Liability

Chapter 17 - Rhys

The growl that rumbles through his chest is miserable at best, and he hates how Thommy has been ordered home, tucked away from the world and a possible second attack that might target another high end family. The thought alone is ridiculous. The Prescotts are rich and influential, catering their legal services to similarly rich and influential people, but even with their British royal roots, they have next to no political pull. They are nothing compared to the Yurievs and the power they wield. Without the Yurievs' backing Rhys' father would be nowhere.

Rhys tries to think of an instance when he met anyone from the Yuriev family, however, he comes up with nothing. He knows they usually attend the same events he is forced to go to because the gossip magazines just love to write about Alenyka Yurieva's clothes and her ageless beauty and how she is the center of attention whether she walks into a room or appears on a red carpet. Not to mention, he knows that his father had several meetings with her in the past, and yet he never introduced his son to the very woman who ensured he will secure a seat in the Senate.

Googling her name brings up millions of results, the images showing a gracefully aged and flawlessly dressed middle-aged woman with perfectly discrete makeup and neatly styled light blond hair. She is beautiful, there is no doubt about that. But her eyes remain cold and emotionless even when she smiles at the camera, her personality spearing through each and every photograph and making it impossible to look away. Rhys cannot help but stare, his attention stolen by the images and the strange feeling budding in his chest.

She looks familiar, but not in a general sense. It doesn't feel like he has met her before and only just remembers the encounter. No, she reminds him of someone, but for the life of him, he can't figure out who. Clicking on her Wikipedia pages proves to be less helpful than expected as well. According her bio, her mother, Illya Yurieva is still alive at 91, but her father died back in 1963. She was married once to Paul Yuriev a politician who had been New York's senator for twelve years between 1980 and 1992. Paul Yuriev committed suicide in 1994. Tragedies seem to follow the family, because two years later her only daughter died as well, leaving behind a son, name and age not mentioned. The list of relatives goes on however, brining up names Rhys didn't expected at all.

Like Elenya Gediminas. The head of the Gediminas Empire. And according to Wikipedia, Alenyka Yurieva's cousin.

Rhys clicks back to Google and types in both Alenyka's and Elenya's names. The results are interesting. There are some montages that compare the two women, but he cannot find one in which they appear together. Of course, it could be because Elenya rarely leaves the West Coast if she is in the country and not back in Russia, but even then to actually successfully avoid the media's watching eyes and getting caught by a paparazzi's lens... it's unheard of when it comes to public figures like the Yurievs and the Gediminas'. The closest result he gets when he enters the names separately is the same blond man with a beautiful, almost doll-like face who appears with both Elenya and Alenyka in several red carpet shots.

Following the links attached to the pictures, he finds out that the man's name is Anastas Gediminas and he is none other than Elenya's son. It's an interesting piece of information, but brings him no closer to figuring out why he hasn't met Alenyka before or who she reminds him of. He spends some more time on hunting for information, stumbling across a picture of his father with Alenyka at some Congress event, but nothing on her daughter or her grandson who she supposedly raised herself after the boy's parents died. The most he can find out is that the boy is twenty-four and Alenyka couldn't be prouder of him.

He concedes defeat in the end, but doesn't go back to struggling with HTML5. Instead he clicks on a few news sites, all of them still focused on the Manhattan attack. Most articles are contemplating which organization could be blamed for the bombing, some wondering if the attack could really have been a direct hit against the Yurievs, while one goes as far as claiming it was some sort of mafia message, delving into the numerous rumors that have been circling around about the Yuriev family's connection to the Russian mob. In all honesty, the entire article is ridiculously over the top with sensationalist phrases that all but call the near century old Illya Yurieva an evil mastermind who managed to take over the entire American underworld by using her womanly wiles. It's offensive on so many levels that Rhys cannot even finish it before closing the tab and logging into Facebook instead.