Secret Santa

Secret Santa

"A gift wrapped in innocence, a game laced with sin—who left the vibrator in her Secret Santa box? The hunt for the truth is as intoxicating as the pleasure it promises."

PROLOGUE

"Well? It’s the twenty-third," Artur Gennadievich said, his eyes scanning the office like a weary general reviewing his troops.

"And?" Elvira didn't bother looking up from her monitor. "Artur, if you’re about to tell me we’re wrapping for the year a week early and you’re flying the whole firm to Egypt, just say it."

Mokin let out a dry chuckle, his nose still buried in a mountain of briefs.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I’ve got a date with Karnaukhov & Son on the twenty-seventh. Artur, you’re the boss—why not just cut the Karnaukhov loose? Pay me a retainer, and I’ll personally escort the three of you to the Maldives. On the company’s dime, of course."

"Freeloader," Elvira muttered, her mouse clicking aggressively through a wall of flickering text.

"Right back at you, Cruella," Mokin shot back, the insult landing with practiced, low-energy ease.

"What a team." Sasha leaned over her contract, her voice a low hum of disbelief. "My mother warned me this place was a menagerie. I’ve been here three weeks and I haven't even seen a 'welcome' flower."

Alexandra Belenkaya hadn't reached the one-month mark at this cramped law firm on the Petrograd side of the Saint Petersburg. Her mother had sold it as a cozy, "practically family" operation, swearing that the owner, Artur Gennadievich—an old classmate—was a man with a heart of gold. She’d promised Sasha that as a fresh law grad, she’d be treated as one of their own. But the narrative had shifted lately. Her mother had recently started quoting old Soviet cinema:

"Remember that movie “Courier”? Where the hole puncher falls on the guy's head? Watch your skull, honey."

Artur—or "Arturchik" as the veterans called him when they weren't being polite—was a soft, rumpled man in his forties. He was a landscape of sweaty cheeks, a protruding belly, and unkempt nails. He lived in a rotating uniform of threadbare flannel shirts and a knitted vest that looked like a relic from a 1970s cartoon, paired with trousers so wrinkled they barely qualified as pants.

The outward slovenliness grated on Sasha’s nerves. Her mother insisted he was a legal titan—the kind of mind that made the greats look like amateurs. But Sasha hadn't seen him in the trenches yet. The boss didn't do courtrooms. That was for the "warrior and the fixer"—Mokin and Elvira. Yet, whenever Artur glanced at Elvira’s trial notes, his brief, surgical strikes of commentary left Sasha floored. He was brilliant, in a quiet, terrifying way.

"No Egypt. No Turkey," Artur muttered, dragging a cardboard box out of the supply closet. "Just a small corporate event. Something to smooth over the... jagged edges... that have developed between us this year. Comrades, we’re doing Secret Santa."

"Artur," Mokin finally looked up, his expression a mix of professional respect and genuine annoyance. "I value you as a mentor. I really do. But you’re killing me with this. We have a twenty-three-year-old associate who’s been here five minutes. What is she going to think of us?"

"Think what you want, but as the Director, I’m making a call," the boss said, scrawling names on scraps of paper and tossing them into the box. "For once a year, we are going to perform an act of corporate friendship. We are going to surprise each other."

"Surprise?" Mokin’s smile turned predatory as he glanced at Elvira. "Artur, last year Vitalik surprised Miss Cruella so thoroughly that she lived off his gift for six months, and he ended up resigning. He was a smart kid, too. It took us five months to replace him with Alexandra."

"The idiot gave me a cookbook for ‘Healthy and Delicious Meals,'" Elvira said, finally turning her chair to face them. "Fine, Artur. I’m in. But on two conditions. First: the budget is a thousand rubles. Period."

"Of course, Elechka," he replied, mopping the sweat from his brow with a crumpled sleeve.

"Second: no public unwrapping. We open them wherever we want—at home, in the car, I don't care. I refuse to sit here and perform 'joy' over whatever piece of junk Mokin tries to insult me with."

The Director let out a long, heavy sigh of relief.

"Deal."

"And one more thing." Elvira set down her nail file, her gaze sharpening as she looked at the three men. "If some bastard gives me another book, I will find out who it was. And I will strangle them with my bare hands."

"If I pull your name, Cruella, you’re getting a bottle of vodka," Mokin smirked. "So, Artur, remind us of the rules. Please tell me they’ve changed at least as much as the tax code since last year…”

CHAPTER 1

After a month on the job, Sasha had finally learned to brace herself. The casual jabs, the mockery, the snide remarks that bled through the lines of professional courtesy—it was the new weather of her life. Her mother insisted this was simply how the world worked. According to her, the only places where coworkers smiled and lent a helping hand were in those sugary, vintage director Eldar Ryazanov films.