Page 85 of Twilight Sins
Guilt gnaws at my stomach, but I shove it down. I’m lying to Yakov, yes. But it’s just so I can talk to my friend. He’d understand that… right?
“Now that that’s settled,” Kayla says, “I have a metric fuckton of stuff to tell you.”
“About what? Is everyone okay?”
“Everyone out here is fine. It’s you we’re worried about.”
I freeze. “Who is ‘we’? No one can know what’s going on, Kayla. You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
She sighs. “No, I haven’t. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t asking questions. I know you fancy yourself a spare tire, but the rest of us think you are vital to the group.”
I snort. “It’s called ‘third-wheeling.’ I’m not a spare tire.”
“That’s not the point!” she snaps, mostly at herself. “I have stuff to tell you, Loon. About Yakov.”
Instinctively, I look towards the door. As if the sound of his name will summon him. He’s powerful, but I don’t think he’s that powerful.
Still, I turn away from the door and lower my voice. “What do you mean? You don’t even know him.”
“I don’t need to know him. I just need to type his name in a search bar. Luna, do you have any idea who you are living with?”
The question pokes at some tender part of me that knows there are still way more questions than answers where Yakov is concerned. A part of me that worries, deep down, I’ll never truly know him. Not in the ways I want to.
I wave that dark cloud away. “Of course I do, Kayla. Yakov has been honest with me.”
“Okay. Cool. Great. So you are super chill living with a man who is rumored to have killed the leader of a rival crime family, then? That feels super normal and not at all terrifying to you?”
Yakov told me he got revenge for his father’s murder. I asked him what that meant, but I already knew. How else do you seek revenge? He could take the person responsible to court and sit through a lengthy trial, but Yakov doesn’t strike me as that type. He takes matters into his own hands.
Still, hearing Kayla say it so plainly sends a shiver down my spine.
“Luna?” Kayla calls. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah. Yes, I’m here. Sorry.”
“So?” she snaps. “Did you know that?”
“I knew… something like that,” I admit. “Yes. I told you, Yakov has been honest with me.”
She barks out a laugh. “Well, you’re the only one. He also has a massive list of suspected crimes: murder, money laundering, racketeering—I don’t even know what that last one means, but it doesn’t sound good.”
I pull my knees to my chest. “I hear you, Kayla. I get it. It sounds scary, but?—”
“But what? Are you defending this? You don’t even like to jaywalk.”
“I know, but?—”
“You told me it was stealing when I tried to tip a waitress fifteen percent instead of twenty,” she continues. “When I got those edibles from John at work, you wrapped them in a tissue, shoved them in your sunglasses case, and smuggled them home in your purse. That was after weed was legalized.”
“I get it!” I shout. I blow out a long breath and lower my voice. “I get it, okay? I walk the straight and narrow. I’m a boring rule follower and you can’t believe I’d ever get into anything exciting. I hear you.”
“Luna,” Kayla breathes, “I do not think you’re boring. You are, however, my best friend in the world. Which is why I’m worried that you are into something very messy.”
I’ve had that same thought too many times to count over the last couple weeks. Can I really blame Kayla for having it, too?
“Yakov is tight-lipped about some of this information because he thinks knowing about it could put me in even more danger,” I admit. “That means it’s also dangerous for you to know. I would cool it with the Google searches if I were you.”
“No, you wouldn’t!” she laughs. “If our roles were reversed, you’d have an entire dissertation written on the guy by now. A Netflix documentary would be in the works to figure out if he was guilty or not. You would be doing everything imaginable to make sure I was safe and I’m going to do the exact same for you.”