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I feel better, but Kayla is clearly freaked out. She has every right to be. I shouldn’t have roped her into this mess. I was being selfish, but that ends here. Whatever is going on with Yakov, I’ll figure it out alone.
“I’m being smart. I promise. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”
“You swear?” she asks.
“I swear. I have to go. I love you.”
“Love you, too, Loon. Please don’t disappear again.”
I hang up and push away from Yakov’s desk.
I’m not sure how much longer I have in here before someone finds me, but I’m not going to waste another second. I pull open his top desk drawer and get to snooping.
29
LUNA
Turns out snooping isn’t as easy as it looks.
In the movies, people yank open drawers and dump out boxes onto long wooden tables. They spread papers around like they’re having a confetti fight. But I have to be precise. Yakov’s office is a shrine to his efficiency. He’ll probably sense a shift in the spacetime continuum if I incorrectly alphabetize one of his folders.
I have to be strategic about this.
“Start at the top and work my way down,” I decide, pulling out a stack of files from the top drawer and placing them carefully on his desk.
The first folder is nothing earth-shattering. Bills and bank statements, both with an unreal amount of zeroes. When you see a mansion like Yakov’s, the person is either deep in debt or ridiculously wealthy. I can now say with confidence that Yakov is the latter.
The most interesting thing I find is a stack of contracts written in Russian. If I had my phone, I’d be Google Translating my ass off. As it is, my monolingual brain is out of luck.
One by one, I sift through a folder, place it facedown to the left, and then move to the next.
Between some of the folders are loose photographs. Old Polaroids of a little girl with dark brown curls holding a ratty stuffed elephant under her chin. Another is of the same little girl with a slightly older boy. He has the same deep-set eyes as Yakov, but it isn’t him. His siblings, probably.
Yakov is the kind of man who barely mentions he has siblings, but then keeps photos of them in his desk drawer? Of course he is.
How is it possible that I’m pissed at him, rooting through his office, and he is still finding a way to soften my heart? He probably planted the photos to make me second-guess my decision to snoop.
Well… he’ll have to try harder than that. It will take more than a little sentimentality to get me off the case.
I set the very cute photos aside and keep searching.
The third drawer—like the first and second—is a collection of boring documents and nothing at all incriminating. Admittedly, guilt is starting to creep in.
Yakov let me into his home, protected me, fed me, fucked me absolutely sideways, and this is how I repay him?
I’m about to pack it all in and try to erase any evidence of my presence from the office when I flip over a folder with another Polaroid photo paper-clipped to the front.
This photo I recognize.
“… Benjy?”
Benjy is standing next to a car. Last I knew, he didn’t have one, but he’s about to climb into the driver’s seat. That’s all beside the point because the photo is unposed. It’s obvious he has no idea anyone is taking his picture.
I flip the folder open and I know for a fact Benjy had no clue about any of this. It’s detailed accounts of everywhere he was and every person he saw in a twenty-four-hour period. The couple pages after that are known addresses, phone numbers, and people of interest. I see my name near the middle of the list, just under Tiffany. The woman he cheated on me with.
I stare at the information in front of me and try to make sense of it.
Yakov asked me about my ex and I told him. He seemed surprised when I described my relationship with Benjy. Was it an act? Are they working together?
