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“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?”
