Twilight Sins (Kulikov Bratva Book 1)

Don’t hate me, but…

I may or may not have set you up on a surprise blind date.

I reread Kayla’s text message half a dozen times while steam slowly starts to pour out of my ears.

Are there any three words in the English language worse than “surprise blind date”? I mean, well, yeah, I can think of a few.

Malignant toe fungus.

Aggressive tax audit.

Husband wants anal.

But “surprise blind date” is no lower than fourth. At worst.

I could strangle her. Kayla Stevenson has been my best friend since we were both in diapers, but right now, I wouldn’t even think twice about pushing her off a cliff.

If she’d shown up here in person like she promised me she was gonna tonight, I really might have done it. When she called, I was just minding my own business, fusing into my sofa while watching some horrendous reality TV show that shall remain nameless. She said she and a few of our mutual friends were meeting up for drinks at this cool bar attached to a Russian restaurant downtown. I tried to get out of it, but she insisted that I get my ass into a little black dress and come have fun for once in my life.

“You’re not quite a couch potato yet, but you’re definitely, like, a couch French fry at this point,” she insisted.

“You’re being dramatic. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, Luna! You’re lonely.”

I rolled my eyes even as I flushed with embarrassment. She wasn’t exactly wrong, per se. But I’m the last person on Earth who’s gonna admit that.

“I’d rather be lonely than be Mrs. Grandma’s Boy,” I retorted.

“Now, who’s being dramatic?” Kayla fired back. “So I set you up on one bad date. Sue me.”

“I might! The dude shared a bed with his grandmother, Kay. He was thirty-three! Who does that?”

“I’ll admit it was a little… unusual. But every family is different, y’know?”

“I most definitely do not know.” I let loose a weary sigh. Work had kicked my butt this week, but I wasn’t quite ready for bed. I was stuck in that in-between fugue state of being too tired to do productive stuff like fold laundry or meal prep, but too wired to call it bedtime. “Ugh. What time are you guys meeting up again?”

She’d squealed in delight and, one very reluctant hour later, I found myself outside of The White Bear, a cool-looking cocktail spot in WeHo. I saw a glowing white neon sign in the shape of a huge bear, a very intimidating bouncer dressed in all-black standing guard outside the red leather door…

But no Kayla.

As if she was spying on me, that’s precisely when the texts landed. Don’t hate me, but…

I press Kayla’s contact so hard I’m worried for a moment that I might’ve cracked the screen of my phone. I tap the toe of my boot on the sidewalk curb rapid-fire while the line rings and rings. As soon as she picks up, I don’t wait for her to start talking.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me, Kay.”

I can practically hear the wince in her voice. “I specifically requested that you not be mad.”

“And I specifically requested that you not do this anymore! You’re giving me an ulcer.”

“Relax, babe,” she crooned. “Everything is going to be fine. For all you know, your Prince Charming is waiting inside with a bouquet of roses, ready to sweep you off your feet.”

“Don’t try to sweet-talk your way out of this. I’m pissed. I mean it.”

I hear a rustle of clothing and the clunk of feet as Kayla gets up to walk around her apartment. She’s always been a pacer when she talks on the phone. Between that and the way she clomps around the house with heavy feet like Shrek, she nearly drove me crazy during the three years we lived together post-college. When I first met Benjy, he thought my roommate was a literal giant until he and Kayla finally met and he realized she was just a five-foot-one blond thing with an inexplicably loud stride.

Benjy. I don’t even like thinking his name in my head, much less saying it out loud. It’s been two years since I last saw him. If we never crossed paths again, it would still be too soon.

But the scars he left on me are here, living rent-free in my head—not unlike he did, actually. He was a leech in every way that mattered. Physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually. Sometimes, I still wake up in the middle of the night and reach out just to make sure he’s not on the other side of the bed.

Kayla is still talking, though I haven’t been listening. “… I’m saying is that if you don’t open yourself up to love, how will it find you? There are plenty of fish in the sea, but you’ll never catch one if you don’t throw out a⁠—”

“First of all,” I interrupt, “you hate fish. Do you not remember when I tried to take you out to sushi for your twenty-first birthday?”

Her shudder is audible. “Don’t remind me. I still taste that spicy tuna roll in my nightmares.”

“You are once again being the dramatic one. But anyway, second of all, when did ‘love’ enter the equation? This is a blind date.”

“So you’re gonna do it?” she asks eagerly.

“Hold your horses. We’re still discussing how I’m mad at you.”

“As if it’d be such a terrible thing for you to get laid. When was the last time you got laid, Loon? Hm? Do you even know? Are there cobwebs between your thighs?”

I wrinkle up my nose and peek over at the bar bouncer to make sure he’s not listening in. “It’s been… a while.”

“If you tell me that Jason the Jerkoff was your last time, I’m literally going to scream.”

“Well…”

I hold the phone away from my ear as Kayla makes good on her promise to scream. When she finally runs out of breath, I listen in again with a sigh. “I know you think I’m pathetic, but⁠—”

“I do not think you’re pathetic,” she insists firmly. “I just want you to be happy, Luna McCarthy. I want you to be so happy you can’t stand it. Because you’re special—to me, to everyone who knows you. And it’s just been… It’s just been a long time since I’ve seen a light in your eyes. The Spawn of Satan snuffed that out. I just want to see it again.”

I release a long exhale I didn’t realize I was holding in. “A blind date won’t fix me,” I whisper. “I’m starting to worry that nothing will.”

“Don’t say that. I love you. It’s gonna be fine. You just have to… close your eyes and jump, I guess. That’s what this is. Jumping.”

I eye the sign over the bar. “Jumping right into the bear’s mouth, apparently.”

“It could be good. Don’t rule it out.”

Once again, as frustrating as Kayla is in that way that only best friends and sisters can be, she isn’t wrong. “Ruling stuff out” is why I am lonely. It’s why I can’t fall asleep at night, why I spend way too long looking at the popcorn ceiling of my darkened bedroom like there will be answers to my future there if I just squint hard enough. I’ve been hibernating from the world for so long now, trying to heal.

But wounds just fester in the darkness.

They need light to heal.

“What does this guy look like?” I ask.

Kayla gasps in delighted surprise. “Tall, dark, and handsome. You can’t miss him. He should be waiting for you in the restaurant next to the bar. His name is Sergey.”

Scowling, I march over to the window and peer through, doing my best to stay out of the line of sight in case anyone inside is glancing out. No need to come off like an uber-creep before the date has even begun.

The restaurant is full of happy couples, happy families, happy servers and busboys and hostesses and chefs. Everyone has dazzling, genuine smiles.

Except for one man.

The only person without a dinner companion isn’t smiling at all. It’s easy to see that he’s huge, even though he’s seated in the far corner. His shoulders are almost as broad as the booth itself and the light reflects off hair that’s black and silky and effortlessly tousled.

His scowl is what grabs my attention, though. It pulls all the sharp lines of his face into relief. Planes of shadow mixing with the angles caught in the candles’ glow. He’s holding his jaw tight and, at first, I think he looks furious. But then I blink and look a little closer and I realize there’s more to it.

There’s melancholy there. Something so sad that it reaches out and pokes at the bruised parts of my own heart.

As I look, he glances down and checks the time on a shining silver watch. Then, as if he can feel me looking at him, he glances right up and into my eyes.

My lips part automatically. It’s crazy to think he can see me—I’m on the other side of dark glass, across a crowded restaurant, tucked halfway into the shadows. There’s no way in hell he’s actually making eye contact.

… Right?

But it sure feels that way. That sense of shared melancholy doubles and triples in an instant. My breath catches in my throat. People always make silly comments about “time standing still,” but that’s how this feels. As if every other patron inside the restaurant, every pedestrian walking past me on the sidewalk—they all screech to a halt and let this moment play out.

I wrench my eyes away before anything else weird can happen. Even still, a full-body shiver ripples through me, a shiver that has nothing to do with the outside temperature.

“You still there?” says a tinny voice in my ear.

I realize with a jolt that I’m still on the phone with Kayla. “Yeah,” I mumble. “Sorry. I just saw…”

“Saw what?”

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I think I—I’m gonna—oh, for God’s sake, I’m going into the restaurant. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

I press End Call just as Kayla is halfway through reminding me that I’m “the moon to her stars,” the same thing she always says whenever we hang up the phone.

I tuck it back in my purse. I square my shoulders. I fix my hair in the reflection in the window and take one last deep breath.

Then I push through the door.