If you go hunting a tiger...

- 1 -

Ajax, thanks for the preliminary reading!

As many as four men pushed me into the car. Of course, I fought back, but the result was zero. I couldn't even bite the hand that was covering my mouth: it was wearing a thick leather glove.

"You don't need to shout, Fräulein Alex," said one of the men, who was sitting next to the driver. The third and fourth were in the back seat on either side of me. The third held my hands, the fourth clamped my mouth. The first added: "Your grandfather wants to see you, Fräulein."

I was so dumbfounded by the word "Fräulein" said by a young guy that I missed "grandfather" past my ears. It's been about fifty years since no one calls a girl "Fräulein". "Frau" also no one ever says. A woman from birth to old age is only "Fru" in modern Alnorria, and no one dares to get into her intimate life. I only saw "Fräulen" and "Frau" in the old novels.

"Your grandfather, Signorina," said the second guy who was driving in the Southern Alnorrian dialect, "is waiting for you at his summer residence."

So. Grandfather, it is. This asshole came into my life yesterday around noon. And before that, I didn't even suspect his existence all my nineteen years.

And, judging by the kidnapping, and even by the "Signorina", which has been out of use even earlier than the "Fräulein", nothing good awaits me in the company of my grandfather.

+++

More precisely, it was not grandfathered himself, but his lawyer, who showed up at granny's candy shop and informed me that Mr. Terrent ordered me to immediately come to the east wing of his summer house and begin training as the heiress of the TGS conglomerate.

It turned out that the guy who knocked up my mom out twenty years ago, cloud her mind before the end of all abortion terms and fled — this was the son of Dave Terrent, president of the TGS concern.

And my granny told me that he was a biker, very handsome and just as stupid, who at first promised to get married, settle down and deliver orders, but escaped and died in an accident even before I was born.

"And how did old Terrent intimidate my mother," I asked the lawyer, "that she didn't file for alimony? Besides, my mother died seventeen years ago, and my grandmother became my guardian. Alimony is paid only to the child, so both the guardian and the shelter can collect it. How did Terrent threaten my granny?"

We — my granny and I — were not beggars, the candy shop provided a more or less decent life, but a man is obliged to bear the responsibility for the production of children on an equal footing with a woman. If he doesn't want himself to change diapers and do homework with the kids, let him pay for a babysitter and a good school.

The lawyer — a man in his fifties, smartly dressed and colorless — said with surprise: "You just found out that you have a grandfather, but all you want to say is «alimony»?"

"Not only. Within a month I want to receive two million eight hundred thousand brangs, or I'll demand through the court's five million six hundred thousand ones. And since the court is a scandal, and commerce only succeeds in silence, it makes more sense for Terrent to pay."

The lawyer all tensed up, his face became predatory.

"Why did you decide that Mr. Terrent would pay you?"

"Because something always belongs to children in big business, and I'm my father's only heir. And if he was alive or had other children, you wouldn't be sitting here."

"And you don't care about your father's death?" The lawyer didn't particularly diligently portray indignation.

"My father left me before I was born," I reminded him. "But we don't live in the Middle Ages, and bastards have equal rights with marriage-children."