AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Without warning, he grabs the necklace and snaps it off my neck.
I yelp, hang at my throat. “What are you doing?!”
“Tell me where you got this,” he says, his voice shaking with rage. “Tell me exactly where and when you got it.”
I huddle back against the headboard. “It was on the end of the bed! I woke up from a nap in the afternoon and there was a box on the end of the bed. I thought it was from you. I thought?—”
Before I can finish, Yakov turns and storms out of the room.
I don’t realize I’m shaking until I try to stand up. My legs buckle under me and I have to grab the edge of the bed to stabilize myself.
I hear Yakov pounding down the stairs. A few seconds later, the front door slams closed.
I’m still shaking next to the bed when Mariya pokes her head through my bedroom door. “Luna?”
“I don’t know what just happened.” I swipe tears off of my cheeks. “Yakov just—I don’t?—”
Mariya grabs my arm and lowers me to the bed. “Breathe, Loon. You’re panicking.”
I take deep breaths in and out until my heart rate slows. Then I reach for my phone. “I need to call him. Does he think I’m cheating on him? Because I’m not. I don’t know where that necklace came from.”
“What necklace?” Mariya swipes my phone out of my hand. “You’re not calling anyone until you tell me what is going on.”
I reach for my neck before I remember Yakov ripped the chain off of me. “There was a necklace. Yesterday, I woke up from a nap and there was a box on the end of my bed. It had a necklace inside of it. I assumed it was from Yakov, but he looked at it like he’d never seen it before.”
“Someone left you a gift on your bed and it wasn’t my brother?”
I shrug. “I guess. But Yakov stormed off. I have no idea what he’s thinking.”
“I do,” Mariya says softly.
I turn to her and she’s chewing on her lower lip. “What is it?”
“Someone—not Yakov—left you a gift on the end of your bed and he has no idea who it was.” She looks at me, waiting for the pieces to click together. “This mansion is a fortress. Nobody gets in or out without Yakov knowing about it. Especially not in his bedroom.”
“He thinks someone broke into the house,” I whisper.
All those days I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up… All those times I felt like someone was watching me…
Someone was watching me. I’m sure of it.
The question now is… what do they want with me?
30
YAKOV
“Check the cameras again,” I snarl.
My fist is clenched so tightly I’ll probably have a permanent indentation of that fucking rose in my palm. But I can’t relax. I can’t let this go until I know who was in my room—in my house. Until I know who was close to my fiancée without my permission.
Isay scrolls through the footage for the third time. “There’s nothing, Yakov. The only movement on the perimeter cameras was when you left yesterday morning and during the routine perimeter checks. No one is on this footage that shouldn’t be there.”
“Are there gaps in the coverage?” I ask.
“There aren’t cameras along the back fence where it meets the drainage ditch. We didn’t think we needed them. The fence is so high right there that almost no one could?—”
“Almost no one could scale it.” I let the necklace slip between my fingers and hold it in front of his face. “But someone fucking did. Someone was in my house and I want to know who the fuck it was.”
