Author's Note: I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for the great response to my first chapter.  You all left such positive feedback that it really inspired me to get this next chapter out as soon as I could and I hope it lives up to your expectations.  Chapter 3 is currently underway and we'll just have to see how soon I can get it done.  Hope you enjoy!

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The man Sydney knew as Mr. Sark stepped into the room, a smug smile on his face as their eyes met, and then he closed the door behind him.

"Hello, Ms. Bristow." He said pleasantly. "Or may I call you Sydney? You're going to be here for quite awhile and there's no point in our being so formal with one another."

She groaned impatiently. "Oh, my God, why on earth would she send you up here? I care even less for you than I do her."

"Well, you're not exactly one of my favorite people, either." He retorted, even though he had no basis for disliking Sydney as they had never really been properly introduced. He just said it because he was annoyed by her hurtful display of conduct towards Irina.

"Look, I don't have the time to sit and chat with you!" Sydney said irritably. "I need to talk to Irina. You have to let me out of here!"

"Oh, so is this the part where I'm supposed to bow down like some lowly paean and cater meekly to the wishes of the newly crowned princess of the kingdom?" Sark raised a scornful eyebrow. "From what I understand, you wanted nothing to do with your mother before."

"I've seen the light, all right?" She said flippantly. "Now are you going to let me out of here?"

"No." He said simply, sitting down in the armchair and crossing his legs. "I'm here to talk to you, so neither of us is going anywhere."

Sydney glared at him, but it was obvious from his relaxed posture that he wasn't going to be budged. "Fine, talk, but I don't know what you think we have to discuss." Her manner was clearly hostile towards him. Maybe if she could bully him along, the quicker it would be over.

"Irina wanted me to talk to you." Sark began. "About your options."

"My options?" She repeated. "As far as I can see, I have only one."

"And that would be?"

"To keep as far away from her as I possibly can."

"Ah, but Sydney, have you really thought it through?" Sark questioned her. "Irina is a very powerful woman and it could be very beneficial for you if you were to join our operation."

Sydney let out a short, mocking laugh. "Is that why you're here? To explain about the choices I can make for my health plan? To tell me about your company stock options?" She retorted sarcastically.

"Very amusing." Sark commented without a smile. "But cracking jokes will only delay you in your quest to see Irina."

Sydney clenched her teeth together. "Okay, okay, let's hear how Irina's baby-faced henchman is going to try to make me turn my back on everything I believe in." She said with a sneer.

Sark gave her a smile she would grow to hate. "Thank you for acknowledging my relative youth, Sydney. It does my heart good when someone realizes all that I've accomplished in such a short amount of time."

"Really? Do cold-blooded killers feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day?" Sydney asked, a wide-eyed innocent. "Do you actually say to yourself, 'Great little execution I pulled off the other day.' or 'I am so good at what I do. Killing people is really my forté.'" She narrowed her eyes at him. "Is that something to be proud of?"

Sark's eyes grew cold. "Don't be so holier than thou with me, Sydney. You're no innocent rose yourself."

She glared at him. "Is insulting me your way of wooing me over to the Dark Side?"

"No, but for some reason, you make it very easy for me to needle you."

Sydney threw him a deadly look. "I've got a thick skin. Don't even think you've hit my jugular yet."

"Irina always said you had a way with words." Sark mused. "She's always telling me how brilliant you were as a child--"

"And why is she discussing me with you?" Sydney interrupted.

"Because Irina thought I should know all about her clever, wonderfully gifted daughter." Sark's words were tinged with derision. "If you spend any time at all with Irina, you soon find out that one of her favorite subjects is you."

It angered Sydney to hear him say that. She didn't want Irina to brag about her as if she were a prized pig from the county fair. She had no right to be a proud mother where Sydney was concerned. Irina had had nothing to do with the way she'd turned out.

"But why would she want you to know about me? Because we're going to be working together?" She spat out disdainfully.

"Would that be so terrible?" Sark inquired blandly. "Irina is a brilliant, dynamic, resourceful woman who--"

"Oh, God, spare me the lovefest, will you?" Sydney cut him off in mid-idol worship. "Why is it that every man who meets her falls under her spell? You, Khasinau, McKenas Cole. Even my father."

Sark gave a careless shrug of his shoulders. "She is a beautiful, charming woman, Sydney, and people can't help but be drawn to her." He said by way of explanation. "You favor her a great deal, you know."

"Don't compare me to her." She said tightly.

Sark's brow knitted as he gazed at her and then his forehead smoothed as he realized what had been picking at his brain for some time now. "I can't believe I didn't notice it in Denpasar." He said incredulously. "You were the mysterious woman behind the veil."

Sydney remained impassive. She didn't see the point in acknowledging whether he was correct or not.

"It's the eyes, you see." Sark explained. "They're Irina's eyes and they should have tipped me off."

Sydney still wasn't speaking, so Sark continued. "That was a strange bit of circumstances as I recall. I was captured by an agent who, for some unfathomable reason or another, left me to the mercy of the SD-6 operatives." Sark watched as Sydney struggled not to react to his topic of conversation. "Was he CIA?"

Vaughn. Just the mention of him was almost enough to make her start bawling again, but she would sooner die than break down in front of Sark. 

"Well, he must have been since I was taken into SD-6 custody." Sark answered his own question when she wouldn't. "I've asked myself a hundred times why that agent would abandon such a valuable commodity as myself? Would you happen to know the answer to that one, Sydney?" She felt as if Sark was taunting her.

"This conversation is pointless." She said as a reply. She would not rise to his bait.

"Oh, now, Sydney, don't be so cold." Sark pouted at her, letting the matter drop for now. "I really was telling you the truth before. Irina wants us to get to know one another."

"Why? You are of no interest to me and your being here only serves to remind me of my predicament." She said witheringly.

"Well, isn't that what little brothers were put on this earth to do?" Sark casually let his bombshell drop with the ease of one who had done so many times before. "I believe our mission in life is to tease and torment our big sisters unmercifully, until you either yell at us to leave you alone or you threaten us with bodily harm if we fail to do so." He cackled gleefully.

Sydney felt as if she had been punched in the stomach and her legs gave away beneath her. Luckily, she had been standing next to the bed at the time. "What did you just say?" She croaked out.

A coolly detached smile spread across Sark's face. "I believe you heard what I said."

"I don't believe it." She growled.

"It's not my problem what you believe." Sark said carelessly.

She gave him a studied look. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-two." He watched his older sister do the mental calculations in her head. "Yes, if you're trying to figure out the math, Mother was pregnant when she faked her death. I was born seven months after she disappeared."

Sydney struggled to keep from gagging. Hearing him call her "Mother" seemed to make it all too real. "Where were you born?"

"Naturally, Mother returned to the Soviet Union upon extraction from her mission." Sark informed her. "That's where I was born."

"And what about your accent? It's not Russian." She was quick to jump on any flaw in his story.

"Boarding schools." Sark replied. "In England and then Ireland for a time. Hence the accent."

"So she didn't raise you?"

"It would have been impossible for her to do so, not with the life she led."

"Did you know what she was doing? Who she was becoming?" Sydney pressed him.

"That didn't matter to me." Sark shook his head. "To me, she was just my mother and I loved her unconditionally."

"So she spent time with you when you were growing up." Sydney felt an irrational flare of envy at the thought of Sark being the one with whom Irina had chosen to stay.

"Of course. When I wasn't in school, she would take me on trips all over the world. Madrid, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Christchurch, Hong Kong." Sark shot her a grin. "Heck, we even spent one whole month in Atlanta, Georgia." He mimicked for her a perfect good ole' boy Southern drawl. "When I was a young child, I wasn't aware at the time who she was or what she was doing, but as I grew older and I realized all that she had accomplished, I felt very proud of her."

Sydney felt sickened. "You're proud that your mother is the head of an international crime syndicate?"

"And so should you be." He said, mild disapproval in his tone as if he couldn't understand why she was so dead-set against joining their mother in partnership. "How many women do you think are savvy and brilliant enough to achieve something like that?"

"The bigger question is why would they want to at the expense of everything else?" She countered, but he had no reply. "What about your name? Where does it come from? Why would you have the last name of a man who isn't your father?"

"Sark is not actually my surname." He corrected her. "To be technical about it, it's an acronym of my given name, which is Sergei Aleksandr Radimir Konstantin Derevko." Sark recited with a regal air, his Russian roots coming through in his speech even though he hadn't lived there full-time since he was a boy.

Sydney raised an eyebrow at the wordiness of Sark's full name. "Why so many?" She asked curiously.

Sark gave a shrug. "I know Aleksandr is for my babushka. Her name was Aleksandrina, as you have just recently learned. The rest of them I don't know about." He shook his head. "You'd have to ask Mother for her own reasons, but I think she was trying to make up for the fact that I couldn't use my father's name."

"Why not?" Sydney asked. "Did she not know who he was?" She didn't know what made her say it, but her smart remark was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

"How dare you say such a thing!" Sark's face hardened and his blue eyes turned positively glacial. "What do you think? That our mother was a whore?"

Sydney broke his gaze and looked away. No, she didn't think that; at least, not consciously. When she was a child, she had always thought her parents had a wonderful and loving marriage. But then to find out it had all been a sham shook Sydney to her core. If her mother would do something as drastic as enter into a marriage with a man for the sole purpose of using him to further her own gains, then who knew what she was capable of?

Sark smiled tauntingly. "Have I struck a nerve, Sydney? Perhaps you are questioning your own paternity?"

Her head whipped up. "Jack Bristow is my father." She growled at him menacingly.

"Unfortunately, you only have the word of a woman you despise." He goaded her.

"Why are you acting as if I don't have any reason to blame her for this situation?" Sydney said heatedly. "I didn't do anything to her except love her. She was the one who abandoned me!"

"Boo hoo, now you're telling me that Mummy suffered, too." Her words were caustic. "Do you think that makes me feel sorry enough for her that I'm going to welcome her back into my life with open arms? You don't know what it was like after she left us. You don't know what it did to my father!" Sydney said bitterly.

Sark looked bored. "Your father is of no concern to me."

Sydney stared at him for a long moment. Could he truly be so utterly heartless? "How did she turn you so completely against him?"

"Mother did not turn me against him." Sark met her gaze evenly. "I have no feelings at all towards your father."

Sydney frowned. "And why do you keep calling him, 'your father'? He's your father, too, even if you don't choose to acknowledge it."

Sark's expressionless countenance suddenly broke into an arrogant smirk, which alternately infuriated her and chilled her to the bone. "Poor little ignorant sister." He shook his head sadly.

She gave him an angry look for treating her so condescendingly. "Please enlighten me." She said coldly.

"There is no need for you to be so outraged on your father's behalf, Sydney." Sark explained patiently. "I'm not rejecting him because of Mother's influence."

"I'm rejecting him because Jack Bristow is not my father."

To be continued…

P.S. Don't give up just yet, S/V shippers! Our favorite CIA agent will be making an appearance very soon, but it might not be in the way you expect!  Thanks for reading and please review!