Say It Again (First Wives, #5)(11)

“I’m not sure how long I’ll be here.”

“That’s fair, I guess.”

“What about you? Are you going to stay for college?”

Claire lifted her chin. “I haven’t decided.”

Sasha smiled. “You have a few more months to figure it out.”

The girl shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll see you around, then.”

As she walked away, Sasha categorized the conversation with the girl as a completely new experience. Young women never sought her out and they certainly didn’t ask about her education or school years.

After returning the books to the stacks, she checked out a laptop from Ms. Arnold and returned to her room.





Chapter Five



“Have you found any answers?” Linette interrupted Sasha’s thoughts as she approached with her question.

She stood in one of the many archways of the outside halls surrounding the school’s courtyard. Students were leaving their classes and going back to their rooms to get ready for dinner. The schedule of the school hadn’t changed in twenty years.

“Good afternoon, Headmistress . . .” Sasha’s address to the woman faded. “Linette.”

“I was told you were in the library today.”

Nothing happened at this school without the woman’s knowledge, and oftentimes, permission.

“Examining old yearbooks. Trying to remember where my fellow classmates ended up.”

“And did you turn up anything promising?”

“I found very little, actually. Seems many of the students left Richter and disappeared. I tried looking them up online and only found a few people working in the private sector.”

Linette tilted her head down the corridor. “Follow me.”

Sasha fell into step beside the woman and waited for her to speak.

“What would I find if I were to look up your name?” she asked.

“In a general search? Probably nothing.”

“What about a detailed one? Like the kind we taught you in your final years here?”

“I’ve used an alias many times since I left Richter.”

“To escape your father’s attention, I can assume.”

“Yes.”

“I doubt you’re the only student to pretend to be someone they’re not. We taught you to go unnoticed when you want to, to stand out when you need to. Did you ask yourself why we did that?”

“You said it was to protect us. Considering Richter has educated senators’ sons, dictators’ daughters, and I’m sure many equally high-profile families in between, your explanation was sufficient.”

Linette guided her to the dining hall and toward the back elevators.

“Would it surprise you to learn that the names of some of the students here at Richter were aliases from the beginning?”

She hadn’t considered that possibility.

“Take yourself. Sasha Petrov.”

“I never had my father’s name.”

Linette stopped at the elevator, waved her armband over the lock, and called the lift.

“Have you ever seen your birth certificate?”

“Of course.”

“You mean the one your benefactor meant for you to have when you left Germany. The one Alice Petrov knew you needed in order to escape your father’s notice.”

The certainty Sasha felt a moment before about her birth name faded. “She lied to me.”

“She protected you. Your mother, on the other hand, wanted to outsmart your father and stupidly gave you his name.” They exited the elevator and took the stairs to the last subterranean floor.

“Then why was I not sent to him when my mother died?”

They passed the soundproof doors leading through the firing range, and around a corner.

Linette unlocked the administration room and then proceeded into yet another space, hidden behind a false wall. There was no way to see the room from the outside.

“I would appreciate that you keep this room to yourself. Very few members of the staff even know it’s here.”

“Why show me?”

Linette hesitated before crossing the threshold. “Perhaps because I feel I owe you an explanation so you can better understand why we do things the way we do here at Richter.”

Sasha followed her inside.

“These are the archives of students such as yourself. I took the liberty of pulling your dossier when you showed up yesterday. For many reasons, I cannot show you any other files than your own.” She crossed to a table and handed Sasha a folder. “The files never leave this room. There are no cameras in this room where, say, a crafty student could hack into the system and learn the secrets hidden here.”

She smiled at the crafty student reference. She opened her file. A childhood image of her on her first day at Richter stared back. “I was only nine years old.”

“Actually, you were eight.”

“But I—”

“By the time Alice Petrov enrolled you here, your birth certificate had been doctored twice. Both copies are in the file, along with the original.”

Alice Petrov had been Sasha’s benefactor at Richter and in life. Sadly, Sasha hadn’t made the connection when Alice was alive. Cancer had robbed Alice of her life, and Sasha of one of the only people on the planet who cared if she was alive or dead.