Chapter 8
ZORA
Bogdan's eating an apple when I walk into Makar's kitchen, leaning against the counter with his feet crossed at the ankles. He looks me up and down and takes another bite.
"She's alive," he says with his mouth full.
"Yeah…" Yefim adds from the table without looking up from his laptop. "Three nights out this month already. Must be a record."
"Shut up." Their teasing is almost as bad as their micromanagement.
"I'm happy for you." Yefim glances up, and his expression is completely flat. "Truly."
Makar comes in from the hallway carrying his coffee and pulls a chair out for me with his foot, nodding at it as he says, "Sit down. We've got things to talk about."
"Can I at least get coffee first?" Being the only woman in this family is rough sometimes.
They think they can boss me around and make decisions for me.
It was nice to be with Kazimir for dinner last night.
He was a real gentleman and never got overly dominant with me except during sex, which was a huge turn on.
"Pour your own." He sits and takes a sip. "You know where everything is."
I pour myself a cup from the pot on the counter and Bogdan watches me while he chews, this half-grin on his face that I've been putting up with since I was twelve years old and he figured out that annoying me was his favorite hobby.
I scowl at him and add some cream and sugar.
The coffee will go down nicely after so much vodka and sex, but what I could really use are a few Tylenols.
"You look tired, little sister."
"And you look like you slept in those clothes." Bogdan scowls at me as I sit down across from Makar and wrap both hands around the mug. "Can we get this over with?"
Makar sets his mug down and flicks a glance at Bogdan then relaxes in his seat and turns his focus on me. "So, tell us what happened… You fucked him?"
The nerve. I roll my eyes and take a few steamy sips from my coffee in an attempt to calm myself before I answer.
I hate that my personal life is on display for them, and I hate that they feel the need to know what I do in private.
It shouldn't matter how I accomplish the task if the task gets done.
So I ignore his rude comment and stick to the important parts.
"He left his phone on the nightstand when he went to the bathroom.
I had maybe ninety seconds but I managed to clone his cell phone to mine…
" I'm sort of disappointed that my job is done.
I like Kazimir. It wasn't horrible hanging out with him, and my God, the things he did to my body.
I was so drunk, I can't remember if we had sex three or four times, or maybe it was one long session that never ended.
Bogdan's mouth twitches at the corner. "And he didn't notice."
"He came back to bed and fell asleep with his arm around me. He didn't notice a thing."
"That's my girl." Bogdan unfolds his arms and walks over to the table where we sit. "Yefim, where are we with the data?"
Yefim pulls the laptop toward him and angles the screen so everyone can see.
"The clone captured everything on the device at the time of copy.
Messages, call history, contacts, photos, app data.
Problem is it's all locked behind a six-digit passcode and biometric encryption.
We can see the architecture but we can't read any of it until Grisha gets through the security layer.
Then we can access the user interface and make our phones look like they're his. "
"How long will that take?" I ask. Part of me hopes it's over with fast so I can put away the guilt I’m feeling for needing to hurt a good man.
Another part of me secretly wishes it would fail so I can see him again.
I'm not sure how I'd manage the guilt that is eating me alive every time I talk to Alisa, but it'd be worth it if he can make my toes curl like that again.
"A week, maybe less. Grisha's good."
"Good." I take too large of a sip of coffee and it's too hot and burns the roof of my mouth. "So you have what you need. Grisha cracks the passcode, you've got access to his entire phone, and I can step back."
Bogdan chuckles and sets his apple core on the table as he leans over Yefim's computer and his eyes pore over the screen.
"You can't step back," Makar says.
"Why not?" I glance up at Bogdan hogging my personal space and push him, so he straightens and backs away. A bubble of ambivalence swells in my chest.
"Because a phone clone gives us his texts and his call log and his contact list, and that's useful, but it's useless without context.
" He wraps both hands around his mug. "If we see a text that says Friday, eight o'clock, same place, we need to know what that means.
What place? What's happening at eight? Who's involved?
The phone gives us data. You give us the key to reading it. "
"So what, I'm supposed to keep seeing him forever?
" My throat constricts as I realize what they're telling me.
Not only do I get to see Kazimir more, but they are encouraging it.
The thought feels like a snare. I'm not supposed to be excited about this.
It's a job and nothing more. Besides, he's such a good man and I know what I'm doing to him will hurt him.
"You're supposed to keep seeing him until we have enough to move." Makar lifts an eyebrow at me. "Did you think this was a one and done? You have to get in his head and know where he'll be and why, and you need to know where their fights are hosted and who's there…"
The guilt starts to snake its way around my chest, constricting until it's hard to breathe.
What will I tell Alisa about this? The more times I see him, the smoother she will think this is going, and how will I manage to really sell a break up?
"I did the job you wanted me to do," I grumble, not relishing the yoyo of emotion I know I'm about to have to live with for much longer than I wanted.
"The job is what we say it is." Bogdan pushes my shoulder then grabs his apple core and walks away. "You knew that going in."
Being the oldest, he thinks he has the most authority over me, and somehow, I've let him think that long enough that when I try to assert myself, he gets super pissy.
All I can do is sulk and wonder if all of this is even worth it.
I have such high hopes of running my own ring, but I know what'll happen. They'll just micromanage that too.
"He trusts you," Yefim says, closing his laptop.
If any of them feels my pain it's him, and he always tries to help me understand rather than just bossing me.
"That's not easy to build and it's impossible to rebuild if you break it.
If you pull away now, he'll wonder why, and if he starts wondering he'll start looking, and if he starts looking, we lose everything. "
"I know how trust works, Yefim." Knowing he honestly cares about me doesn't make it easier to listen to him.
"Then you know why you can't walk away from this yet."
I suck in a breath and rub my burnt tongue against the roof of my mouth while my head thumps. If the alcohol didn't give me this headache, their annoying voices would've.
"Fine," I say. "But if I'm getting sucked into this, then I want to be the one calling the shots. You're not the ones putting your necks on the line. If he suspects me, he could snap my neck."
Makar glowers but he nods at me. "Grisha can set the clone up as a mirror through your phone. Everything that passes through Kazimir's device gets pushed to yours in real time. He'll never see it."
"When?"
"Give me your phone now. You'll have it back by morning."
"And what do I tell Kazimir if he calls me and I don't pick up?" My head hurts too badly to care about this anymore. I want to go home and sleep it off.
"Tell him your phone died." Makar shrugs. "Tell him whatever you want. You're good at that."
His attitude is so negative toward me, I wonder if he even cares that he's putting his own sister at risk.
I push back from the table and stand. Bogdan watches me go with a nasty expression on his face.
All I want right now is to be out of this kitchen and away from these idiots.
They've never once asked me how I feel about any of this.
Yefim walks me to the door and stops me with a hand on my arm. "You're doing the right thing," he says quietly, like he doesn't want the other two to hear him. He's trying, I'll give him that, but I'm still not feeling the best about this.
"I gotta go," I grumble.
I should've known better than to plan breakfast with Alisa this early in the morning after a night that wild, but she insisted on hearing the replay of every detail of my night.
So I head across town to the little coffee shop we love to meet up at and park a block away.
She's waiting at a booth when I struggle in wishing I'd have gotten that Tylenol from Makar's place before I left.
"You're late," she says as I sit down.
"Family stuff."
"Ugh. Brothers?"
"Always." I pick up the menu and open it. "Did you order?"
"I was waiting for you because I'm a good friend and also because I want to hear about Kazimir before I can even think about food.
" She folds her arms over the table and leans in.
"Tell me everything." She looks giddy, and I want to find energy inside myself to feel giddy with her, but the annoyance I feel toward my brothers has morphed into that swarm of guilt now.
"He's good, Alisa." I try to say it convincingly, and she doesn't seem to notice that I'm feeling off.
"Good how?"
"Good in every way." I close the menu because I'm not going to be able to focus on it.
"My God," I say, finding a real smile. "He was so focused on me and listened to every word I said, and then the sex…
" I let an ungodly groan rumble up as my eyes roll back in my head, demonstrating just how badly I want that man again.
Remembering his hands on my body makes me forget why I feel guilty or frustrated.
"Stop it," she hisses.
"I'm serious."
"You're falling for him," Alisa says, folding open her menu and grinning at me over it. "God, you're glowing."
"I'm not." I cover my cheeks and feel them burning under my fingers.
"You are. Your whole face changes when you talk about him. You get this look—”
"What look?"
"You know… You look all starry-eyed and dreamy." She reaches across the table and takes my hand. "He sounds incredible. And you deserve incredible, Zora. I mean that."
I wish I could tell her everything, but I know her response would be disappointment in me. I manage to pull my eyes from her and drop them to my menu so hopefully, she won’t see my shame as I say, "Thank you," and squeeze her hand.
"Don't let this one go." She squeezes back. "Men like him don't show up twice."
Every time she smiles at me, I feel the distance between who she sees and who I actually am stretch a little wider.
The chasm is all my fault, slowly constructing a divide I know may be something she could never forgive me for.
And I'm doing it for selfish reasons, which now don't feel so convincingly necessary as they did a few months ago when this all started.