Twilight Sins (Kulikov Bratva Book 1)

“Things would have been easier if we never met,” I say.

Luna catches her breath.

Fuck, I want to touch her. I’m smashing her heart to rubble, I know that, but I still want to see her lips part as she inhales. I want to feel her pulse pound against the pad of my thumb.

Love is loss. But if I have to lose her, I want to be there to witness every second of the destruction.

Maybe I’ll go back to the house tonight. One more night together. That’s what we need. A night to say goodbye.

I’m about to tell her exactly that when my phone falls out of my hands.

I lunge for it. But it isn’t falling. Someone took it.

“Enough of that,” Nik snaps. The screen is black now.

I frown. “You hung up on her.”

He tilts his head to one side. “Have you been drinking since I left you at dinner?”

That was today? I’ve lost track of time. The hours since I walked away from Luna in the kitchen feel like days.

She believed every word I said. Her eyes were glassy with tears. I could see her heart breaking while I shoved her away.

“She looks so pretty when she cries,” I murmur to no one in particular.

“You are in so fucking deep.”

“Give me my phone.” I swipe for his hand, but miss. Instead, I knock over a drink and beer sloshes across the bar.

The man a few stools over stands up, shaking spilled beer off of his pants onto the floor. “Get the fuck out of here, asshole. You’re wasted.”

“I could still waste you,” I growl.

“Come and fuckin’ try.”

Nik waves the other guy off. “Stand down, man. You don’t want to do this.”

“I’ll take both of you douche bags.” The man stands up, looking from me to Nik. “I’m not scared of a few pretty boys who can’t handle their liquor. I’ll teach you how to⁠—”

I don’t find out what he wants to teach me because my fist slams into his jaw.

Nik curses somewhere behind me, but I’m focused on the stumbling, groaning mudak in front of me. “You think you can hurt me? Fucking prove it.”

The man’s nostrils are flared. He’s shorter than I am, but he’s broad. Built like a bull. For a second, I imagine horns on his head.

Then he charges at me, his shoulder slamming hard into my sternum. He throws me back on a table and I don’t try to get up. I just lie there while he throws punch after punch into my torso.

I can’t feel anything. My body is numb. Everything is numb.

“Yakov!” Nik yells. “What the fuck are you doing? Fight!”

“Not so loud now, are you, you son of a bitch?” the man growls.

He thinks he’s winning. He thinks this is all I’ve got.

I let him land one more punch before I sit up and grab his fist. I twist his arm back and shove him against the bar.

“You can’t hurt me.” My knuckles split against his eye socket and his nose. He tries to dodge, but even drunk, I’m faster than he is.

I hit him again and again until he’s moaning, dripping blood onto the bar top.

Nik drags me back. “He’s had enough, Yakov.”

“Nik!” the bartender yells. “Get him out of here!”

Nik slaps cash down on the bar and leads me to the door. I let him.

“Was that worth it?” Nikandr spits in disgust as he dumps me into his backseat. “Do you feel better?”

Blood drips down my chin from the split in my lip. My right eye is already swelling closed.

I shake my head. “I don’t feel anything anymore.”

I’m not in my bed.

I know because I can’t hear the soft sound of Luna’s breathing. Also because I hear cabinets banging around and a kettle hissing.

I roll over, leather squealing underneath my clammy skin.

“You got blood on my carpet,” Nik accuses.

I wince. “Stop fucking shouting.”

He laughs. “I’m not. You can thank the gallon of vodka you drank. I didn’t think you had a tolerance level, but you found it last night.”

“That explains the headache.” Each word out of my mouth feels like a knife to the brain.

“And the blood on my carpet. Don’t worry: I accept cash or credit.”

I sit up and Nik’s penthouse swims around me. I have to blink a few times before the ground levels out.

I can’t remember the last time I was this hungover. Maybe the night after my twenty-first birthday. Maybe the night after Otets died. Maybe never.

Nik is making a pourover. The smell of coffee brewing turns my stomach, but I also need it. Coffee, some bread, maybe a lobotomy.

“You could’ve taken me home. Then I would have bled on my own carpet.”

“You really don’t remember shit,” he snaps. “I tried to take you home and you threatened me within an inch of my life to bring you here instead.”

“I hate sleeping on leather.” I unstick my legs from the couch and stand up. My legs feel like sandbags, but the dizziness is gone. I pick my way to the counter and drop down on a barstool.

“I told you exactly that, but you didn’t care. You didn’t want to go home.” Nik slides a plate of dry toast towards me. “You actually wanted to go to another bar, but I wasn’t interested in paying more hapless losers to forget the sight of Yakov Kulikov drooling into his beer or stirring up stupid fights.”

“That makes sense.” I flex my hand, cuts opening up on the middle three knuckles. “Did I win?”

“Don’t you always?” Nik smirks. “You let the guy toss you around for a second. I never took you for a masochist, but you looked like you enjoyed it.”

You think you can hurt me? Fucking prove it.

The memory feels hazy, like a dream. Every time I try to grab hold of it, it slips a little further away. But I remember talking to Luna. The way she sounded on the phone… the way she looked in the kitchen before I left… That’s not hazy at all. I remember it in high definition.

I wanted to kick my own ass. Since that wasn’t possible, I guess I found someone to do it for me.

“I had some energy to burn,” I say instead.

Nik slides a mug of coffee over to me. He doesn’t look convinced. “‘Energy.’ Sure. Whatever you want to call it.”

“How did you know where I was anyway?”

“The owner of the bar works out at my gym. We go way back. He recognized you and thought you were in a bad way. He was afraid to cut you off himself, though.”

“He couldn’t have.”

“Hence why he didn’t try.” Nik drags a hand down his jaw. “When I got there, you were on the phone with Luna. You looked… It didn’t seem like things were going well. Do you remember any of that?”

More than I want to.

“There wasn’t anything to remember. We have nothing to talk about.”

He’s quiet for a moment as he stares into the depths of his coffee. When he raises his eyes to meet mine, there’s a kind of liquid sadness in them. “Did you know you still talk in your sleep when you’re drunk?” Nik asks. “It’s wild. You have full conversations with yourself. For being unconscious, your enunciation isn’t half-bad, either.”

Blyat’. I haven’t shared a room with anyone in years and I haven’t been drunk in even longer. I can’t risk being hammered if something goes wrong. The only reason I could afford to last night is because I doubled the guards at the house in my absence.

“Don’t you want to know what you said?” Nik continues.

There’s no need. I think I already know.

But it doesn’t matter what I want. What I need is to stay focused on defending the Bratva and my family. I can’t afford distractions.

I finish the last of my coffee. “What I want is to take a shower and figure out how to turn the tables on Akim Gustev. Anything else, I don’t want to fucking hear about it.”

Nik sighs. “You don’t have to shut her out to⁠—”

“Stay focused and do your fucking job or I’ll find another second.”

Nik’s jaw clenches. Then he nods once. Briefly. Sadly. “You can use my shower, but don’t touch the beard oil. It’s expensive.”