"Cocky."
"Accurate." I bump her shoulder with mine and she leans in, laying her head on my shoulder.
The vodka loosens us both up and the conversation drifts from teasing into real conversation. She tells me about growing up with three brothers who never let her win at anything, and I tell her about training with Roman and the first time I got knocked out in the ring.
The more we talk, the more I like her, and the more I realize Roman is the reason any of this is happening for me. He pulled me out of my bad teenage rebellious years and trained me into a fighter and a soldier. I owe him a lot, and I need to make sure I thank him. Without him, I may not have ever met Zora, and I like her a lot.
"Your uncle sounds like a good man," she says.
"He raised me after my father died. I owe him everything."
She's quiet for a moment, rolling the glass between her palms. "I know what it's like to owe your family everything. It's not always easy to carry."
I look at her, and there's something in her face I wasn't expecting—a fatigue under her warmth. Maybe she doesn't want me to see how heavy her heart is when she talks about her family, but I see it. I want to ask her about it, but whatever it is, she'll tell me when she's ready.
"Stay tonight?" I ask, already knowing her answer before she says it. But I want to hear it all the same.
She looks at me over the rim of her glass and takes a slow sip before answering. "I was hoping you'd ask."
8
ZORA
Bogdan's eating an apple when I walk into Makar's kitchen, leaning against the counter with his feet crossed at the ankles. He looks me up and down and takes another bite.
"She's alive," he says with his mouth full.
"Yeah…" Yefim adds from the table without looking up from his laptop. "Three nights out this month already. Must be a record."
"Shut up." Their teasing is almost as bad as their micromanagement.
"I'm happy for you." Yefim glances up, and his expression is completely flat. "Truly."
Makar comes in from the hallway carrying his coffee and pulls a chair out for me with his foot, nodding at it as he says, "Sit down. We've got things to talk about."
"Can I at least get coffee first?" Being the only woman in this family is rough sometimes. They think they can boss me around and make decisions for me. It was nice to be with Kazimir fordinner last night. He was a real gentleman and never got overly dominant with me except during sex, which was a huge turn on.
"Pour your own." He sits and takes a sip. "You know where everything is."
I pour myself a cup from the pot on the counter and Bogdan watches me while he chews, this half-grin on his face that I've been putting up with since I was twelve years old and he figured out that annoying me was his favorite hobby. I scowl at him and add some cream and sugar. The coffee will go down nicely after so much vodka and sex, but what I could really use are a few Tylenols.
"You look tired, little sister."
"And you look like you slept in those clothes." Bogdan scowls at me as I sit down across from Makar and wrap both hands around the mug. "Can we get this over with?"
Makar sets his mug down and flicks a glance at Bogdan then relaxes in his seat and turns his focus on me. "So, tell us what happened… You fucked him?"
The nerve. I roll my eyes and take a few steamy sips from my coffee in an attempt to calm myself before I answer. I hate that my personal life is on display for them, and I hate that they feel the need to know what I do in private. It shouldn't matter how I accomplish the task if the task gets done. So I ignore his rude comment and stick to the important parts.
"He left his phone on the nightstand when he went to the bathroom. I had maybe ninety seconds but I managed to clone his cell phone to mine…" I'm sort of disappointed that my job is done. I like Kazimir. It wasn't horrible hanging out with him, and my God, the things he did to my body. I was so drunk, I can'tremember if we had sex three or four times, or maybe it was one long session that never ended.
Bogdan's mouth twitches at the corner. "And he didn't notice."
"He came back to bed and fell asleep with his arm around me. He didn't notice a thing."
"That's my girl." Bogdan unfolds his arms and walks over to the table where we sit. "Yefim, where are we with the data?"
Yefim pulls the laptop toward him and angles the screen so everyone can see. "The clone captured everything on the device at the time of copy. Messages, call history, contacts, photos, app data. Problem is it's all locked behind a six-digit passcode and biometric encryption. We can see the architecture but we can't read any of it until Grisha gets through the security layer. Then we can access the user interface and make our phones look like they're his."
