Twilight Sins: Chapter 23

“Ever heard of a little thing called ‘sunlight’?” Nikandr squints into my office from the doorway, trying to make me out in the dark. “This is bleak.”

“Headache,” I mutter.

It’s not a lie. Not exactly. Sitting in front of a bright computer screen in a dark room for three hours has my eyes burning.

“Another reason to get out of this room.” Nik walks to the window and separates two of the blinds to peek out. Blinding sunlight slices through my office for a moment before he lets them snap closed again.

They were open earlier. It’s how I saw Hope and Luna talking in the garden. Then I suddenly had the overwhelming urge to go stretch my legs. Weird.

“My work is here.”

“My work, actually,’ Nik corrects. “What’s the point of me looking into Akim’s dealings if you’re going to handle it all yourself?”

“He has suppliers and fronts all over the city. We need to know which of them will crumble under a little pressure in case the Budimir tip doesn’t pan out.”

“I know. That is all information I’m looking into. You have other, more important things going on.”

“What is more important than the Bratva?”

“Oh, nothing big. Just a curvy blonde you’re shacking up with.” He tries and fails to bite back a smile. “The first woman I’ve ever seen you with outside of the dark corners of a club, now that I think about it.”

“The only reason Luna is here is because of Akim. I solve the Akim problem, I get rid of Luna.”

I’ve repeated that line to myself so often that it’s lost all meaning. Saying it out loud hits different.

“Sounds like another reason to take our time with him if you ask me,” he mumbles.

“I didn’t ask you.” I slam my laptop closed. “If Akim is going to start assassinating every woman I go to dinner with, that’s a problem we need to solve immediately.”

“It would be a problem if you went to dinner with women more often. The reason Akim sent someone to take Luna out is because she is the first woman you’ve been on a date with… ever? Is that right?”

“It wasn’t a date. It was a misunderstanding.”

A misunderstanding I jumped into with both feet. Not that I’m going to offer up that information. Nik is reading too much into all of this as it is.

My brother drops his chin and stares at me, clearly unconvinced. It’s the same look our father used to give us when we were kids when he caught us doing something we shouldn’t have done. I always covered for him, but our father never bought it.

“You’re the one who called and told me we were in danger. Should I have left her to die?”

“No,” he says. “But we have safehouses. Plenty of them. You could have put her up in one of those.”

The thought never even crossed my mind. I wanted Luna close to me, so I kept her close. I’m not in the habit of second-guessing my intuition.

“It’s safer here.”

“Obviously,” he huffs. “The compound is the safest place in the damn city. Yet another reason you don’t usually bring people here. Especially people who question you and send you off in the middle of the night to beat up their ex-boyfriends.”

I grit my teeth. “Don’t waste your time following me.”

He grins, pointing to his eyes and ears. “I was doing my job.”

Fuck. I didn’t want Nik to find out about my little rendezvous with Benjy. Mostly because I knew he’d look at me exactly like he is right now.

“And I was doing mine,” I bark. “I was making sure the people under my Bratva’s protection are fully protected.”

“Okay, but if she was anyone else, she wouldn’t be under your protection at all. You would’ve kicked her out of your house the second she started asking questions. Actually, she wouldn’t have been in your house in the first place.”

“Good point.” I jab a finger toward the door. “Goodbye, Nik.”

He ignores my command and leans forward, palms on my desk. “It’s fine if you’re into her. Great, even. It’s good for you to loosen up a bit. But as your eyes and ears, I need to know if this thing between you all is serious.”

“As your pakhan, I don’t need to explain shit to you.”

“I have someone watching her apartment, but if you two are an item, I need to arrange way more protection. If she’s your woman, every major player in the city will have a target on her back. She needs to be guarded like a queen.”

The image of Luna in a crown—only a crown—doesn’t do a damn thing to clear my head.

“She’s not my fucking anything,” I hiss. “If you spent as much time following up on leads about Akim as you do following me around the city, we’d have the Gustev Bratva under our thumb by now.”

Hurt flashes across my brother’s face before he holds up his hands. “Yeah. Fine. If you’ve left me anything to do, I’ll get right to it, boss.”

“Boss” should be a sign of respect, but I know Nik better than that. I just reminded him of his place in the hierarchy and he’s not loving it.

Join the club. He and Luna would have a lot to talk about. Too bad I have no plans to leave them alone in the same room together anytime soon.

Nik leaves with his tail between his legs and a thumb drive of information I’ve been piecing together. It’s a peace offering that ruins my plans to stay in my office for the rest of the afternoon. With nothing else to do, I wander into the kitchen.

It’s after lunch, but I never even had breakfast. I kick on the espresso maker and turn around to find Luna standing just behind me.

She’s in a pair of worn jeans and a cropped pink tee. My eyes flash to the strip of tanned skin visible just above her waistband. Then I sidestep her and reach for a mug. “If you’re trying to get me back for scaring you earlier, you’ll have to try harder than that.”

“I’d never waste my energy. You probably have a tracker hidden on me somewhere. I bet it buzzed and let you know I was coming.”

“You find your way into whatever room I’m in. No tracker necessary.”

“Some of us aren’t reclusive creatures with no need for human contact.” She sees the mug in my hand and goes a bit starry-eyed. “Or coffee. That’s why I’m here, anyway. For coffee.”

I don’t believe her for a second. She’s bored out of her mind. Bored enough that she is willing to talk to me even though I know she’s still mad about earlier.

I gave her my mom’s old garden patch, but Luna would rather have answers. The longer she sticks around, the more I wish I could tell her. But I won’t put her at risk. When she leaves my world behind, I want it to be a clean break. I want her to be safe.

I grab a second mug. “What’s your poison?”

“No poison at all, to be clear. I only say that since I’m sure you have a cabinet of actual poison tucked away somewhere,” she says. “But a cappuccino is fine.”

“Is a cappuccino what you want?”

“I just said it’s fine.”

I turn to face her. “That wasn’t my question.”

She rolls her eyes. “What I want is a white mocha with two shots of espresso and caramel sauce, but since this mansion was built without a coffee shop inside—huge oversight, by the way—a cappuccino will be fine.”

I turn back to the machine. “That sounds disgusting.”

“That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d be judgy. But it’s not like your plain black shot of espresso is a culinary masterpiece.”

“You don’t know how I take my coffee.”

She laughs. “Yes, I do. All you manly men are the same. Why actually enjoy your first beverage of the day when you could instead drink battery acid and put a little hair on your bare chest?” Her cheeks heat up and she glances away. “Anyway. White mochas are the shit.”

She waits in silence until I swirl a healthy dollop of whipped cream on top of Luna’s mug.

“What’s that?”

I turn around, her white mocha in my hand. “The shit, apparently.”

“That’s a white mocha.”

“With whipped cream and caramel sauce.” I take a drink, swirling the sugary mess around my tongue. “I think you meant, ‘It tastes like shit.’”

I slide the mug across the island to her, but she doesn’t grab it. She’s too busy staring at me, open-mouthed. “How did you do that?”

“My staff has a wide range of coffee preferences. The coffee cabinet stays well stocked.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain how you even know what this drink is. Or how to make it.”

As the plain black espresso shot I plan to drink brews, I lean against the counter and cross my arms. “You don’t know as much about me as you think, solnyshka.”

She finally takes a drink, cursing softly under her breath. “Oh, fuck me.”

“Is that your version of a five-star review?”

“It’s me realizing I don’t know anything about you. At all.”

Just the way I like it.

Usually.

But the way Luna is frowning down at the countertop makes me second-guess that approach.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” she blurts. Her cheeks flush. “I’m just a little desperate for something to think about. My brain isn’t good at long stretches of down time.”

“You were in the library for five hours straight the other day.”

She arches a brow. “So much for not having a tracker on me.”

“I don’t need a tracker. I walked by the library and you were so into your book that you didn’t even notice.”

I still remember how she looked. Her legs were curled underneath her and her hair tumbled over her shoulder like a sheet. It was strange how normal it felt to see her there.

“Oh.” She frowns. “You should have said something.”

“I was busy.”

Busy with anything other than snatching the book out of her hands and fucking her senseless against the shelves.

Her frown deepens. “Must be nice. I’d love to be busy.”

“Most people would love to kick back in a mansion for a few days.”

“Then they can swap places with me,” she snaps. Instantly, she chews on her lower lip. “I just… Relaxing isn’t great for my anxiety. I like to stay busy. It’s why I’ve been working so much overtime since Benjy and I broke up. Being in the office is easier than being at home by myself. It’s too quiet.”

After the Gustev Bratva murdered my father, I didn’t sleep in the mansion for weeks. It didn’t help that my mother whisked off to Moscow with Mariya in tow. The house was dead quiet. I buried my anxiety in a string of women who were all too happy to let me sleep in their bed. They weren’t quite as happy when I was gone first thing in the morning.

“It’s not like Benjy was great company, either,” she shrugs. “But whatever he was shouting about was usually better than the thoughts running through my head. Until it wasn’t.”

Fuck what Nik thinks—I might have to track down Benjy and beat him again. The more I learn about him, the more I realize I should have killed him.

“You deserve better than some abusive asshole for company,” I grit out.

She gives me a tight smile. Thin. It’s nothing like the way her face lights up with a real smile. “If you know any nice guys up for the job, send them my way.”