?"

"No, I can't quit altogether," she denied immediately, "However, Ghost Fox is going to let them know that with me being here in Starling, she needs to take over the facility in Russia. I'll head over to Verdant within the next couple of days to upgrade the computers and install the new equipment and then, hopefully, Tommy will be able to handle it on his own. On a part time basis at least; I'll still check in on them every once in a while but the new system is pretty user friendly. I designed it around the upgraded VR visor I made for him so he should have everything under control once he gets used to it."

"One thing; when you say 'you'll check in on them' do you mean 'you' or Ghost Fox?"

"Both," she said with a frown, "Ghost Fox will check in every once in a while or handle coms if things get hairy but Felicity will be there as well whenever I need to add equipment or do something that Tommy can't do." At the look Lyla was giving her she rolled her eyes, "Yeah, I know, I'm talking in the third person again but you asked."

"I didn't ask you to talk like you have some kind of mental condition," she tossed back. "So, since you're planning on keeping this Ghost Fox persona in play, I take it that you're never planning on letting the hubby know your secret identity? So what if Oliver needs to talk to both of you at the same time or what if he demands to speak to her in person? Are you just going to kill her off and tell him she died or something?"

"Maybe, I don't know. And stop calling him that," Felicity said tightening her lips in irritation. "It was annoying when Helena did it but when you call him that it just sounds creepy."

"What else should I call him; 'Mr. Queen' perhaps?" Lyla asked teasingly.

She gave the other woman a longsuffering look, "You know why I did that."

"Yeah, to keep him off balance while keeping your own head straight," Lyla said easily. "It was a good strategy for the first official meet and greet but that's not going to work for you long term and you know that—or at least you should know that. What are you going to do when Ghost Fox's feelings for Oliver carry over into the daytime when Felicity Smoak is working cheek by jowl beside her new and very sexy 'husband'-who, if I'm not mistaken, was throwing some very interested looks her way back in Russia?" she hummed smugly.

"That wasn't interest, that was loathing," Felicity returned flatly. "Oliver has zero interest in me as a human being. In fact, I don't even register as 'human' to him at all; I was the human equivalent of that tiny little Styrofoam cup of coleslaw they throw in the box whenever you buy a two piece meal at KFC."

Lyla laughed at that, "What?"

"Yeah, no one ever eats that crap; they just toss it in there like a punishment or something when all you really want is the chicken and mashed potatoes. So, yeah; I was human coleslaw," she said disparagingly.

"That's a healthy attitude to have about your new husband; 'I'm his human coleslaw bride'," she snorted. "Also that was not loathing, that was 'eventually I'm going to have angry sex with you' eyes."

She groaned and shut her eyes tight, "I am not planning on having angry sex with Oliver Queen, okay? I'm not planning on having sex with him period!"

"You might not be planning on it but, trust me, angry sex isn't something anyone ever 'plans' for. As my mother used to say, many a bundle of joy was conceived during unplanned angry, panty ripping, up against the wall sex so, if I were you, I'd get my birth control prescription renewed because, from what I hear, Oliver can get a little sloppy about condom usage," she smirked.

Felicity let out a huff at that, "Oh, that was so wrong. Also, I think we may have been separated at birth because your mom sounds a lot like my mom."

"True," Lyla said letting out a small chuckle. "But back to the angry panty ripping sex; I would suggest that when you go to the pharmacy you also pick up a pack of condoms and keep them close. Not to impugn Oliver's STD status but his mom did admit to paying off three girls who said he knocked them up. That tells me that this guy's fascination with Russian roulette began way before he ever joined Bratva."

"Oliver has been tested since returning from the island, many times in fact—not that I care because, again, I will not be sleeping with him," she said firmly. "That said, I will remind you that while the old playboy version of Oliver Queen was something of a man slut, two of those girls were lying."

"So his mother claimed but, even if she was telling the truth, one wasn't. Speaking of, are we going to ignore the fact that Moira is totally planning on killing that girl sooner rather than later?"

"No."

"So what's the plan?"

"The plan?" she asked as she rolled back onto her stomach and tried folding her arms under her head experimentally.

"What are we going to do about your mother-in-law from hell?" Lyla asked pointedly. "You know the one that has legendary assassins who are allegedly immortal on speed dial?"

"I don't know that we need to do anything yet."

"Bullshit," the other woman snorted. "You forget I've known you long enough to know that you had at least a half a dozen plans in place for dealing with Moira long before we even stepped into that meeting. I also know that you weren't just testing Oliver when you dropped that bombshell about his kid; you were gauging Moira's reaction and seeing how she handled Oliver."

"True," she agreed neutrally.

"So what's our play?" Lyla asked curiously. "Are we going to protect the mother, allow Moira make her move and let the chips fall where they may, or take her out now quickly and cleanly and save ourselves a lot of trouble later? For the record, I vote for option number three because if she does kill this woman and gets hold of that kid then that will definitely complicate things. And I'm not just talking about the mission here; not only will you have to 'really' be married to Oliver for the rest of your life, but it also means that she'll be looking to get rid of you next so that lifelong commitment you agreed to will be as short as possible."

"She's already looking for a way to get rid of me. In fact, I'm surprised that she hasn't already phoned her good friend Ra's al Ghul to see if he'd be willing to make her son into a widower."

Lyla gave her a look, "How do you know she hasn't?"

"Because I have a program monitoring all her incoming and outgoing communications and set up an alert that's keyed to certain phrases and IP addresses," she explained. "The League does almost all their internet based business through this really lame looking gardening blog. It's encrypted but I broke through in less than five minutes then created a spyware program that records all of the chats and traces the user's locations. I doubt she'll go that route though since Moira is a creature of habit who doesn't like getting her hands dirty, not when she has people for that sort of thing. She's used the same information broker for years and, as it so happens, that guy uses our network to conduct his business. Either way, if Moira contacts the League on her own or asks him to set up a hit with me as the target, I'll know about it."

"Doesn't mean she can't change her habits or have one of her buddies from Tempest set the hit up for her," the other woman pointed out.

Felicity gave up on trying to get comfortable and sat up with a wince, "True and, to be honest, I gave some serious thought to taking Moira out of play permanently," she said not even bothering to be coy about it. "She's dangerous, well-connected, and she knows how to manipulate Oliver a little too well for my tastes so I'd be an idiot if I didn't consider it."

"No kidding," Lyla agreed wryly. "The Arrow might be a bad ass but Oliver Queen is a total mama's boy. The question is, if you take her out, how are you going to keep him from going off the rails afterwards?"

"The only way I can which is by taking her out of play without killing her," she said easily.

The other woman raised an eyebrow at that, "And how, pray tell, do you plan on doing that?"

"Already did it," she said with a stifled yawn. "I have it on good authority that a guy named Mark Francis who's the CFO of Kardak Holdings had dinner two nights ago with Moira and her ex-husband, Walter Steele, to discuss the possibility of her running for mayor."

"Mayor?" she repeated dubiously. "Are you shitting me? Even if she did run there's no way in hell she could get elected; not after the thing with the Undertaking and her son's ex trying to implicate her as an accessory."

"Maybe, maybe not. Moira said it herself; she's political royalty so she'll get at least some votes no matter what. Whether she wins or not isn't the point though. The fact that someone wants her to run is."

"So you're distracting her from killing Oliver's baby mama and complicating things for us by playing into her ego?" Lyla said slowly. "That's a good idea but it won't buy you a lot of time, especially when she doesn't get elected because no one in their right mind would vote for that woman."

"You'd be surprised," she said wryly. "Besides, even if she doesn't win, it'll buy me a few months at least."

"And then what?"

"And then I'm hoping that she'll either have conveniently lost interest in Samantha Clayton and her son or that we'll be able to find some other way to distract her."

"Or we could just kill her and get it over with because you can't seriously think that running for mayor will make her forget she has a grandson—or that her 'beautiful boy' is married to the 'human equivalent of coleslaw'?" Lyla asked dubiously, "Nuh uh, no way; she is going to try to clear the board ASAP."

"Trust me, I am very aware of what Moira is capable of and how she thinks, so while Moira would love to make Oliver a widower and his son an orphan, the only thing she wants more than that is to make everyone forget about her connection to the Undertaking. Laurel did a real number on her rep and she's still reeling from it. She's already been politely 'asked' to resign from several foundations because no matter what the DA said, everyone still knows or suspects that she was involved with Malcolm. It also won't take long before someone points out that Robert and Moira were both natural blue-eyed blonds as is Oliver, while Thea is a brunette and looks exactly like both Tommy and his father right down to her blue-green eyes. Now, you could argue that she might be an ancestral throwback or point out that Oliver is more of an ash blonde and that Thea's hair color is only a few shades darker than his own but, once those whispers start, it's just a matter of time before someone brings up the fact that when Thea famously fell off her horse during a televised youth equestrian event, Malcolm had to rush back from a business trip so he and Tommy could donate blood because no one else in her immediate family shared her blood type."

"And, once that happens, people will realize that Moira plus Malcolm equals a bouncing baby girl whose bio-dad is not Robert Queen," Lyla concluded.

"Exactly," Felicity nodded. "It's why Moira paid off her OB/Gyn right after Laurel spouted off during that press conference. She knows how people in their circle like to talk and the DA is chomping at the bit for any excuse to go after her. She hated having to eat crow over that crap storm and Laurel especially would love the chance to be vindicated so she could get her old job back. Becoming mayor wouldn't just give her leverage with the DA, but it would raise her TVQ with the public immensely. Trust me, there is nothing Moira wouldn't do if it meant erasing all that from the public's minds and burying it forever."

"I'm still not buying it," the other woman said wryly. "There is no way Moira could possibly think that anyone in this town will ever forget that she was almost indicted for terrorism and five hundred and two counts of murder. Or, for that matter, that Laurel Lance, her son's ex-girlfriend and former 'member of the family', stood in front of a hundred news cameras and stated categorically that Moira was guilty and the only reason they couldn't indict her was because someone, namely the 'Hood', destroyed the evidence."

"Yeah, they really should've fired her for that alone…even though everything she said was true," Felicity said slowly. "Still, Moira is all about image. It's the reason why she dropped the multi-million dollar slander suit she threatened to bring against the DA's office on the condition that they cleared her name of any connection to the Undertaking and agreed to have Laurel publicly censured."

"Yeah, that didn't help smooth things over with her son's ex, that's for sure," Lyla said with a huff.

"Yeah, well, it was a stupid move on Laurel's part," she said dismissively. "While it might have been the truth, and while I can sort of admire her passion for justice, she should know by now not to let her mouth write checks her ass can't cash."

"That is true," the other woman agreed. "Plus, you know that Donner guy totally put her up to that," she said with a raised eyebrow.

"Oh yeah," Felicity snorted. "I mean, it was obvious. That guy practically pushed her in front of the podium and handed her the mic then, the second the shit hit the fan, he threw her under the bus so he could further his own career at the expense of hers. That said, she was the one driving that bus so if she got screwed then she only has herself to blame for it."

"That's a little cold, don't you think? Not to mention anti-feminist," Lyla chastised lightly.

"How is expecting someone to take responsibility for their own actions 'anti-feminist'?" she argued. "The way I see it, just because I'm a feminist and she's a woman that does not mean I have to blindly support her or pretend like she's a victim when she's the one making her own decisions and choosing to act without thinking things through. And that press conference wasn't a one-time deal either; she does it all the time," she said with a grimace. "How many times did Dig and I wind up in a screaming match with Oliver because he abandoned the mission in order to chase after Laurel because she threw herself into a situation without taking into account the consequences of her actions? She's an intelligent woman, okay? I'll give her that and I'll also give her credit for being a crusader for all things good in the world, but you also have to use some common sense every once in a while, too."

"You're still pissed about the Tommy thing," Lyla said knowing.

"Goddamn right I'm pissed," she huffed.

"But do you really have a right to be?" the other woman questioned.

"Yes, I do," Felicity said firmly. "Lyla, I contacted both Laurel and her father after we found out that Merlyn was going to set off the Markov device. Oliver warned her, her father warned her, Tommy warned her; I warned her multiple times. Hell, I broke into every news station and radio broadcast and announced to the entire city that Malcolm Merlyn was the Dark Archer and that he was planning on setting off a device in the Glades and that people needed to evacuate immediately. I then picked up a cell phone and told her that I worked with the Arrow and warned her to stay out of the Glades," she emphasized, "And yet, after all that, she still ran back there into a burning building, for files. Not people, not a box of kittens; files. Files that were already backed up to the Cloud, by the way."

"Here we go," Lyla muttered to herself but she ignored her.

"I mean, I get that she's a lawyer and not a computer tech but she uses one every single day and she knows for a fact that when Tommy donated all that money and equipment to CNRI that everything they saved to the Cloud was backed up to an off-site server," she let that sink in for a beat, "Why, in this day and age, would she think she had to save paper files? And even if there were no back-ups, what in those files was of such vital importance that it was worth risking her life and the lives of the people around her? She didn't think, Lyla! She just ran inside with no thought to her own life or the lives of the emergency workers who were trying to save people and who would have to run in after her. It was like, because someone told her not to do it, she had to prove them wrong and do it anyway. Who does that?" she demanded. "Who says to themselves that, 'Oh, you say I can't run into this burning building while the entire city is crumbling all around me? Well, I'll show you!'?" she said mockingly causing the other woman to snicker.

"I know I shouldn't laugh because it's really not funny, but still…" Lyla said shaking her head.

"Yeah, I know, and it's not funny; it's a goddamn tragedy of epic proportions disguised as a brain fart," Felicity said flatly. "That's the only explanation for going after files during a citywide emergency that I can come up with but, whatever her reasoning was, all I know is that she certainly didn't take Tommy's safety into consideration and, as a consequence to that, he lost his eyesight and may never be able to regain full function of his legs again and yet she has never taken responsibility for any of that. Instead, she turned it around and decided that it was the 'Hood's' fault for not saving him fast enough, or his team's fault for not stopping both devices, or Tommy's fault for going in after her to begin with. The one person she doesn't blame is herself. Wait, I take that back," she said holding up her hand, "She does sort of blame herself but only for the fact that she 'hurt her friend', Tommy, by sleeping with Oliver even though, according to her, it wasn't really 'cheating' since they were already broken up for all of a week and, according to her, Tommy felt that 'they should be together'."

"Ouch," Lyla said with a wince. "How do you know about that though? Did Oliver tell you?"

"No, she did," she huffed. "Oliver still had his coms in when he rushed down there even though he was in civvies and both Tommy and I got to hear her entire speech."

"Yikes," the other woman breathed. "Now that's cold."

"Yeah, well, to be fair she had no idea that Tommy was listening in but still, it's just one more example of how the women in Oliver's life like to rewrite history to suit their own purposes so tell me again how me not letting her off the hook makes me a bad feminist. Where is the Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan quote saying that I have to pretend that actions don't have consequences just because the person making those decisions is a woman or that I have to pretend that the truth doesn't exist just because someone who has a vagina can't handle it?"

She shook her head and reminded herself that now was not the time to rant about Laurel. Still, she couldn't help but add, "After all, the point of being a feminist is to promote equality between the sexes and I'd be saying the exact same thing if Laurel was a man."

"Hey, you're preaching to the choir here," Lyla assured her. "It's the reason why both Helena and I brought up the fact that, if we were going all in on this plan, Laurel had to be out of the picture. She's too goddamn dangerous and too much of a distraction where Oliver's concerned. Actually, she's not all that great for Tommy's mental state either, not to mention the threat she is to everyone else on the team including Johnny. By the way, what's your plan for her because you and I both know that, no matter what Oliver says, the minute she 'needs' him again, he'll go off-book to run after her."

Felicity blew out a frustrated breath, "I don't know. I had a few ideas but they've all fallen through so far."

"Like what?" Lyla asked curiously.

"Tommy once mentioned that Laurel had a job offer from a firm in San Francisco that she turned down because her dad guilted her into staying in Starling City. There's another firm near there in Coast City that handles a lot of our West Coast business-"

"Clark and King?" Lyla asked.

"Yeah," she nodded. "I spoke to Bill Clark who said that Marcia, his law partner, helps fund a pro-bono firm very similar to CNRI there. They mostly handle stuff like bankruptcies and social security disability claims but Clark and King is a huge firm with a lot of different divisions and offices all across the country. They handle everything from corporate law to criminal law so he said she could get her an interview there with Mark Shaw, the head of their pro-bono team, or if she wanted to leave California altogether they had an opening for a junior associate in their criminal law firm in Metropolis."

"And?" the other woman prompted.

"They both contacted her, said that she came highly recommended and asked if she'd like to send in a resume and come in for an interview, even offered to fly her up there on their dime, but she turned them down," she shrugged.

"Maybe she thought it was fake?" Lyla offered. "After all, two law firms calling her out of the blue like that, offering to roll out the red carpet after she got fired and was nearly disbarred…?"

"It wasn't completely out of the blue," Felicity denied. "I had Bill call Joanne de la Vega, Laurel's former co-worker, at her new firm, Wethersby & Stone. I heard from Tommy that Laurel had gone to Joanne to ask her for a job but that the firm wouldn't hire her due to the fact that one of the partners was on the Bar Association committee and made it clear that, even though she managed to hang on to her license by the skin of her teeth, she would not be working for them or for any other firm associated with them, period. That was one of the reasons she made that scene in Verdant afterwards," she said shaking her head and grimacing. "Anyway, Bill had done business with Ephraim Stone in the past so he built on that and brought up the pro bono firm Marcia King founded. He said that he'd heard the bad news that CNRI wouldn't be reopened due to budget cuts and that Ephraim had mentioned to him that she was one of the people who ran it. He asked if she needed any help finding jobs for her clerical staff or knew of any talented attorneys who would be willing to relocate and Joanne immediately brought up Laurel's name and recommended her for the position. I thought it was the perfect solution since her mom lives pretty close to there and she can't find work here, but she told him that she wasn't interested."

"Huh," she frowned, "So what are you going to do now?"

"Nothing, I did my part already," Felicity told her. "I arranged for her to get a new start and salvage her career but she chose to remain here, presumably because she's still clinging to the idea of eventually getting back with Oliver since she's officially erased her relationship with Tommy from her mind and relegated him to the status of 'friend'."

"Yeah, you're probably not wrong about that one," Lyla said slowly, "Fuck if I'd go there after a guy cheated on me with my own sister but whatever. So what are you going to do if she and Oliver do fall back into bad habits?"

"He knows what I'll do; I warned him of what could happen if she got too close, so the rest is up to him," she shrugged slightly then winced as her muscles pulled uncomfortably in protest.

Lyla gave her a shrewd look, "I don't buy that. You have got to have another plan in the works, admit it."

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you but I don't," she said with another wince as she shifted on the bed. "Oliver's choices are his own so if he wants to put his life on the line or jeopardize everything over this woman then I wash my hands of it."

"Meaning what? That you'd kill her or have your dad order her to be taken out?" the other woman asked skeptically.

"No, of course not!" Felicity said with a withering glare, "Taking out Laurel wouldn't accomplish anything except to completely alienate Oliver and, even if we pull out of the deal, we may still need him on our side later on. Even my dad knows that which is why the worst he'd ever do is revoke Oliver's position as a captain and exile him from Bratva; what he wouldn't do though is kill Laurel. However, just because my dad won't make a move against her, that doesn't mean the other brothers wouldn't. Oliver knows that and he also knows that if he does choose to go there that we'll pull our financial support and I'll dissolve the marriage. Once that happens, while Anatoly wouldn't go after her, he also wouldn't protect her and that once Oliver loses his position within Bratva, there will be no way he could pull rank on the people who would."

"Yeah, but that was just a bluff, right?" Lyla asked uncertainly. "You wouldn't actually divorce him or let your dad kick him out of the brotherhood, would you? At least not until you had the Calculator in Bratva custody?"

"In a heartbeat," she said flatly, "When I criticized Laurel for not accepting the consequences for her actions that applies to everyone, not just her. Oliver is a grown man who has had ample warning about what will happen if he breaks our agreement and you should know by now that I never bluff. I meant what I said at that meeting; if Oliver chooses to jeopardize the lives of his team and family over Laurel then I will have no other choice but to pull out."

"Even if it means taking a huge financial loss and possibly giving up on finding the Calculator?" she pressed.

"There are other, less messy, ways to get what we want even if it takes longer to get it and it's worth the financial hit if it means keeping ourselves and the brotherhood safe," Felicity told her. "Besides, in order for this to work eventually Oliver is going to have to be told why we're doing this; you know it and I know it. As much as I'd like to keep the truth to myself, eventually he's going to move beyond his own immediate concerns and start asking questions like why I want to get to the Family of Eleven and what I hope to accomplish when, as a woman, I can't serve on the council. While Oliver may be more than a little self-involved at times, he's not stupid. He'll realize sooner or later that, even if I can get him to the Family of Eleven in hopes of using him as my puppet, I have to realize that he doesn't want to become pakhan much less be part of a worldwide criminal conspiracy. He'll also realize that, even though we carefully went through everything at that meeting, we created a pretty big loophole for him to find by emphasizing the fact that, once all the papers were signed, there would be no going back and adding things later."

"The loophole being in regards to his continued position within Bratva and the fact that neither you nor your dad ever made him agree to become Anatoly's heir or join the council in the first place," the other woman supplied.

"Exactly," she nodded. "Once that starts rolling around his brain, he'll start to wonder how I plan on using what amounts to a one-shot longshot to my advantage and ask what my angle is but if I can't trust him to use the right head in the field, then I can't trust him to help us either making this whole plan is a bust from the get-go."

"So, in a way, washing your hands of the situation and letting Oliver handle Laurel is a test to see if you can trust him without exposing yourself or your plans?" the other woman opined.

"Basically."

"See, I knew you had to have another angle," Lyla said smugly. "There is no way you would simply give up just because she turned down one job offer unless you had a reason for it."

"Fine, you win; you had it all figured out because you know me better than anybody else, happy now?" Felicity said sarcastically.

"Aww, you do love me!" the other woman cooed. "We should get matching tattoos or one of those break apart heart necklaces that say 'Best Friends Forever'!"

"Hilarious, now back to what we were saying before all this Laurel talk led us on a wild goose chase," she grumbled with a dismissive gesture, "Moira really isn't all that hard to figure out. You heard her in the meeting; she was less concerned about the fact that her son dresses up in a hood at night and kills people than she was about allowing a woman into her family who might not be up to her social standards," she said dryly. "She even referred to her son's mission as a 'hobby' for God's sake."

Lyla raised her eyebrows at that, "Yeah, that was definitely fucked up. I'm just glad I wasn't drinking when she said that or I probably would've spewed tea all over her for that one."

"You and me both," Felicity agreed ruefully. "Still, as big of a snob as Moira is, that's not what really drives her. Even when she joined Malcolm Merlyn's Undertaking, it wasn't about money or class warfare, it was about protecting her family and their legacy. She also shares this kind of selective amnesia with her son, the same one he shares with Laurel. They all tend to want to forget things when they become inconvenient and they all like to rewrite history to suit their own egos so having an illegitimate Queen heir and his mother turn up out of the blue would be fairly inconvenient, wouldn't you say?" she asked knowingly. "It's the reason why you and I both know that, as it stands, Samantha Clayton has a big huge countdown clock hanging over her head. However, now that Moira has the opportunity to change her brand and rehabilitate her image, as long as Samantha stays on her side of the fence and doesn't come looking for a hand out, I think that she could easily be convinced to let sleeping dogs lie."

"Yeah, but you can't know that for sure and that's a huge gamble to take with an innocent woman's life while simply killing Moira would make a hell of a lot more sense," Lyla pointed out. "Moira is from a very privileged background. She even referred to herself as 'royalty' for Christ's sake and did it with a straight face," she said with a meaningful look, "That tells me that this is a woman who honestly believes that she's above the law and that no one can touch her."

"True, and me covering for her by erasing all the evidence that Malcolm Merlyn set up to implicate her in his crimes probably didn't help matters any but I'm willing to roll the dice and say that there's no way Moira would risk another scandal while running for office and having a girl turn up dead and her kid being Oliver's would definitely set tongues to wagging. Same thing if she convinced Oliver to take her to court; as long as Moira is in the running for mayor she won't pursue Samantha Clayton or her son and, even if she loses the race, she'll be still riding that high of being the almost and possible future mayor of Starling," she said with a smirk. "After all, political races are like opening a bag of chips; you can't stop at just one. Once Moira catches the political bug, win or lose, she won't want to risk ruining her reputation again by stirring up trouble."

"What if you're wrong?" she asked again. "You'll give it another shot by offering to fund her race for the senate instead?"

"Why not?" she shrugged, "Hell, if it will keep her distracted and out of my hair, I'll keep dumping money into her war chest until she can buy her way into the White House. God knows I have plenty of cash and, as far as I'm concerned, it's money well spent if it gets me what I want."

"What about Oliver? Even if you do succeed in distracting his mom, he's not going to simply forget he has a kid out there."

"I know Oliver," she said dryly. "He might be curious about the boy but he's also looking for any excuse he can find to avoid dealing with all of this."

Lyla appeared to absorb that for a moment before speaking again, "Okay, it's a good plan but how do you know she'll take this guy up on his offer? After all, Laurel turned down the job offer you arranged for her, what's to stop Moira from doing the same?"

In response Felicity reached for her phone and handed it to Lyla who read the text she showed her out loud.

"Dinner went well, M & W on board—Mark." She looked up at her, "I take it that 'Mark' is 'Mark Francis' and I'm assuming, therefore, that he's in the brotherhood and that Kardak Holdings is a Bratva front?"

"Mark isn't Bratva but he is a Bratva associate and loyal employee. As for Kardak Holdings, it's mostly just a clearing house for Bratva funds but they have a lot of pull with the local government. Technically though, it's a subsidiary of K&S Investments."

"Which means you own it," Lyla said slowly. "So how long have you been planning this? You couldn't have pulled all this off in less than a month."

"I've known for a while that my dad wanted to arrange something between me and Oliver and that it would be a good idea to have a few fail safes in place, just in case."

"And just how long have you known about your dad's 'plans' for you and Oliver?" she asked her.

"Almost five years, give or take," Felicity frowned. "Well, more like four and a half."

"Four and a half years?" Lyla repeated in disbelief, "And what about Samantha Clayton; how long have you known about her?"

"About the same," she admitted.

Lyla stared at her blankly, "Okay, you're going to have to start giving with some details here because you never told me this part."

"I told you some of it."

"You told me that your sperm donor was some kind of mastermind for hire and that you were after him because he basically signed you and your mom's death warrants when you were a kid. What you didn't tell me is that you'd been planning on bringing Oliver into this for almost five years now or that you'd had eyes on him and his family that entire time."

"That's because I didn't plan on bringing him into this, not at first anyway," she corrected her, "All I did was cover my bets just in case."

She stared at her incredulously, "Cover your bets? God, you really are from Vegas, aren't you?"

"Damn straight," Felicity said with a grin before sobering slightly, "When my father first returned from the island, he told me what happened there and about Oliver Queen. It was also around that time that the Calculator popped back up on the Bratva's radar but, before dad could get to him, he was deemed 'untouchable' by the Family of Eleven. Neither I nor my dad had any idea that Oliver was going to pop up in Russia out of the blue or that he'd be joining the brotherhood, much less that we'd be 'married' five years later. At that point all my father wanted to do was distract me by saying that he felt he owed Oliver a blood debt then asked me to try tracking him down."

"Distract you from what? Tracking down the Calculator?" she asked curiously.

"Among other things," she said wryly. "Going after the Calculator in defiance of the Family of Eleven was a big part of it though. I knew what my dad was doing, of course. Still, as long as Noah, or whatever his real name is, was being hidden from sight by the Family of Eleven I couldn't do anything about that anyway so I decided to take my dad's little game of 'Where's Waldo' and show him what I could do when I was feeling really motivated."

"He didn't already know?" Lyla asked with a snort.

"Not then, no," she said shaking her head. "He knew I was a genius but you have to remember that I had just turned seventeen when my dad disappeared and I was only a few months shy of eighteen when we finally located him and the other survivors on Lian Yu. On my dad's orders, the men scoured the island for any sign of Oliver but shortly after landing there they got word that ARGUS had troops en route so they had to abandon the search. When my dad got back to Russia he immediately wanted to start the search again but things were kind of…unstable within the organization so he set me on his trail instead."

"Unstable?" she repeated, "How so?"

"At that time my father wasn't pakhan," she said shifting once more to get comfortable. "He was a captain who occupied one of the two spots closest to the then pakhan known as the 'two spies'."

"Like Béka, that Hungarian guy who calls himself your dad's 'Eye of Providence'…whatever that means?" Lyla asked.

"No, Béka doesn't hold an 'official' title within Bratva. He's kind of my dad's sleeper agent," Felicity said wryly. "Everyone outside of our intimate circle thinks Béka is just my dad's personal chef so that he can keep an eye on everyone and everything without anyone noticing, hence his title, 'the Eye of Providence' or the pakhan's 'all-seeing eye'."

"That explains a lot," Lyla said shaking her head slightly. "I was wondering why he spent so much time in the kitchen."

"Yeah, well, he likes to cook and also happens to have a thing for our housekeeper, Galina so he spends a lot of time in there. He also makes a mean Chicken Paprikas with Homemade Spaetzle," she shrugged. "Anyway, the 'two spies' are basically the two highest ranking captains under the pakhan and the other guy, Kovar, turned out to be the one who 'arranged' for my father to be lost at sea in the first place. We had no proof at the time but this other man's ultimate goal was to first eliminate my father and take over his organization and then to overthrow the pakhan—not that the old pakhan was such a peach either," she said quickly. "His name was Gregor and he was dirty as hell, too. In fact, he went from being my dad's friend who protected us and later ordered him to kill Kovar, to striking a deal with that guy to take my dad out instead. Back then though Gregor was still acting as our shield and was willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that my father wasn't the one running things as long as I kept the money rolling in. Time was running out though because Kovar was spreading rumors about Anatoly being either dead or missing and kept making overtures about wanting to meet up with my dad to discuss a marriage between our two families. And, to add more crap to the already heaping crap pile, another high ranking member of the Bratva, a captain named Viktor Dopud, decided to get in on the action and made 'inquiries' as well."

"So these guys both wanted to marry you?" Lyla said in disgust. "Wouldn't they have been around your father's age if they were both captains?"

"Actually Viktor was a couple of years younger than my dad while Kovar was ten years older. Either way it was gross, especially since I'd never laid eyes on either one of them in my life," she said mirroring the other woman's expression.

"Then why were they both asking about you? I get that Kovar was trying to draw out your dad but what was Dopud's deal?""

"He hated Kovar and wanted to piss him off," she grimaced. "I guess he thought giving him some 'romantic' competition would get under his skin but it didn't work. Kovar didn't actually give a crap about marrying me; like you said, he just wanted to flush my dad out to see if he really was alive and, if he wasn't, he wanted to 'inherit' control of his organization through me. Dopud cared even less about me than Kovar did. He hated women, hated foreigners-especially Americans, so the last thing he'd want is an American wife who was educated there and raised with American sensibilities. Neither of them saw me as a human being or even knew what I looked like, what my skills were; nothing. I doubt they even knew my name, just that Anatoly had a daughter who was of 'marrying age'," she said rolling her eyes. "All they cared about was using me as a weapon against the other; Kovar wanted to use me against my dad so he could seize control of the information network and become pakhan, while Viktor just wanted to be an asshole. From what I hear Kovar was basically a butcher who got off on hacking people to ribbons, and Dopud ran the local fighting pits and brothels if that tells you something about his character, so I'm pretty sure that even if I had been forced to marry one of them that I wouldn't have survived past the honeymoon. Still, both men were starting something of a bidding war and demanding to speak with Anatoly on the matter so the pakhan came to me in secret and basically told me that my dad needed to either show up at the next meeting of the Brother's Circle or he'd have no choice but to declare him dead and appoint another captain in his place which would be either Kovar or Dopud. Once that happened then they would basically 'inherit' me and my mom and, since we had no male relatives to protect us, they could do whatever they wanted with us. Either way I was screwed; literally," she said darkly.

"What about Misha and Yuri along with your uncles?" Lyla asked with a frown. "Couldn't they have stopped them?"

She shook her head, "Both Pyotr and Alexi were in the States and the boys were there as well; Misha was away studying at Harvard with Daniil and Iosef at NYU. Yuri lived with us but he was way too old to fight a war against his pakhan and two of the most powerful captains in the organization next to Anatoly. Alexi was already on the outs with Gregor which is why he was stuck in Starling running a Bratva chop shop to begin with. It was basically a punishment. I'm not sure what happened exactly but, instead of promoting Alexi to captain, he basically demoted him then exiled him to Starling instead. Yuri could've sent for Pyotr and the boys, however no one in Russia would take his claim to Anatoly's place seriously since he'd been living in the US for decades. Our only option then would've been to leave Russia and go to Gotham to live with Pyotr or join Alexi and his family in Starling City but it's unlikely they would've given us that choice, especially since they already put in a bid to marry me and therefore inherit Anatoly's seat through 'legitimate' means."

"And you were only seventeen when this was going on?" she asked horrified. "Jesus, you must've been terrified."

"Not terrified; pissed," Felicity said firmly. "This wasn't the 1800's and there was no way in hell I was going to marry some old man at seventeen just because my dad's boss ordered me to. Since I was no longer worried about Kovar or anyone else finding out my dad was missing, I threw everything I had behind finding him. In the meantime I made plans to blow the whole thing up just in case I didn't find him—and by 'blow up' I mean blow the fuckers up, as in sky high," she stated emphatically.

"Literally?" Lyla asked carefully. "You were going to kill Kovar and Dopud?"

"Oh I wasn't just going to kill them, I was going to kill everybody," she chuckled darkly. "Remember, not too many people in Bratva knew what I could do, most still don't, and even the ones who think they know are just fooling themselves because I have always been my dad's secret weapon," she said firmly. "My dad has been grooming me since I was seven years old to help him lead Bratva so, while I may have looked like a pretty little daddy's girl to a guy like Gregor and the rest of them, what they forgot was that my 'daddy' was Anatoly Knyazev, the KGBeast; the most feared assassin the Bratva has ever known, so the idea of killing a bunch of guys in order to save myself and my mom really didn't faze me."

Felicity looked at her, "I know you think I don't have a soldier's instincts but, while I may not be the kind of person who can shoot first and think later, that doesn't mean I'm afraid to get bloody. One of the first things my dad taught me was this Tolstoy quote, 'Which is worse? The wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not?'," she paused for a moment. "In other words, it doesn't matter whether you feel guilty for taking a life or don't feel guilty about taking a life, the wolf has to eat so the lamb has to die just like you have to do whatever it takes to survive even if that means killing someone else. Even if I did feel bad about killing a bunch of people my back was to the wall so I was fully prepared to hack a drone on a kill chain and take out the whole bunch of them at the meeting of the Brother's Circle if I couldn't get my dad there in time. That's not an exaggeration either. After all, I knew when the meeting was, where it was being held, and who would be there. I even had the codes for a Russian drone at a base near Krasnoyarsk where the meeting was being held on standby. I planned on hacking the drone, sending it straight to the location to drop its payload then, before the smoke cleared and the Russian military caught on to the fact that one of their birds went rogue, I was going to shut the rest of Bratva down so that no one could ever come after us. I could do it, too. I ran the network; that meant I could choke out their money sources, drain their accounts, and expose the entire organization with just the click of a mouse. I was then planning on placing the official blame for the attack on Serbian terrorists while leaving a breadcrumb trail that led straight to the Tambov Gang's doorstep. They would've believed it because, even though we were in an official 'cease fire', the Tambov's had been trying to muscle in on the Bratva for years. After that match was lit, I was then planning on taking my mom out of Russia to our safe house in Switzerland where no one would ever find us. Luckily for the captains attending that meeting though, just before the clock ran out, I managed to find a clue about where my dad was when I happened to hack into ARGUS."

"You just 'happened' to hack into ARGUS?" Lyla said dubiously.

"I was 'borrowing' one of their spy satellites to look for my dad and noticed that they had it trained on a little no name island in the North China Sea. I got curious so I did some digging and that's when I found files on ARGUS's operations there along with the names of my dad and several other people. It turns out that Kovar turned my dad over to ARGUS and they were keeping him there illegally. The plan was to bring down a plane carrying the head of the Triad and then have my dad and a high ranking Chinese general by the name of Yeo Fei arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism. Not only would it have caused an international incident between the US and both the Russian and Chinese governments, but it would've sparked off a war between the Bratva and the Triad. We got him and the other survivors out before ARGUS could stage their 'rescue' and he came home just in time to show the other captains he was very much alive and to officially turn down both Dopud and Kovar's offers of marriage," she said with a humorless smile.

Lyla shook her head, "And how did they react to that?"

"Not well and it sparked off something of a mini war between the three of them so my dad sent me and my mom away and, let me tell you, my mom was not happy about that," she said ruefully. "Her loud voice came out during that discussion big time. After all, my dad had been missing for the better part of a year, came home weighing almost thirty pounds lighter and covered in fresh burn wounds and scars, and the first thing he did after he hugged us was send us both packing for another seven months. Both of us wanted to stay and help but my dad insisted. He said it was too dangerous for us there and he needed to know we were safe so he could do what he needed to do. So, after a lot of arguing, my mom agreed to leave Russia and spend the next several months holed up in their home in Switzerland while I went back to the States to get my MBA at Harvard. Dad wanted me to go with her to Switzerland so it would be harder for them to find me but I argued that if mom and I both disappeared that it might tip Kovar off. Besides, I was safe in the States. My dad arranged for his old friend, Pyotr Leonov, to provide me with protection while I was there so I practically had an entire army of huge hulking Russian dudes with tattoos guarding me 24/7."

"Pyotr Leonov?" she said slowly. "As in 'Uncle Pyotr'? So is he really your uncle or just a family friend?" she asked.

"He's actually a cousin technically but Russians tend to mix things up that way. Basically any older male relative or family friend is either an 'uncle' or a 'grandfather' which is why Yuri is 'grandpa' or 'dyed' to everyone here and Ivan is my 'uncle' even though we aren't really related. Pyotr is Yuri's son and Misha's dad and Alexi Leonov is his older brother. Alexi is also business partners with Pyotr and, in addition to running his own crew here, he provides us with men to watch over Kardak's construction sites and act as enforcers and bodyguards whenever the need arises. Oh, and if you think Alexi and his crew look intimidating, you should've seen Pyotr's guys," she smirked, "Let me tell you, when you've got two guys who look like they pick their teeth with the bones of Hell's Angels sitting beside you, no one pesters you for your notes or argues about stuff like seating assignments."

"Okay, but if you were in Boston and Oliver was still missing and presumed dead, then why bother to look for him much less keep tabs on his family?" the other woman asked with a frown.

"What else was I going to do? My dad had pretty much shut me out of any and all Bratva business because he didn't want anyone coming after me so I was feeling pretty useless, not to mention angry and frustrated because I wanted to be by my dad's side and I couldn't. My only friends were a bunch of Bratva soldiers who scared away anyone else my own age, especially boys, and who were more interested in watching the game or playing cards than keeping me entertained. Therefore, because I wasn't allowed to help him the way I wanted to and couldn't distract myself with normal stuff most college kids get to experience like dating or going to parties, I concentrated instead on figuring out what happened to his friend. Besides, I felt like I owed ARGUS some payback for keeping my dad in that hellhole for months so I wanted to take them down as well. I suspected that if he were still alive then he was in their custody but I couldn't find anything. Whatever they had him involved in it was completely off book and since I was getting no love there, I looked first into Oliver's background and then into his mother's background and financial records hoping to find some kind of preliminary paper trail. After all, if he was alive and not in ARGUS hands then he needed money, right? That's when I first stumbled across the Tempest accounts."

Felicity offered her a level look, "Mind you, at the time I didn't know what they were; I just assumed it was Moira's 'rainy day fund' she used whenever she needed to pay someone off like a cop to overlook her son's partying or to hire someone to get rid of her husband's girlfriends. In fact, when I found the references to Samantha Clayton and saw the amount of money written out to her I assumed that she was one of Robert's girls who was being paid off in order to avoid a sexual harassment or paternity suit, possibly both, until I looked closer and realized that, while she'd had no discernable contact with Robert, she did go to school with Oliver. I also noted that the first check Moira had written out to her coincided with her one visit to Starling City around ten weeks after he enrolled in Stanford and that the second check was uncashed but postdated so that the payout would fall around the same time that she gave birth to her son. Even if I hadn't hacked into her attorney's firm and found all the NDA's and agreements she signed, it didn't take a genius to figure out that Oliver had gotten her pregnant and that his mother paid her off. What I didn't know at the time was whether or not Oliver wanted to be part of his son's life since she only made one phone call to his home after leaving Starling and they had no further contact since she gave birth after the Gambit sank. All I knew was that William existed and that Oliver was most likely aware of the fact that he was his father since she made several calls to his cell phone just before cashing the first check. Still, knowledge is power and I knew that if Oliver was alive then he might be tempted to see his son so I had Kardak Holdings hire her. I needed to keep a close eye on her and I figured that would be the easiest way to do it."

"You thought buying an entire company was an easy way to keep an eye on Oliver's baby mama?" the other woman asked skeptically.

"I didn't have to buy it, I already owned it, and Kardak Holdings was never a real company," she told her. "It was a shell corps based outside of Greece that the Bratva used for purchasing property and moving funds around."

"And no one ever caught on to the fact that it wasn't a real company?" Lyla asked with a frown.

"Why would they?" she asked her. "The laws regulating US real estate deals are virtually non-existent."

"What about Homeland and the Patriot act? Since 9/11 the US government requires mortgage lenders to do thorough background checks on their customers and report all bank transactions above five thousand dollars or more," she pointed out.

Felicity smirked at that despite her discomfort, "Yes, but money launderers don't borrow money for mortgages, they pay in cash. Not only that but LLC's aren't required to disclose their ownership to anyone thanks to deregulation and, as a bonus, real estate and insurance brokerages can legally declare themselves to be private 'banks'. In 2008, bank specialists in New York estimated that out of a total of 1,350 banks located in Gotham and throughout the greater New York area, only three hundred of them were 'real banks' and that the rest were, and I quote, 'little more than treasuries for big businessmen or entities engaged in criminal activity such as money laundering'. They even went so far as to refer to the Bratva as the Bank of Gotham's 'local partners'," she smirked at that.

"I take it that's true?" Lyla asked wryly.

"Not at all," Felicity assured her. "Those figures are way off. It's got to be at least…" she mulled that over, "1, 450 Bratva controlled banks located throughout Gotham and the greater New York area."

She chuckled at that and shook her head, "Damn, why hasn't your buddy, Batman, done something about that by now? Or, I don't know, the federal government?"

"Well, in Batman's case, he tends not to care too much about white collar crime," she said dismissively. "He's more of a two fisted type who prefers his criminals a little more earthy and low rent. I could go into this whole psychological profile I have of the Bat starting with the fact that, like Oliver, he's a rich, white, male born into privilege so, even as he battles for the little guy, he still sees the world from an ivory tower prospective. Then again, it could be the fact that he uses the same loopholes to launder money for his mission so busting us would mean exposing himself."

"Interesting take on that," the other woman said slowly.

Felicity grinned, "Thank you. As to your other question, the reason the feds don't jump in and arrest everybody is because what we're doing is perfectly legal, remember?" she said pointedly. "The real question you should be asking is why is it legal in the first place and the answer is because, even though we take plenty with one hand, we also give back with the other. Believe it or not, not all crime is bad for the economy. Yes, we're responsible for the loss of billions of dollars each year to private corporations and other institutions but," she began to tick off her points with her fingers, "we're driving the market by buying and renovating houses during an economic downturn, we renovate those houses creating jobs and therefore putting money back into the local economy, and we turn those houses and tenement buildings into everything from low cost housing to high-end condos giving people decent places to live and increasing property values. Why would they want to mess with us and I haven't even mentioned yet the fact that we pay taxes on all of it."

"Yeah, but even you aren't comfortable with everything the Bratva is into," Lyla said pointedly. "The drugs, the prostitution…" she said leadingly.

She shifted in the bed once more, "Okay, you have a point. I never said the brotherhood was straight out of Disney and if the government shut down the Bratva, yeah; you'd get some hookers and drugs off the street, but the vast majority of our current money comes from gray market banking and real estate so they turn a blind eye for the most part. There's a reason why you rarely hear the Bratva mentioned in the news and why you hardly ever hear about a brother getting busted. The last time the FBI went hard after the Bratva was in the 90's with Semion Mogilevich and his crew and where are they now, I ask you? In Moscow having dinner once a week with Putin at his private supper club," she said pointedly. "They even arrested him once for tax evasion in 2008 even though he'd just stolen over $10 billion dollars in a banking scheme and was accused of running a murder for hire ring as well as engaging in both drug and human trafficking. They then immediately let him go with their apologies saying, 'the charges against him are not of a particularly grave nature' and never once attempted to add charges of either murder or trafficking, nor did they bring it up again for almost a year," she let that sink in a moment. "The next time he showed up on the FBI's Most Wanted list was in October of 2009 and that's when they dropped the 'tax evasion' angle and tried charging him for crimes ranging from fraud to human trafficking to murder for hire. He was never arrested or formally charged though and by December of 2015 he was permanently removed from the list because the FBI stated that he 'no longer met list criteria' and, in spite of the warrants issued against him, they are fully aware of the fact that he still lives freely in Moscow and have never once tried to come after him. Now you tell me; if we were as big a threat to the US economy and national security as all these law enforcement and government talking heads claim, then why haven't they done anything to stop us?"

"Okay, you got me there," Lyla conceded reluctantly.

"You see things from a law enforcement point of view and I get that," Felicity said waving her off. "You're not wrong; we are the bad guys, but they're the ones giving us the opportunity to be the bad guys because the same loopholes we use are being used by the supposed 'good guys', too. The whole deregulation and private banking thing? That's a huge loophole that the Bratva and other groups have been able to take advantage of—especially when the whole transaction is just one LLC with undisclosed ownership using their own private bank to buy property from another LLC with undisclosed ownership and paying with cash. In this case, instead of running smack dab into the Patriot Act and SWIFT regulations, we're disguising that by buying and selling real estate using cash and reporting the proceeds as profit."

Lyla nodded, "Okay so, getting back to how all that affects us and our thing, K&S, meaning you, 'buy' Kardak, then Kardak 'buys' some property that they sell Smoak Tech, and then Smoak Tech sells that back to K&S or some other shell corp K&S owns, but no one actually really buys anything because it's all the same company."

"Exactly," she nodded, "And, in the meantime, the money keeps 'moving' from one private bank to another when, really, all you're doing is adding to what's already there, and the price tag goes up enabling us to launder even more money. Also, keep in mind, real estate has an arbitrary value. If I wanted to, I could buy an acre of worthless swamp land, slap a two million dollar price tag on it, and it would be perfectly legal. If someone then wants to buy that swamp for what I'm asking for then that's perfectly legal as well. Then, after they buy it, they could slap a four million dollar price tag on that land and sell it to someone else and no one would say 'boo'. Truth be told, it's even neater than hiding the money in an offshore account which is why the Australian government recently tried to create a new government commission to stop 'gangsters' like us from purchasing property along the Gold Coast but even they admitted it's a futile effort. After all, there's no way to trace the sale if the buyer is paying cash and using an LLC to cover their tracks. If they really wanted to stop us then all they'd have to do is change the law. Same thing in this country; half the high rises in Miami alone were bought and built by cocaine money coming in through Columbia and it's been that way since the '70's so this is not a new concept," she reasoned. "And while the SEC and IRS require due diligence in looking at the source of funds when it comes to business transactions like investments or mortgage lending practices, when it comes to cash transactions involving real estate they're a bit more…flexible, especially if you're over-reporting the value of property and thus paying more taxes as a result instead of under-reporting the value to get away with paying less."

"Huh, that's pretty slick actually," she mused. "It's kind of like the real estate version of a shell game."

"Exactly. Technically though I didn't 'buy' Kardak and open an office here and in Central City to launder money, I did it so I could keep an eye out for Oliver as a favor to my dad," Felicity explained. "It's also not like it was a huge investment on my part. Officially it's a real estate brokerage and investment company specializing in corporate spaces and construction. Mark Francis was already working with some of our construction companies as the head money man so I simply 'hired' him on as Kardak's CFO then consolidated our various real estate holdings and construction companies under one banner."

"And again, no one noticed?" the other woman pressed.

"Why would they? Big companies swallow up little companies all the time," she shrugged. "Besides, while some of these companies were 'real', most of them only existed on paper so having Kardak 'buy' them then reduce their nonexistent workforce and redistribute their nonexistent holdings only increased their legitimacy. I was even able to thank Leonov and his crew by creating pension funds for them and was able to send out severance checks to our 'laid off' workers who could then turn around and claim unemployment and social security benefits for a job they never had in the first place. It didn't even take all that long to get it done. We already had corporate offices set up as a front to run the various 'businesses'; all we really needed to do was file some paperwork and buy a new sign. Once that was done, I made sure Mark headhunted Samantha to work as a real estate broker for our brand new Central City branch then instructed him to open an account with Starling National and invest company funds in Queen Consolidated in order to get close to Moira and her new husband."

"So what it all comes down to, after all that, is that the Bratva is funding Moira's campaign for mayor," she said drolly.

"Uh huh, and no matter how much she winds up costing me, I'll make it all back and then some," she said with a grin. "Besides the obvious profits we get through money laundering there's also government subsidies, tax breaks, the rent we collect, along with the money coming in from our legitimate companies. We're even in the middle of rebuilding several tenement buildings in the Glades that will be used for low-income housing and are subsidized by the federal government so, not only are we getting paid to launder that money, but we're getting paid by the government to do it, then paid again after the building is completed through both tax breaks and HUD. And every bit of it is perfectly legal," she emphasized. "Not one law is being broken."

Lyla shook her head, "Damn girl, you really are something else. You know, I knew about some of this but ARGUS doesn't usually deal with this kind of stuff. We leave stuff like what you're talking about to the FBI while we concentrate on…?" she squinted slightly as she searched for the right words.

"Bigger things like undermining the economy of other countries and preventing them from smuggling nuclear weapons into the US?" Felicity interjected wryly.

"Basically, yeah," the other woman shrugged. "But now I can't help but wonder if ARGUS should've been focusing their attention a little closer to home because, damn; you are terrifying, you know that?"

"I try," she said rearranging her pillows again. "You know, I think I need another pill because the one you gave me isn't working."

"You don't need another pill," Lyla said firmly. "It'll kick in soon; you just have to be patient. I swear, one minute you're acting like John Wayne and trying to tough it out and the next minute you're asking me to help you OD," she snorted. "In the meantime, when are you planning on telling Oliver about all this?"

Felicity looked at her askance, "Why would I tell Oliver about any of this?"

"I mean, maybe not about funding his mom's campaign or about your whole money laundering thing but you are going to tell him you're Ghost Fox, right?" she asked curiously.

Felicity let out a breath and sighed, "Like I said, I haven't decided if I'm doing that yet."

Lyla paused at that before pursing her lips slightly, "It's your choice, and I'm not saying I disagree with it, but you've been working with his team for over a year and you are married to the guy."

"We're not married," Felicity denied immediately. "I mean we are but we aren't. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement that allows us both to reach our goals, that's all. Oliver gets to keep his family from losing their company and going broke and I get to ride his coattails all the way to the Family of Eleven so I can take down the Calculator once and for all. In fact, all of us need Oliver right now but I don't see you confessing to Dig about your part in all this."

"Yeah but to be fair Johnny is my ex-husband, not my husband husband, and I didn't say that I disagree with you; I'm simply saying that, even if you don't think of him as being your husband, he is your partner and you are going to have to build up some trust between the two of you eventually. Well, he's Ghost Fox's partner anyway and in a lot of ways sharing a mission with someone is more intimate than being married to them," she amended. "Believe me, I know what I'm talking about," she said ruefully. "Johnny and I were good as gold when we were on-mission and covering each other's six, it was when we tried being married without the constant threat of death that things got tough."

"Yeah, but Oliver and I don't have a relationship; we're not even friends," she argued. "We'd never even met each other until a week ago."

"You might not have met him but Ghost Fox has known him for a while and he shared a lot of very intimate things with her—you—" she grimaced, "Now you've got me doing it."

"So what you're saying is that I'm cheating on my husband by letting him form an emotional attachment with another woman who is…me?" she said slowly.

"Okay, now you're really fucking with my Zen," Lyla said disgruntledly.

"Look, let me make it simple for you; Ghost Fox was my way of keeping Oliver alive and getting the information I needed to get us to this point. And before you accuse me of using him or manipulating this situation to my advantage, let me remind you that Oliver is the one who initiated all of this. All I did was wait for it to happen," she reminded her.

"So you're saying that you knew for sure that Oliver would eventually come to Anatoly for a loan? Even without you having to step in and manipulate the situation to your advantage?" Lyla asked skeptically.

"I knew the odds were in my favor that he would," Felicity said with a firm nod.

The other woman raised an eyebrow at that, "How?"

"Because I've seen the numbers, the real numbers, and numbers don't lie. Remember, I've been buying up stock in QC through various shell corps for almost five years now," she said with a pointed look. "Not huge blocks of stocks like what Stellmoor is doing; I never intended to launch a hostile takeover or anything, I just wanted to have a few stocks as an ace up my sleeve just in case."

Lyla's eyebrows drew together at that, "So? What does buying up some stocks have to do with Oliver's family going broke? Wouldn't that help their bottom line?"

"It would but I didn't buy that many and QC's stocks have been overinflated for years," she emphasized. "Even before I started buying shares, Robert Queen had been manipulating the price of his company's stock in order to cover up the fact that the company was in real trouble and that his family was damn near destitute—for billionaires anyway," she amended. "He went so far as to transfer ownership of their homes, art collection, and everything else of value to the company so he could afford to pay his tax bill and keep up with the insurance. He shut down most of his factories in the Glades so he could raid the pension funds in order to keep the rest of the company afloat then outsourced those jobs to China where he could pay his workers something like a quarter an hour and no benefits. Then, for his Russian interests, he went to the Bratva and purchased workers for his mining company in the Urals."

Lyla's eyes widened slightly at that, "Robert Queen bought slaves to work his copper mines?"

"The copper mines, iron mines, and even several diamond mines that he kept secret so he could funnel that money back into the company without having to disclose where it came from. He even bought factory workers for his aluminum manufacturing facility in Siberia," she confirmed. "After all, why wouldn't he? Paying three hundred dollars a head for indentured workers made a hell of a lot more sense than actually paying them a salary that included benefits. He didn't even have to worry about safety regulations or keeping them alive because, if they died, he could just buy new ones."

"That's monstrous," the other woman said, her eyebrows drawing together in anger.

"I agree and so does my dad which is why we don't deal in human trafficking but we also don't get in the way of those who do because, frankly, most of those workers voluntarily sell themselves to the Bratva either to settle a debt or to guarantee a loan," she reasoned. "Again, I'm not saying that we're the good guys; we're criminals and that's a fact, but our world is very different from yours and the people who place themselves in indentured servitude know what they're getting into. Once they pay their debts then they're free to leave."

"But does that ever happen?" the other woman pressed.

She sighed, "Every once in a while, however most don't. Instead they just get in deeper and deeper until they can never get out from under their debt but that, again, is a choice," she said firmly. "Right or wrong, fair or unfair, everyone makes the choice to either be the wolf or the lamb and, if you choose to be the lamb, then eventually you'll be eaten by the wolf and, if you're the wolf, then it makes no sense to cry about the lamb because your belly still has to be filled. That's just the way it is," she said dismissively.

"That's a pretty cold attitude," Lyla pointed out. "I never expected you of all people to say something like that."

"I never said I didn't feel sorry for those people or that I liked the fact that things like this go on within our world but the truth is the truth," Felicity reiterated. "Had Anatoly not saved us I probably would've been sold to a brothel or to some factory overseas where I would've been expected to pay off the debt my sperm donor owed the brotherhood so I do feel sorry for those people and, if I could, I'd stop all of it, but I can't. Even if I could, the Bratva aren't the only ones out there who engage in human trafficking. Every country in the world, including this one, engages in human trafficking; China and Africa especially. That's not an excuse but it is the truth and I'd be a hypocrite if I pretended otherwise. And I will remind you that ARGUS didn't exactly give the members of the Suicide Squad a choice in serving their country either."

"That's not the same thing," Lyla denied immediately. "They were criminals."

"Was Oliver a criminal when Waller renditioned him?" she asked arching an eyebrow. "I'm fairly certain that if you asked Oliver he'd tell you that he never 'volunteered' to have his family's lives threatened or agreed to become an ARGUS agent. How is Amanda Waller forcing US citizens to become her personal assassination squad any better than what the Bratva is doing? At least when we 'buy' people we give them a chance to earn back their freedom and, while we may not exactly be warm and fuzzy about it, we also don't put bombs in their spines."

The other woman's lips thinned at that before she nodded reluctantly, "Okay, you have a point about Waller but, as for the rest of it, we'll just have to agree to disagree."

"Fair enough but again, neither my nor my father's organization has ever or will ever deal in human trafficking or drugs," she reminded her. "Assassination and murder for hire, yes, arms dealing, yes, money laundering, yes, but Anatoly has always drawn the line at drugs and the selling of human lives, not because he necessarily looks down on it-even though he does," she emphasized, "but because it's messy and draws too much attention. The business we do makes four and five times more profit for the organization with little to no risk attached which is why we've grown as powerful as we have. While the drugs will always exist as will vice and the rest of it, as we grow in our successes the rest of the brotherhood will see that and begin to follow suit. We're already seeing a huge shift within the organization. More and more of the individual cells are turning their attention towards more 'legitimate' means of making money in an effort to become more like us because the whole point of what we're doing is to maximize profit while minimizing risk and no one wants to bring heat down on the brotherhood or usher in a return of the drug fueled gang wars of the 90's where brothers fought brothers over territory. The internet and global economics are a wide-open space with room for everyone and, while I'm not saying that I'm a hero or claiming that what I do is some kind of subversive vigilante mission to transform the Bratva from within, the fact that things are changing speaks for itself."

Lyla remained silent for a moment as she considered her words, "Well, you'll never make me a fan of the Bratva but…" she grimaced.

"Just keep focusing on the fact that the more successful we are the closer we'll be to bringing down Waller and changing the Bratva from within," she suggested. "It won't happen overnight and there will always be parts of it that will never sit right but—"

"The wolf has to eat, got it," she agreed grimly. "Waller used to say something similar, she said, 'There are people in the world who deal only in extremes and it would be naive to think that anything less than extreme measures will stop them. Sometimes bravery isn't enough. Sometimes the world requires us to be bold whatever the personal cost,'" she shrugged, "Of course your way of saying it was a lot shorter not to mention more poetic but I get what you're saying."

"I don't know how I feel about you comparing me to Amanda Waller seeing how you feel about her but I'll take it," Felicity said with a grin. "Anyway, back to what we were saying. After Robert Queen died and Walter Steele took over, everything changed. Remember, a lot of the stuff Robert was into overseas was completely off-book so Merlyn took those over with no one to oppose him because no one else knew about them. As a result, without all that mystery money keeping QC afloat, stock prices dropped dramatically. Walter Steele was a good businessman but there was only so much he could do. He was also extremely ethical so, instead of doing what Robert did, he tried fixing the company the 'right way' by scrapping the plans for the proposed Applied Sciences division until they could afford it and cutting back anywhere he could. It wasn't enough though which is why Moira made the risky decision to sell off a huge chunk of their shares. Before Robert died they owned 75% of the company and now they own 40%-and that's after putting themselves in hock up to their eyeteeth. Long story short, the writing was on the wall long before Lian Yu happened so sooner or later Oliver was either going to ask for a favor or he and his family were going to lose the company, if not to Stellmoor, then to some other group of corporate raiders."

"So if you had all this insider information on Robert then why didn't you just buy all of the stocks so that couldn't happen?" she asked curiously.

"Because I didn't need to," she said dryly. "In fact, if I'd done that I would've been working against my own best interests."

"How so?" Lyla asked as she leaned back against the headboard with a frown.

"The only thing I'd get by buying up controlling interest in QC would be the company and I don't want the company," she said firmly. "What I want is Oliver, or rather his position as captain. If I own his company then there's no deal to be made in that. In fact, they'd be better off if I did own the company because I'd make sure it turned a profit which would increase the value of their stocks along with their personal fortune and Oliver, since he doesn't give a crap about becoming a businessman, would simply allow someone else to do all the heavy lifting while he continued to use the proceeds from his trust to fund his mission. However, Stellmoor is a vulture capitalist firm that buys depressed companies and strips them bare before shutting them down. If Stellmoor got hold of QC, everything his family built would be destroyed and, thanks to Robert, they'd even lose the house. Since Stellmoor started gobbling up shares, the Queens have been doing their best to get over the 51% mark with no success. Then again, so has Stellmoor but neither of them can get to that magic number because, now that I purchased the 10% of shares owned by Starling National, I now own, altogether, 20% of the company. That's a lot but it's nowhere near controlling interest—"

"Until you combine it with the Queen's 40%," she finished.

"Right," she nodded.

"That still doesn't fully explain everything," she pointed out. "Not only was that a huge gamble on your part but, as far as I know, the Queens aren't aware that you own 20% of the company; they still think you only control the 10% they put up as collateral after you paid off their loan."

"True and, if all goes well, I might even wind up with Stellmoor's other forty percent by the time I'm done."

"Oliver is going to feel pretty betrayed when he finds that out, don't you think?" Lyla asked pointedly.

"Why would he feel betrayed?" she scoffed. "Once he finds out that, thanks to me, his family has 60% of the bargaining power I'd think he'd be feeling pretty damn grateful. He'll be even more grateful if I do manage to make a deal with Stellmoor to get the other forty percent because I'll sell those shares back to him as well. Once he has the funds to pay for them, of course," she added. "Again, I'm not running a charity here."

"You and I both know that's not how that's going to work," Lyla said wryly. "It's going to make him put up walls and trust you even less than he does now. If you compound that by not telling him about Ghost Fox and he somehow finds out on his own, then it'll feel like you stabbed him in the back then used his corpse as a human shield."

"And you think that me coming out of the blue and telling him that I'm Ghost Fox will make him trust me even more?" she asked dubiously. "Especially since, by admitting that, I'd also be admitting to him that most of the information I unloaded on him at the meeting came directly from him and his team. He's not going to care that they're the ones who volunteered all of it to a perfect stranger whose name they didn't even know and that I never manipulated them into saying anything; all he's going to see is that I lied to him and used what he said to Ghost Fox in private against him. Besides, I don't need him to trust or even like me," she said firmly. "In fact, the less time he spends around me or likes me the better."

Lyla hummed skeptically, "And why's that?"

"Because Oliver is a man who is easily distracted by women," Felicity said without hesitation. "He fixates on the women in his life, especially the ones who refuse to coddle him, and I don't want him distracted because he's trying to figure me out or form a connection. I want him focused on being the Arrow and a Bratva captain; those are the parts of his personality I need on my side, not Oliver Queen, the guy who views any woman who isn't interested in him as a mountain that must be climbed and conquered then left behind once he plants his flag."

"You are so full of shit," she scoffed. "You and I both know that's not how you feel about Oliver. I've eavesdropped on some of your late night conversations with the guy and I know for a fact that you have a thing for him and it's definitely mutual. He might not know who Ghost Fox is but it's obvious to me he wouldn't mind figuring it out. I also know you feel the same way which is one of the biggest reasons why you kept driving him up the wall with that 'Mr. Queen' stuff."

"I was trying to create some professional distance between us, that's all," she denied.

"Maybe, but I also think you were avoiding calling him Oliver so you wouldn't slip up and say something that would tip him off because part of you wants to know what would happen if all that unresolved sexual tension finally had a chance to get resolved once and for all," she said with a smirk.

"You know, for a former spy you're a real yenta sometimes," Felicity snapped in frustration as she punched down her pillow with a huff.

"Gotcha!" she said with a triumphant grin.

"Would you go away? Go back to your own room," Felicity said bad-temperedly as she carefully lay back on the bed again and winced.

"Okay, crabby pants, nighty night," Lyla said with a jaunty little wave as she walked out of the room.

"And another thing, next time someone tries to shoot you I'm not jumping in front of the bullet to save you!"

"Promises, promises!"