Red Alpha

By Cristina Grenier

Cadence Freedman is a newly minted intelligence agent on her way to Moscow. Her assignment: gather information that could prevent potential nuclear warfare - if, indeed, such intel exists. Cadence, however, hosts a secret mission all her own. To achieve her goals, she must cross paths with Demyan Boykov, Russian Prime Minister Osip Danshov's personal bank and one of the country's most dangerous public figures. Instantly drawn to him, Cadence realizes that sticking to regulation might not be as easy as she hoped - and that Boykov might be enough to tempt her from the straight and narrow.

Demyan Boykov lives beneath the rigid control of the state. Of all those beneath the facade of democracy, he knows most intimately what Russia's past has cost its people. Cadence Freedman provides a welcomed distraction from the monotony of his prison, and her body offers a plethora of delights he longs to sample. When the young agent seeks his secrets however, their ambitions clash and they find themselves collaborating in a plot with thousands of lives in the balance - as well as the sanctity of their hearts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monster Media LLC
• Release date: Mar 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386141136

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Red Alpha

Cristina Grenier

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Prologue

He didn’t understand. But, then again, Demyan had never been very good at understanding things. His father had always called him thick, while his mother preferred to label him contemplative.

The truth was that the young boy was neither of those things. However, Demyan was careful. Even at the tender age of eight, he knew that there were certain things that he couldn’t do and say in public, regardless of what people thought.

He and his sister were always at odds that way – arguing over what they could and couldn’t say. Of course, as she was three years his senior, she usually won. But, in the moment, Demyan wasn’t sure how much that mattered. All he knew was that he was utterly confused, and Elisaveta seemed to know much more about what was going on than he.

Why there were men with huge, gleaming black guns in their living room, and why those guns were pointed at their parents…

Demyan wanted to stop them. He wanted to run up to the men and grab their guns – to point them away from his mother and father, but Elisaveta wouldn’t let him. She stood in front of him, her hand holding his tightly, her expression shielded from view by her long blonde hair.

The hair that their mother had so lovingly brushed that morning.

Because she held him, there was nothing Demyan could do but watch as the tall, stiff soldiers asked their parents a deluge of questions that neither of them seemed to know the answer to. The young boy didn’t think he’d ever seen such terror on his mother’s face.

Just that morning, she had sung him his favorite song to coax him out of bed – the one Elisaveta insisted he was too old for, and teased him when she heard. But Demyan gladly endured her cruelty if it meant that his mother’s low, sweet tones pulled him from his dreams rather than his sister’s loud chattering. Now, tears stained his mother’s pale skin and her dark blonde hair hung around her face limply.

One of the black-clad men hit her and bloodied her lip.

A cry of outrage escaped Demyan as he leapt towards his parents in distress. Elisaveta, however, maintained her hold on him – only tightening it when he attempted to escape. Veta! He screamed, tugging madly at her wrist. Let me go, Veta!

"Hush! His sister snapped in return almost immediately. Or you’ll die too!"

Die? Their parents were going to die?

Almost as if Veta’s words had brought the action into being, the apartment was suddenly filled with the deafening sound of gunfire. Demyan might have screamed, but his breath was stolen from him. Veta shoved him onto the floor, and tears streaked down the dark-haired boys face as he listened to his mother’s cries, his father’s pleas for mercy.

And then, all at once, everything went quiet.

The guns, along with the terrible sound of his parents’ suffering, stopped.

With his head pressed into the carpet, Demyan couldn’t see what had happened. All he knew was that, moments later, strong arms were hauling him to his feet, and Veta was once more beside him. Whereas he couldn’t stop crying, barely able to breathe beneath the combination of fear and grief that weighed down on him, Veta’s face was eerily stony for an eleven-year-old.

As one of the black-clad men steered them out of the apartment, another spoke on a radio to some unseen comrade, and Demyan heard him say something about militants. He had no idea what a militant was, but somehow, the term sounded worse than death itself.

He and Veta left their home that day – and with it, any vestiges of their childhood that might have remained.

Chapter One: The Mission

Cadence didn’t think she’d ever been more on edge in her entire life.

She sat, stiff backed, in a chair outside of her superior’s office, as she waited for those within to make one of the most important decisions of her life.

Something she had wanted for close to ten years.

Taking a deep breath, the young woman gazed around the small waiting area in which she was seated, trying to clear her mind. When she got nervous, she tended to fidget- and that hardly reflected well on her professionally. She had worked far too hard for the entirety of her career to make a mistake now.

Cadence closed her eyes, trying to employ the breathing techniques she’d been taught for yoga. In through her nose, out through her mouth. Regardless of the way her heart hammered against her ribs or the tension in her long legs.

She needed to be calm.

A low buzzing from inside her bag made her arch her brow, and she reluctantly opened her eyes to retrieve her phone. At the sight of the text-message displayed across the screen, she smiled, shaking her head, as a measure of her nervousness melted away.

You’ve got this in the bag. Relax.

-G

At least Geoffrey had the utmost confidence in her. It helped when she herself wasn’t quite sure that she had what was required to be sent on this mission.

At that precise moment, the door to Myles Branch’s office opened, and Cadence leapt out of her seat as if she had been burned. The man himself emerged – a ramrod straight column of muscle that represented every obstacle she’d ever had to go through to get where she was – and he was speaking softly with someone that Cadence knew by face and reputation only.

Everly Cresseda – the head of the Russian Intelligence sect of the FBI. She had the final say in agents who went overseas – and into the belly of the beast. Of course, conditions for agents sent to Russia had been far less dangerous in the past twenty years, but that didn’t prevent Cresseda from being a stickler for regulations.

She didn’t like agents who had minds of their own – a single rule infraction in the past five years took you out of the running to join her team.

Luckily enough for Cadence, she had been operating with the intention of joining the Russian unit ever since she’d obtained her desk job. Straight and narrow was her middle name – and why wouldn’t it be?

After all, disregard for regulations had been Alessia’s downfall.

At her elder sister’s memory, the young woman frowned. She was doing this for Alessia. Both for her, and for the country that allowed both of them to meet aspirations they’d had since they were young.

Director Cresseda, this is Agent Cadence Freedman. When the two finished speaking discreetly, Branch gestured in her direction, and Cadence thought her spine might snap from the effort it took to make herself look taller. She was already five nine as it was, and atop that, today she was wearing her power heels.

Which made her almost as tall as Director Cresseda herself. Not that the severe blonde woman was giving her any points for that. As she shook Cadence’s out-stretched hand, she gave the dark-skinned woman a once over that spoke volumes of how she felt about her recommendation. Freedman. Are you, by any chance, kin to Alessia Freedman?

And there it was. Out in the open.

The one thing standing between her and the assignment she so desperately wanted.

How many times per year did Cadence face this issue? It had all but taken over her career, let alone the life she lived outside the office. It felt like she would be the younger sister of Alessia Freedman forever- and damn any attempt she made at notoriety for her own name.

She was my sister. The young woman grudgingly admitted, cursing her dearly departed sibling even as her heart ached at the sound of her name. Even though it had been a full ten years, she felt Alessia’s absence as powerfully as she had the day she’d found out about her sister’s death.

Which was why she had to get to Moscow.

Of course. Cresseda replied, as if she’d expected no less. I’ll have you know, Ms. Freedman, that I’m not running a unit built for vengeance. We stay well within the guidelines put forth by the department. You complete the mission assigned to you and then you’re brought home.

"Pardon my frankness, Director Cresseda, but this organization isn’t about vengeance. I knew that the day I signed up." It was a gamble, she knew, to speak so strongly. In essence, to lie. But Cadence had been waiting ten years for this. She’d do just about anything to get to Russia.

The director gave her a long, hard look. One that Cadence estimated might have cowed a woman with less conviction. As respectfully as she could, she met the director’s gaze, and, looking on, Branch arched a brow at the silent battle of wills going on before him.

It seemed like an eternity, but in reality, a minute might have passed before Cresseda spoke. You’ll take the exam. She demanded crisply, Both physical and mental, and when the trials are finished, then we’ll speak again. Are we clear?

Five years ago, Cadence would have leapt into the air with a whoop of excitement. But, age had mellowed her. Her twenty ninth birthday was fast approaching, and she anticipated celebrating in private rather than making a scene.

Thank you, Director Cresseda. She shook the other woman’s hand again, her expression carefully neutral. I look forward to it.

The blonde woman’s smile was thin. I’m sure. With that, she turned on her heel to stride down the hall and out of the department.

Leaving Cadence standing beside Assistant Director Branch as her nerves turned to elation. The tall man stepped up next to her, unable to suppress a grin of triumph. I had to admit Freedman, I didn’t know if she would bite. That woman’s a hard nut to crack.

You don’t know how much I appreciate this, Myles. For the first time since she’d received Geoff’s text message, Cadence allowed herself to smile. The hardest part, the young woman reminded herself, was over.

The exams would be cake – and then, she would only have to deal with Cresseda once more before she’d be on her way to Moscow.

And into Alessia’s world.

What’s there to appreciate? You’ve worked hard for this, Freedman. You deserve it. Her mentor extended his hand to shake and Cadence took it warmly. When she’d first started at the bureau, Myles had been the one to show her the ropes. He’d been hard on her – but it had been his strict nature that had helped to mold her into the agent she was.

And Cadence was proud to say she thought she was ready for anything Director Cresseda could dish out.

It wasn’t until she left the office later on that day that Cadence finally allowed herself to celebrate. On the way home, she bought a pint of her favorite pistachio almond ice cream as well as an entire pecan pie. She planned on treating herself this coming weekend, as there would be none of that when she started training.

Once she was safely in her apartment, she took off her suit, methodically hanging the jacket and skirt she’d painstakingly pressed that morning in her closet before throwing on a pair of sweats. That done, she sank down on her sofa, closed her eyes, and took a moment to let it all sink in.

She was almost there. Russia was within her grasp.

It seemed like only yesterday she and her sister had been watching the news on television, lamenting over the state of the world when other children were busy with Barbie dolls and dress up clothes. From a very young age, both she and Alessia had been interested in the world around them. For Cadence’s older sister especially, tales of conflict in foreign lands and the people trying to make the world a better place had always been more interesting than anything their parents bought them.

Not that Darrell and Tiffany Freedman hadn’t tried to interest their daughters in normal playthings. They provided them with everything from finger paints to toy kitchens in the hopes that Alessia and Cadence’s odd preoccupation with the real world would fade away.

But it never did.

Both of the girls had joined their school’s international and debate clubs as soon as they were old enough, and were always clamoring after the latest news stories. After a while, their parents gave up trying to force them to be children and merely let them have their way. Of course, they weren’t allowed to talk about religious conflicts and refugees at the dinner table, but it was a small sacrifice for the girls to make, really.

They subscribed to every world news site that they could, listened to talk-shows instead of music, and swore to one another that they would always try to make the world a better place. Alessia, in particular, had always been interested in Russia.

One of the largest countries in the world, with one of the most convoluted political systems. An ally to the US, but holding to policies in direct opposition to its ally’s interests. Alessia wanted nothing more than to go there. To live on the ground and watch the operations of a former communist country from the inside.

Of course, their parents had been skeptical, to say the least. A black girl, in Russia? She would stick out like a sore thumb. Where would she learn the language? How was she going to stay warm? While Darrell and Tiffany had always encouraged their daughters that they could do anything they set their minds to, Alessia and Cadence quickly found that their options were limited to things a little closer to home.

Yes, their mother and father wanted them to succeed – but they wanted them to do so within the reach of their parents– where there was little danger and more opportunity.

While Cadence had actually been willing to assuage their parents’ desires, Alessia was having none of it. She had been determined to escape from beneath their parents’ thumbs and explore the world she heard so much about every day. How, she demanded of her younger sister, were they supposed to change the world if they never got to see it?

That had always been Alessia – headstrong. Willing to fight for what she believed in.

Cadence watched her sister graduate high school three years before her. Spoke to her every weekend on the phone after she moved away to attend classes at Penn State – her dream school. Alessia majored in International Affairs, much to their parents’ dismay, and signed up to study abroad at the first opportunity. Darrell and Tiffany tried to prevent their daughter from going by refusing to fund her trip, but Alessia had just worked two jobs – and gone to school - until she raised the money herself.

She went directly to Moscow – do not pass go and do not collect one hundred dollars. Of course, it had cost far more than one hundred dollars to get Alessia to Moscow, but she never regretted the hours she spent working. She posted hundreds of pictures online, played tourist at every site she could, and called Cadence every night to insist that she was going to end up in Russia, somehow.

Even then, her conviction had been completely steadfast. While Alessia had been in Russia, she had first done the tourist thing – visiting every major attraction the city had to offer. From the Kremlin to the cathedral in Moscow, she left literally no stone unturned. In the year that she was in Russia, it became a part of her. She learned the language so well that she literally shocked her professors, and learned the city almost as well as the majority of her Russian friends. And so, of course, when the time had come for Alessia to return, she was reluctant.

Cadence tried to understand. Though she and her sister had always been close, she knew that being in Russia was what her elder sibling wanted – and so she worked with Alessia to try to find a program, a job- anything that would ensure that she stayed in Russia.

Their parents hadn’t been so thrilled.

They demanded that Alessia come home – and back to the life they planned for her.

Thinking back, Cadence realized that their mother and father hadn’t really meant to alienate their eldest daughter. They had only wanted what was best for her – and in their minds, what was best for her involved keeping her close. Alessia responded to their unyielding attitude by cutting off all communication with their parents – necessitating that Cadence serve as their go-between.

It was a hard few years. Cadence herself was trying to get her undergraduate degree in criminal justice and doing so while trying to maintain relations with her parents and her sister was hard on her. There were times where she