Kostya: A Dark Mafia Romance (Zinon Bratva) by Nicole Fox (open ebook .TXT) 📗

brought around. Had it taken from storage and brought here because he planned this. It’s what he wants.

As Lila slides behind the wheel and I fasten my seat belt then wipe my eyes, Lila guns the engine and speeds around the circle drive to the gate.

I tell her all of it, everything that’s happened with Kostya since the moment he first hired me. The infatuation that blossomed into obsession, the offer, Tiana, the letters and Mom’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea to blackmail a mob boss. I leave out only the most sordid details—the interrogation in the guesthouse, the firefight at the Baltzley. Oh, and the sex. That I choose to keep to myself.

When I’m finished, she glances over.

“Your boss is an asshole.” An asshole I slept with, but I don’t tell her that. Couldn’t have if I wanted to, because she isn’t finished, and like our mother, she’s impossible to stop once she’s on a roll. “And what’s with that whole Russian accent thing? The whole ride from the airport he didn’t sound one bit like Baryshnikov, but then we get back to the house and all of a sudden he’s one Mamushka away from the motherland.” She shakes her head. “It’s like he wants you to forget he’s supposed to be Mr. Big and Scary until he needs you to remember it.” She shoots me the infamous Lowe woman look—one cocked eyebrow, nostrils flaring, compressed lips.

I point to the road. This car is the only possession I have that I own outright. I’d like to keep it is unscarred as I can.

“I know. He’s a jackass.”

“That’s right.” She nods and makes a sharp left onto Sepulveda. At least I don’t have to tell her to go to Mom’s. Not like we have anywhere else to go, anyway. “And I know right now it doesn’t seem like it, but there are good men out there.” Her smile lights up her entire face. “Kostya Zinon isn’t one of them.”

For all I know, he has some super-secret recording device in my car, so talking smack might not be in my best interest, but it’s the only thing that’s going to satisfy Lila. I want to think of something awful to say, but when I sit back and close my eyes, all I can see is his face, his anger, his hate. My stomach churns again. It hasn’t settled in days.

I clutch the door handle because I can’t reach into my chest and stop my heart from aching. “Did he talk to you at all?” I’ve reverted to a lovesick teenager desperate to know if my crush has mentioned me.

She gives me a new version of the look—she’s added a sigh and twisted her lips to the side. “No. And you should be strong enough to tell him to go fuck himself if he can’t see how you feel about him and trust in it enough to know our mother acted alone.” I sniff back another bout of tears because she’s right and she glances over again. “He isn’t exactly a Chatty Cathy, you know.”

God love her for trying. But we’re close to Mom’s and I need to know what we’re walking into. The elephant riding shotgun needs to be addressed.

“Does Mom know you’re here?”

Honestly, Lila could’ve avoided the trip if she’d only made a phone call once in a while. I know it, she knows it, Mom knows it. She shakes her head because of course, if she couldn’t call to say hello, why would she call to say she’s being hauled home for a mandatory visit by an angry Russian who may or may not have listed the entire family on some kill list he’s about to distribute to his army of strapped-up goons?

My imagination is rolling through the stereotypes I never would’ve thought to associate with Kostya until now.

“Not yet.” She stares ahead, not even taking a side-eye glance at me. “I wasn’t going to come back at all.”

Gee, that’s heartwarming. Missed you too, sis. “Then why did you?” I’m not petulant as much as curious.

“Because your boyfriend is persuasive.” I don’t correct her on the title, because she’s back in her own world where the truth of the details doesn’t matter. She’s protecting her secrets, selfish to the core because life is a little tougher than she wants it to be. “He told me Mom’s driving you crazy. That she’s worse than ever. Although I don’t really know how you’d tell the difference.”

How dare she talk about Mom like that? Running out on us took away Lila’s right to throw stones a long time ago. “Can you blame her, Lila? We didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”

“If I stayed here, I would have died, Char. I was dying.” She’s a one-string banjo plinking out the same old tune. Poor old Lila. Woe is she.

And maybe because I’m hurting and I need a release, or maybe because it’s just time to air this family shit out, I shoot her a glare and snap, “Life is always about you. The Lila Lowe Show, twenty-four seven, three-sixty-five. Honestly, sis, I’m sick of it.” I was sick of it even before she left. The time since then hasn’t helped much. “Every day you were gone, she elevated your pedestal another couple inches and I had to listen to it. Every fabulous detail of your fabulous life, reimagined and retold for—well, I don’t know for whose benefit, but it sure as hell wasn’t for mine.”

“Nobody made you stay!”

I don’t miss the venom she injects into her tone.

“Really? Who the hell was going to take care of her?” I’m not sure, if she doesn’t have someone doing it for her, that my mother can even write a check.

“Well, maybe if you didn’t baby her, she would finally get up and take care of herself.” She jerks the wheel into a parking lot a couple blocks from Mom’s and I pitch forward when she slams her foot on my brakes. “No