"Maybe you should wait to tell him until I know for sure, which should be later today. There is an agent who is decoding the book."
"This is unbelievable, Maya. Natasha was murdered, wasn't she?"
"I think so. Did Dad tell you anything yesterday?"
"He told me he was in the car the night she died, but that he just thought she killed herself with his drugs. He feels extremely guilty about that."
"Well, that probably isn't what happened."
"I'm scared for you, Maya. I want you to come here, be with us. We're safer if we're all together."
"I don't think that's true, Mom. I'm the target. I'm the one who knows too much. I can't bring that to you. But you don't have to worry. I'm being protected."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"I love you, Maya."
"I love you, too."
She set down her phone and let out a breath. At least her parents were safe. Hopefully, they would stay that way, but they needed to get to the truth fast.
Chapter Twenty
Jax tried to concentrate on Natasha's journals, but his mind kept wandering back to Maya. He'd hurt her. He'd seen the pain of betrayal in her eyes, and he didn't think he could ever forget it. He'd lied to a lot of people in his life. It was often part of his job, but it had never felt like this. He had crossed a line he shouldn't have crossed.
He couldn't take it back now, and part of him didn't want to take it back. They'd had a great night together. But it was not a great day, and he suspected Maya would have walked out a long time ago if she weren't curious about the cypher or if she had somewhere else to go. But she'd lost everything in the last few days, and he'd just piled on to that loss with his secret.
He couldn't change that; he just needed to concentrate on the now and move forward, which meant focusing on the words of Maya's grandmother.
He'd skimmed over the early years of her life. Many of her entries were boring and random: what she'd had for dinner, who she was pissed off at, a bad script, an irritating phone call from her assistant—normal life stuff. He couldn’t really understand why she'd bothered to write a lot of it down, but the passages about love and family were where her writing took off.
Natasha had fallen for Phillip at a very young age and become a mother when she was barely twenty-one years old, an accidental pregnancy that had made her both happy and sad. She definitely hadn't been equipped to have a baby, and the two years she took off from her career to take care of Rex had felt like she was working out a jail sentence.
He wondered if Maya's father Rex had ever read any of these passages. If he had, it was no wonder that he resented his mother, because Natasha had certainly resented him. Or maybe it wasn't specifically him; it was the fact that he was a baby she hadn't wanted to have, and he was the obstacle in front of her dreams.
When Natasha got her first part after becoming a mother, she was over the moon with joy. She didn't care that she would have to leave her then three-year-old for almost three months while she shot her movie. For the next few years, her words sung of adventures and meeting exciting people. By the time her son, Rex, was nine years old, Natasha was completely over being a mother and a wife.
She started having an affair with Wallace Jagger, her new agent, who was taking her career to new heights. And while she seemed to love Wallace, it also felt like she was mostly in love with herself. She became caught up in her hype, her Academy Award nomination, her trips to international luxury hot spots. Eventually, she divorced Phillip and married Wallace. They loved spending time at the Russia House. Being around so many Russians made her feel like she was home again.
It was in the next few years of her journal writings that Natasha began speaking of people in nicknames, the Lark and the Wolf. Constantine had told Maya that Julia was the Lark. But who was the Wolf? Was that Constantine?
He paused on one paragraph where Natasha spoke about the Lark: She reminds me of who I used to be and makes me question my decisions. She also makes me angry. She sees through me. But