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“That’s not fair. He’s my priority, sure. But that doesn’t mean you and I can’t be friends.”
I frown. “Is this you overcompensating for the fact that I’m not allowed to talk to my only friend?”
“We just want to be safe here, Emma.” Kirill rubs his chin and sighs. I’m sure he’s as sick of giving this explanation as I am of hearing it. “The more information Phoebe has about you, the more of a target she becomes.”
“Right. Spare me the lecture. Bottom line is, I’m completely isolated with no one to talk to.”
“You can talk to me.”
“So you can go give Ruslan a full report? C’mon. I’m not stupid, Kirill.”
“You two belong together,” he mumbles. “You’re as paranoid as he is.”
“Does he think I’m up to no good?” I demand. “Spying for someone else now, I suppose. Probably the government. Or Mossad. Maybe some rival Bratva don?”
“Pahkan.”
“Whatever.”
He smirks. “I’m not reporting on you to Ruslan.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.” I immediately regret my snark. I can’t exactly afford to alienate Kirill. Not when I have so few people to talk to here. Not when he’s the one helping me get custody of the kids. “I’m sorry… I’m being a bitch. It’s the hormones.”
“Yeah, you better milk that excuse while you can.”
I can’t quite suppress my smile. “Do you know what’s going on with Ben, by the way?”
The laughter vanishes from Kirill’s face. He’s all fun and games at first glance, but beneath that is a stone-cold killer who doesn’t like Ben any more than the rest of us do. “He’s lying low for the moment. I don’t think he understands why or how he’s being snowballed. All the momentum he gained with that CNN interview fizzled out overnight.”
Take that, you bastard.
“He’s hit the bottle pretty hard,” he adds.
“Predictable,” I snort. It must be nice to have a coping mechanism available for the price of a six-pack at the corner store.
“But,” adds Kirill, “your parents are another story entirely.”
My eyes snap to his. “My parents?”
“Your old phone has a ton of messages and missed calls from a Barrett Carson and a Beatrice Carson. I’m an espionage genius, so I put two and two together.”
I groan. “Oh, God. I need to deal with that.”
“I’m inclined to agree. Just convince them that you have the situation under control. Don’t mention anything about Ruslan or Remmy or… anything else.”
“Duh. Even if there wasn’t a legitimate reason, I’d still be hiding shit from my parents.”
He leans against a wall and folds his arms as he regards me with a sympathetic look. “So I take it you’re not particularly close with them?”
“Sienna was my family. Barrett and Beatrice were basically just our rich patrons. And when they didn’t get what they wanted from us, they cut us off. Financially, that is. They thought it would have a much bigger impact than it did.”
“Losing their money didn’t scare you?”
“It did,” I say with a shrug. “For about five minutes. But we both had jobs and an actual work ethic. Neither one of us was scared to make our own way. And we had each other. That helped.”
His eyes never leave my face. “It must be hard losing a sibling.”
“It’s the hardest.” The way he asks the question makes me curious. “Haveyoulost a sibling?”
