Twilight Sins (Kulikov Bratva Book 1)

“I am trying to make things better with your brother,” I hiss as Mariya unlocks his office door. “Breaking into his office and snooping isn’t the way. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Mariya pushes the door open and waves me inside. “I’ll tell him I acted alone.”

“And when he finds out that I was with you?”

“Play the pregnancy card. He can’t be mad at you when you’re carrying his baby.”

I think Mariya severely underestimates her brother’s ability to hold a grudge. But I’m curious enough about the world I might be bringing a child into that I step into the cool dark of Yakov’s office.

Mariya slams the door closed and flips on the lights. “So I usually find new and interesting things in the bottom right drawer of the desk or the top drawer of the filing cabinet.”

“‘Usually’?” I echo, eyebrows raised. “You do this often?”

“Only when there’s something I want to know.” She grins. “Which is, admittedly, kinda often.”

“How?”

She holds up the little silver key she used to unlock the door. The smirk on her face looks so much like Yakov’s that a pang of loneliness thrums through my chest. “My mom kept a spare office key hidden between the pages of The Feminine Mystique in the library. The men in my family aren’t super into second wave feminism, I guess.”

“That’s actually pretty smart.”

“Yeah, apparently, she was cool at some point. Fuck knows what happened.”

I can guess what happened. Her husband died.

Yakov’s mom was married to the leader of a Bratva and he was assassinated in front of her and her children. That could mess anyone up.

The realization that I’m dangerously close to being in that same position is not lost on me. But I push the thought aside. I have more than enough to worry about without adding future hypotheticals to the list.

Mariya starts digging through drawers, stopping only to glance up at me. “Are you planning to help?”

“I feel weird about this.”

“Do you want to know what’s happening or not?”

I bite my lower lip. “Yeah, but I… I want Yakov to want to tell me.”

“Keep dreaming,” she snorts. “The men in this family don’t tell us women anything. If we want answers, we have to do the digging ourselves.”

“Aren’t you worried Yakov will find out you were in here and be mad?”

“Yakov expects me to do reckless shit like this. Everyone does. I’m just keeping up with expectations.”

I tentatively open the top drawer of the filing cabinet and flip through a sea of manila folders. “Have you always been reckless?”

“My mom has called me a ‘handful’ since I was a little kid, if that’s what you mean. But she usually said it like it was funny. I kind of felt like she was proud of me for going after what I wanted. I guess I got to be too much for her the last few years,” she says sadly. Before I can say anything, Mariya turns the question around on me. “Are you close with your family?”

“No. My dad was never in the picture and my mom and brother live far away. We don’t talk much.”

“What’s ‘much’?”

“Well, as a super random example, I could literally be kidnapped and impregnated by the leader of a Bratva and my mother would have no idea. So… that’s how often we talk.”

Mariya snorts. “You’re way more fun than I thought you’d be when we first met. As far as sisters-in-law go, I could do a lot worse.”

“Wow!” I exclaim. “That’s a big step up from ‘the bitch your brother is fucking.’ I’m honored.”

“That’s what you get for talking to me when I’m jet-lagged and haven’t had coffee,” she jokes. “Plus, Yakov was being a jerk. I was in a bad mood.”

“Well, as nice as it is that you think of me as family, Yakov and I are not engaged.”

We’re not even talking. Marriage feels firmly off the table right now.

“You’re pregnant with his baby, Loon. Do you really think you’re going to have a choice?”

Goosebumps spread across my arms, but Mariya doesn’t notice. She keeps digging through drawers, oblivious to the new anxiety she just dropped on my already overflowing plate.

Marrying Yakov doesn’t scare me. Maybe it should, but it doesn’t. The thought of him feeling like he has no choice but to marry me, though? Terrifying. The only thing worse than not being with Yakov would be being with him when he’d rather be with someone else.

Mariya slaps a folder on the desk, breaking me out of my dark thoughts. “Here we go!”

She opens the folder and spreads the pages out across the desk. There are overhead satellite images of city streets covered with crisscrossing arrows and hatch marks all over. Scribbled notes fill the margins.

“What is all of this?”

Mariya frowns, turning her head as she twists the maps around. “Clearly, they’re planning something. But I can’t read Yakov’s handwriting. And I have no idea where this is. Is this in the city?”

She sorts through a few more maps until I see something familiar. I snatch one of the maps off the desk and study it. “I know this place.”

“How?”

I point to a large fountain in the shape of a four-leaf clover on the corner. “I remember that fountain. There was one just like it outside of this buffet I used to go to after work.”

“A buffet? No, Luna. Just… no.”

“Don’t be a snob. They had good mac ‘n’ cheese. It was called… ah, shoot, what was it… Henrietta’s!”

Mariya is looking it up on her phone almost as soon as the name is out of my mouth. “Henrietta’s closed down early last year. Oh my gosh, Luna!”

I tense. “What?”

“It says here they closed because of an ebola outbreak at the salad bar. Someone sneezed blood on the Caesar and then, boom, it’s The Walking Dead everywhere you look.”

I smack her arm. “That is not funny.”

She snorts and taps around on her phone some more. “It closed down because buffets are gross and they went bankrupt, but it looks like it’s being reopened as a club. The Rouge Lounge.”

She pulls up an article about the club, mumbling as she reads. I bounce on my toes behind her, trying to read over her shoulder.

“The restaurant was bought and renovated over the last year into a club. This article says it’s going to be ‘the hottest spot in L.A.,’ but they say that about every new club. Oh, the opening night is tonight, actually.”

“So Yakov and Nik are at a club opening?” I ask. “That doesn’t sound like them.”

“Clubbing also doesn’t require detailed maps.” Mariya shakes her head, reading more. Suddenly, she gasps. “Holy shit!”

Part of me expects it to be another prank, but she whips her phone towards me. She taps on the screen, zooming in on a picture of a husky man with ice blonde hair. He’s standing next to a red neon sign that reads ‘The Rouge Lounge.’ “That’s the new owner. Akim Gustev.”

“Do you know him?”

“He’s the son of the man who killed my father,” she grits out. “This article says he’ll be standing outside the front doors of his new club tonight to personally welcome guests.”

I may not have grown up in this world, but even I can put two and two together. The secrecy, the maps, the connection to Akim.

It’s an ambush.

“He wouldn’t,” I breathe.

“The only reason Yakov or Nik would go near Akim is to kill him. There’s no other reason they’d be there tonight.”

“But it’s going to be packed. There will be hundreds of people there!”

Mariya chews on the corner of her mouth. “If anyone can carry out a hit in the middle of a crowded club and get away with it, it’s my brothers. They know what they’re doing.”

Mariya’s confidence in them is sweet, but it does nothing to ease the dread churning in my stomach.

I’m worried about what it would mean for me and the baby if something happened to Yakov. But more than that… I’m worried about Yakov. I don’t want that night in the kitchen to be the last time I ever see him.

I’m trying to get a grip on the panic spiraling inside of me when an alarm beeps on the desk behind Mariya. She spins around to where Yakov’s computer is sitting open. It was locked when we tried it earlier, but now, the screen is filled with a grid of security footage. Shots of the gardens, the front porch, the driveway, and the security shack.

“What’s happening?” I ask.

Mariya bends over the computer. “The alarm is going off. That only happens if someone in the guard shack hits the button.”

“Is it a mistake?”

“It could be, but I’ve never seen it happen. But I don’t see anything on the—” She inhales sharply.

“What?”

Mariya doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe.

I lean around her and see men moving on the screen. They’re walking across the lawn. It looks like Yakov’s guards on patrol.

Then a man in all black pulls a large gun out of his jacket and fires at the guard shack. Each blast of the gun glares bright in the camera’s grayscale night vision mode, but I can still make out the husky man with ice-blonde hair standing behind the shooter.

My legs buckle and I grip the edge of the desk for support. “Is that⁠—”

“I have to call Yakov.” Mariya pulls out her phone and slaps it to her ear. She bounces from one foot to the other, cursing under her breath. “Pick up, Yakov. Pick up, pick up, fucking pick up!”

“Why is he here?” I rasp. “His club is opening. He said in the article he’d be waiting at the doors. He said⁠—”

“I don’t need your voicemail, Yakov. I need you!” Mariya yells into the phone. “Akim Gustev isn’t at The Rouge Lounge like he said. He’s here. At our house. It was a trap!”

For a second, I’m terrified for Yakov and Nik.

Then I see the men in dark coats making their way across the front lawn towards the mansion, guns at the ready. And it hits me.

Yakov and Nik aren’t in a trap.

We are.