Make Me Shine (Six Silent Sins #1)

by Colt, Elodie

  Sending me a cocky smirk, she yanks down her lose-shoulder shirt along with her bra. A two-headed snake twists around her nipple, but it’s the elegant numbers making an arc above her breast that forms a knot in my chest.

  I sit up to trace a finger over it. “When did you get this?”

  “A few months ago,” she mumbles.

  My throat bobs as I follow the colorful lines with my eyes. I envy Zoya for her strength. Mom’s day of death is already branded into my soul. If I had to look at it every time I took off my clothes, I’d go crazy.

  Zoya clears her throat and adjusts her shirt, motioning for me to lie back. After wiping my forearm with disinfectant, she switches on the tattoo machine. I hiss when she moves the needle over my skin, but after a minute, I get used to the burning pain.

  It’s kind of funny watching Zoya in action with her eyes squinted in concentration, and her tongue clamped between her teeth. I always wanted to be like her. More assertive. More confident. While Zoya shows off her body with fringy cut-offs and torn tights, I try to be as unremarkable as possible.

  My phone chirps with an incoming email, and I unlock the screen. At the same time, Zoya scrapes the needle over the bone in my wrist, and pain shoots up my arm.

  I drop my phone, the device clattering to the floor. “Ow!”

  “Sorry. This area is tricky.”

  I pluck up my phone before Zoya resumes my torture, and I notice I’d accidentally opened an email from an unknown sender. The headline reads, ‘You’re invited to Silent Sins!’

  I scan the body of the message:

  Are you ready for Silent Sins?

  We take SENSUAL to a new level. We redefine DESIRE. We take you on an EROTIC journey you’ll never forget.

  Sign up today and enter The Room.

  I scroll down, but the email ends after a ‘Learn more’ button followed by the company logo. It’s a creative design with two elegant S’s intertwined—one gold, the other black with a sparkling flame underneath.

  “What the hell is Silent Sins?” I ask aloud.

  Zoya shoots me a glance from under her lashes, still focused on her task. “eNtimacy’s new dating program. Never heard of it? It’s all over Twitter.”

  “Oh, let me check real quick.” I make a show of tapping on my phone. “There it is. First tweet from FuckTwitter saying Fuck Social Media, hashtag IDon’tGiveAFuck.”

  Zoya snorts. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, sister.”

  Yeah, thank you, holy era of innovative technology and online networks for making it impossible to get rid of a crazy stalker and live a normal life.

  “Why are you asking?” Zoya wants to know.

  “Just got an email.”

  She’s quiet for a moment before she asks, “Are you going to give it a try?”

  “Give what a try?”

  She nods at my phone, and I narrow my eyes at her. I only asked her what Silent Sins was. I didn’t tell her anything about the content of the email.

  “How do you know what this email is about?”

  She finishes the last part of my tattoo, applies a salve on my skin, and sticks a plastic wrap on it.

  “I signed you up for it,” she says at last.

  “For what?”

  She flashes me a furtive glance. “For Silent Sins’ case study.”

  I gape at her, my jaw unhinging.

  “It’s a new program that’s been successful in many countries,” she says, “and they’re looking for volunteers to give it a try.”

  It takes me a moment to find my voice again. “You signed me up for a fucking online dating agency?”

  “Yes, I did!” She slams down the needle, and I flinch. “I can’t stand it anymore, okay? You cringe every time a man speaks to you. You throw fearful looks over your shoulder every five seconds. You shut out the outside world. Luka is long gone, but you’re still a mess.”

  I bite my lip. Zoya thinks Luka was only a temporary issue. She doesn’t know he never left, and that I moved to another country to get rid of him.

  “I want you to live again,” she adds with a pleading look.

  “And eNtimacy is going to change my life for the better?”

  “Well, you never know…” she mumbles, snapping off her gloves.

  I rake my fingers through my hair, regretting my words immediately.

  I knew Zoya was into women long before she confided in me. For years, she pretended to be normal, scared that Dad would write her off if he found out that his daughter was gay. Mom knew, but she would never stand up against him. Marina Jendarov was kind, but she preferred playing referee instead of taking a side.

  When eNtimacy—the leading online dating agency—became popular in Russia, Zoya jumped at the chance and met Holly. For two years, a continent separated them, limiting their communication to video chats.

  It was hell. For her and for me. Listening to Dad babbling about how our neighbor Kostya would be a perfect match for her. Catching Zoya reading articles about ‘how to cure it.’ Watching her crumbling piece by piece.

  Until I convinced her to come clean.

  And we were prepared. We knew life in the Jendarov family would never be the same again. We knew it would be a hard pill for Dad to swallow. We knew it was going to be off-the-charts bad.

  But we hadn’t counted on him throwing her out and cutting her out of his will on the same day.

  And what did my amazing sister do? She boarded the next plane, moved to the US, and married Holly three months later. She was twenty back then. I’ll never forget Dad’s face the day the wedding invitation dropped into the mail, confirming that his youngest daughter would be Zoya Benson from now on.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper at last, sitting up. “I know you wouldn’t be here now without eNtimacy, but me signing up for online dating is like…” I wave my hands about. “Like mixing a shot of Russian Standard with Red Bull. Absolutely outrageous.”

  Huffing a laugh, Zoya ambles over to the freezer, pulls out a bottle of Vodka Mamont, and fills two shot glasses. She hands me one, and we toss the shots back with ease before we knock them off the table as the tradition requires.

  I glance down at the dragonfly on my arm, its green body nestled inside my wrist with the blue tail curling around my knuckle.

  “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Ella.”

  We share a moment of mutual silence before I stand up and pull her into a hug. Having a good five inches on her, I lean my cheek against her forehead, inhaling her fragrance of fresh paint and roses. She snakes her arms around my waist, squeezing.

  “I’m like you, Zoya,” I grumble. “I can handle women better than men.”

  “Or maybe you’ve got it all wrong,” Zoya says in a wistful tone, wiggling out of my embrace to give me an intense look, “and you need to find a man who can handle you.”

  ‘Or maybe you need to find a man who can handle you.’

  Zoya’s words continue to tumble inside my head the rest of the night. I didn’t get much sleep and got up at an ungodly hour to finish work, but I can barely concentrate on the words.

  A TV channel wants me to proofread the Russian subtitles of their newest series, but the translation is a joke. Whoever they hired for this job was certainly not a native and had no idea about the difference between Northern and Southern Russian. I even found a few Ukrainian words in the dialog.

  Yawning, I sag in my chair. This job was way easier back when I had two translators in my agency. Sadly, I had to cut ties with everyone when I left Belgorod. Now, Linguella Translations is a one-man show.

  At least the job pays well. With my skills, I can charge twice as much as the average translator. And with all the Eastern European restaurants shooting up like mushrooms in this town, I’ve got more than enough menus to translate every day.

  Zoya’s comment continues to nag at me. ‘Or maybe you need to find a man who can handle you.’

  “Ugh.”

  I push my chair away,
adjust my sweatpants, and then position myself on the mat in my living room, bending down into the Dolphin Pose. Pulling in, I slowly release a deep breath.

  When I made the decision to move here and live with Zoya, it sounded like a good idea. After all, she’s the only family I’ve left. My only friend. The only one I can trust. Mom is pushing up daisies, and Dad ran off the moment her condition worsened. Not that it broke my heart or anything. He treated Zoya like shit and tore us apart. Eloping with his new flame and saying goodbye to our family was a relief.

  Sticking up my ass, I switch to the Extended Puppy Pose.

  Zoya loves me, but I can see through her dark brown eyes and easy-going attitude. The worry. The pain.

  She knows that Luka broke me, and she can’t stand it that I buried Elenka Jendarov the day I buried Mom. She built her life here, the one Dad sabotaged for many years.

  And then I tagged along. New name. New attitude. Old demons.

  Plopping down on my stomach, I bend my upper body into the Cobra Pose.

  Zoya wants to carry my baggage, but I don’t want her help. I don’t want her to shed tears because I’m borderline deranged. I want her to be happy. Build a family with Holly and live the American dream.

  I lean my elbows onto the mat and switch to a headstand. Suddenly, a car honks directly below my window, and I startle, toppling over and landing with the grace of a potato sack.

  “Ow!” I rub my tail bone where I can already feel a bruise forming.

  Well, I guess yoga time is over, so I scramble up and walk over to my aquarium. Crawly and Buzz flutter around in agitation when I open the flap on top.

  “Impatient, are we? Alright, guys, let’s explore the outside world.”

  I grab a jar and unscrew the lid, waiting for the perfect moment to swipe it and catch the dragonflies. Once done, I quickly close the lid and shove the jar into my bag. I don a pair of jeans and my biker jacket, fetch my helmet, and check my security system one last time before I venture outside.

  While I lean my Honda Hornet into the curves, it becomes clear that I’m the only biker on the street. The morning is sunny but dewy, and most people have already traded their light jackets for windbreakers and scarfs, rubbing their hands to warm them, while I welcome the wind blowing over my skin.

  Twenty minutes later, I arrive at Prospect Park Lake. I put on my Ray-Bans before I hurl my bag over my shoulder and make my way to the only lake in Brooklyn.

  The park is a sea of autumn colors with orange leaves barrel-rolling in the wind that carries the scent of wet grass and pine needles. The basketball courts and rustic summer houses are deserted. Where you usually find hordes of people lying on blankets and tourists cruising through the lake with pedal boats in the warmer months, only a few fishermen and runners enjoy the last days before this place turns into a winter wonderland.

  A bike bell dings behind me, and I startle, bolting to the side and simultaneously tightening my fist around the pepper spray in my bag. The guy speeds past me, oblivious to me trying to get my heart rate back to normal.

  Should I bite the dust anytime soon, there are only two ways it will go down. Either, I’ll do it the Russian way with a vodka overdose, or I’ll die of a heart attack. If I didn’t have to rely on my sense of hearing, I’d run around with earplugs twenty-four seven. I’m so jumpy, I hate to be in the same room with my toaster when it spits out my breakfast.

  To my defense, it wasn’t always like this. The trigger was the night Luka broke into my bedroom to watch me sleep. I swear my heart stopped beating when he loomed over me, and the shock was so severe, I puked my guts out for the rest of the night.

  So, yeah—Ella Jenkins startles easily. It’s one of the reasons why I turned off the vibration function on my phone and use low-volume ring tones.

  I halt in front of the lake, enjoying the view of the dewy leaves and clear water glistening in the sunlight. A few feet away, a couple watches their toddler plucking stuff from the ground, but otherwise, the shore is empty.

  I place my helmet on the bench next to me and pull out the jar from my bag. It vibrates in my hands as the two dragonflies flap their iridescent wings against the glass.

  I remember the days when Mom would take me to the pond behind our house, back when my only concerns were when I could finally wear a bra, when I would receive my first kiss from Filipp Oblonsky, and how on earth I was supposed to pass my algebra exam. Whenever we watched the dragonflies buzzing around, one of them would make itself comfortable on my head. Mom would always laugh, telling me it’s supposed to be a good omen when a dragonfly lands on you.

  Well, I’m still waiting for luck to strike.

  “Time to say goodbye, boys,” I whisper with a heavy heart. As much as I love to set them free, I always hate to see them go. “Don’t get eaten out there.”

  Once the lid is open, Crawly and Buzz dart out, flying for their freedom. I watch them whir through the air until they’re out of sight, then close the jar and sink down on a nearby bench.

  Rolling up my jacket sleeve, I look down at my tattoo still covered with a plastic wrap. Crawly is gone, but at least his picture will stick with me forever.

  ‘Dragonflies have two lives,’ Mom explained to me one day. ‘First, they live underwater, and then they become the conquerors of the air.’

  I wanted to be like them. Held onto the hope that, when I was grown up, I would be a conqueror, too. Sadly, the only thing I had conquered by now was the heart of a broken man who made my life hell on earth.

  Dragonflies are perfect creatures in many ways. When they’re grown up, they can walk on water, but when they plunge into the water, they are dead.

  It took me a long time to realize that I had it all wrong. I was born a conqueror, but I fell into the water and drowned.

  I blink back the tears threatening to drop, trying to swallow down the sudden hollowness in my chest. I wish I could turn back time. Erase all the mistakes I made. Never befriend Luka and give him false hopes. Convince Mom to let them remove her breasts before it was too late. Scream at Dad and make him see what I saw in Zoya.

  Dad…

  I should stop calling him that. Roman Jendarov isn’t even my biological father, I learned recently. Another baggage I have to carry around, but one I won’t unload on Zoya.

  Frustrated, I fish out my phone to check my emails. My finger hovers over the one I received from eNtimacy yesterday.

  ‘Or maybe you need to find a man who can handle you.’

  I still can’t shake what Zoya had said. She had meant so much more with her words. That I needed a man who helps me shoulder my burden. A man who forces me out of my shell. A man who isn’t afraid of my jagged edges.

  But a man who knows he’ll get cut as soon as he touches them.

  A man who takes over control.

  A tiny hand appears in my periphery, and I look up to see the toddler from before holding out a stone, waiting for me to take it. I blink at him, taking in the chubby face jammed in a thick Micky-Mouse hat as it lights up with a smile. A fucking smile.

  Kids hate me. They can see the apathy in my eyes. They can feel the bad blood coursing in my veins. They can smell my fear.

  And yet, the rug rat stays unfazed by my scowl, tilting his head and staring at me with his huge, blue puppy eyes.

  “Luka!”

  The sound of his name hits me square on. I yelp, jumping a foot in the air. The toddler startles and drops the stone, his face scrunching up before he bursts into tears and wails in such a high-pitched voice, I shrink back. I’m close to slapping my hands over my ears when the mother hurries over, shooting me a death glare before sweeping up her kid and skirting off.

  “Shhh. Don’t cry, Luka,” she croons. “Was she rude to you? Oh, my poor boy…”

  I dart to my feet, ready to go apeshit on her, ready to tell her that she startled me and not the other way around, ready to tell her that she gave her kid the worst name on earth. But then my gaze snaps back to the toddler with its red face
and snotty nose and sad eyes.

  It pities me. They all pity me. Fuck, I pity myself…

  My false bravado drifts away with the breeze wafting over the lake, and I slump back down onto the bench.

  You should have become something else, I think sullenly. One of those zombies that startle kids in fake haunted houses. You’d be a natural.

  Grimacing, I glance down at my phone and, after a moment of hesitation, click on the ‘Learn More’ button. The Silent Sins logo appears on top, right below the tagline ‘We light up your match’ in fancy script letters.

  Congratulations! You won a free six-month membership!

  We can’t give you the job you want. We can’t give you the car you want. But we can give you the partner you want.

  As the leader in online dating agencies with access to the largest pool of potential partners and the best algorithms to find the best matches, we at eNtimacy are always looking for new ways to build, improve, and perfect your love life.

  Maybe you’re looking for a lifelong partner.

  Or maybe you’re looking for something else. Something without commitment. Something without emotional attachment. Something more sensual.

  Silent Sins has been successful in many countries all around the world, and we are happy to announce that this brand-new elite program will launch in the United States next year.

  Until we open up the doors in New York City for our premium program, we want volunteers like you to join our case study and give us your honest feedback. In return, we offer a free six-month membership with all the luxury and goodies you can wish for.

  Hooked?

  Make an appointment with your personal account manager today!

  I huff a dry laugh. Jesus Christ. This is like having arachnophobia and winning a trip to the jungle. Or being afraid of heights and joining a skydiving club.

  Even the words online dating agency make me shiver. Passing on personal information. Meeting with strangers. Exposing my identity. This fancy program stands for everything I’ve tried to avoid so far, and Zoya thinks I can just pull a switch and plunge in at the deep end?