Page 16 of Bound By Sin
"How long will that take?" I ask. Part of me hopes it's over with fast so I can put away the guilt I’m feeling for needing to hurt a good man. Another part of me secretly wishes it would fail so I can see him again. I'm not sure how I'd manage the guilt that is eating me alive every time I talk to Alisa, but it'd be worth it if he can make my toes curl like that again.
"A week, maybe less. Grisha's good."
"Good." I take too large of a sip of coffee and it's too hot and burns the roof of my mouth. "So you have what you need. Grisha cracks the passcode, you've got access to his entire phone, and I can step back."
Bogdan chuckles and sets his apple core on the table as he leans over Yefim's computer and his eyes pore over the screen.
"You can't step back," Makar says.
"Why not?" I glance up at Bogdan hogging my personal space and push him, so he straightens and backs away. A bubble of ambivalence swells in my chest.
"Because a phone clone gives us his texts and his call log and his contact list, and that's useful, but it's useless without context." He wraps both hands around his mug. "If we see a text that saysFriday, eight o'clock, same place, we need to know what that means. What place? What's happening at eight? Who's involved? The phone gives us data. You give us the key to reading it."
"So what, I'm supposed to keep seeing him forever?" My throat constricts as I realize what they're telling me. Not only do I get to see Kazimir more, but they are encouraging it. The thought feels like a snare. I'm not supposed to be excited about this. It's a job and nothing more. Besides, he's such a good man and I know what I'm doing to him will hurt him.
"You're supposed to keep seeing him until we have enough to move." Makar lifts an eyebrow at me. "Did you think this was a one and done? You have to get in his head and know where he'll be and why, and you need to know where their fights are hosted and who's there…"
The guilt starts to snake its way around my chest, constricting until it's hard to breathe. What will I tell Alisa about this? The more times I see him, the smoother she will think this is going, and how will I manage to really sell a break up? "I did the job you wanted me to do," I grumble, not relishing the yoyo of emotion I know I'm about to have to live with for much longer than I wanted.
"The job is what we say it is." Bogdan pushes my shoulder then grabs his apple core and walks away. "You knew that going in."
Being the oldest, he thinks he has the most authority over me, and somehow, I've let him think that long enough that when I try to assert myself, he gets super pissy. All I can do is sulk and wonder if all of this is even worth it. I have such high hopes of running my own ring, but I know what'll happen. They'll just micromanage that too.
"He trusts you," Yefim says, closing his laptop. If any of them feels my pain it's him, and he always tries to help me understand rather than just bossing me. "That's not easy to build and it's impossible to rebuild if you break it. If you pull away now, he'll wonder why, and if he starts wondering he'll start looking, and if he starts looking, we lose everything."
"I know how trust works, Yefim." Knowing he honestly cares about me doesn't make it easier to listen to him.
"Then you know why you can't walk away from this yet."
I suck in a breath and rub my burnt tongue against the roof of my mouth while my head thumps. If the alcohol didn't give me this headache, their annoying voices would've.
"Fine," I say. "But if I'm getting sucked into this, then I want to be the one calling the shots. You're not the ones putting your necks on the line. If he suspects me, he could snap my neck."
Makar glowers but he nods at me. "Grisha can set the clone up as a mirror through your phone. Everything that passes through Kazimir's device gets pushed to yours in real time. He'll never see it."
"When?"
"Give me your phone now. You'll have it back by morning."
"And what do I tell Kazimir if he calls me and I don't pick up?" My head hurts too badly to care about this anymore. I want to go home and sleep it off.
"Tell him your phone died." Makar shrugs. "Tell him whatever you want. You're good at that."
His attitude is so negative toward me, I wonder if he even cares that he's putting his own sister at risk. I push back from the table and stand. Bogdan watches me go with a nasty expression on his face. All I want right now is to be out of this kitchen and away from these idiots. They've never once asked me how I feel about any of this.
Yefim walks me to the door and stops me with a hand on my arm. "You're doing the right thing," he says quietly, like he doesn't want the other two to hear him. He's trying, I'll give him that, but I'm still not feeling the best about this.
"I gotta go," I grumble.
I should've known better than to plan breakfast with Alisa this early in the morning after a night that wild, but she insisted on hearing the replay of every detail of my night. So I head across town to the little coffee shop we love to meet up at and park a block away. She's waiting at a booth when I struggle in wishing I'd have gotten that Tylenol from Makar's place before I left.
"You're late," she says as I sit down.
"Family stuff."
"Ugh. Brothers?"
"Always." I pick up the menu and open it. "Did you order?"
