Page 20 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
“Would it have changed anything?” I asked.
He finally looked at me then, and for just a moment I saw something fracture behind his eyes—regret, maybe, or the ghost of what we’d shared before morning ruined everything.
“No,” he said quietly. “It wouldn’t have.”
I nodded and got out of the car, closing the door behind me with the kind of careful control that kept me from slamming it hard enough to shatter the windows. I didn’t look back as I walked to my front door, didn’t watch him drive away, but I heard the engine fade into the distance like the end of a song I’d never hear again.
Inside my house, surrounded by the familiar comfort of my own things, I finally let myself feel the full weight of what had happened. Not just the sex—though that had been a revelationI was nowhere near ready to unpack—but everything that came after.
The way he’d held me like I was something precious, then let me go like I was nothing at all.
The way I’d felt, for a few hours, like I belonged somewhere other than the careful distance I’d maintained from his world.
The way I’d lied to his face about it being a mistake when the truth was that it felt like the first real thing I’d done in years.
I sank onto my couch and buried my face in my hands, trying to sort through the tangle of emotions that threatened to drown me. Guilt over betraying everything I’d sworn about Bratva men. Fear about what Maxim would do if he ever found out. Anger at Lev for making it so easy to walk away.
And underneath it all, a grief so sharp it took my breath away. Not just for what we’d lost, but for what we’d never had a chance to find.
My phone buzzed with a text from Maxim:Car arrives in thirty minutes. Don’t make me worry about you more than I already do.
I stared at the message until the letters blurred together, then deleted it without responding. I wasn’t getting on that plane. Wasn’t running from shadows that had already taken too much from me.
But I also wasn’t naive enough to think that staying would change anything between Lev and me. He’d made his position clear with that empty politeness, that casual dismissal of something that had rearranged the architecture of my heart.
I was alone in this. Just like I’d been alone when my parents died, when I’d sworn off love to keep myself safe, when I’d built a life that looked perfect from the outside but felt hollow at the core.
The only difference was that now I knew exactly what I was missing. Now I knew what it felt like to burn.
And somehow, that made the cold so much worse.
Chapter 5 – Lev
I felt her slip away from me before I was fully awake—the absence of her warmth against my chest like a physical wound. She moved through my bedroom like a ghost, gathering her things with the kind of careful silence that spoke of regret louder than any words could have.
The buzz of her phone cut through the morning air like a blade, and I watched from behind half-closed lids as she wrapped my sheet around herself and tiptoed toward the door. Even in retreat, she was beautiful—all tousled hair and kiss-swollen lips, looking like she’d been thoroughly claimed by a man who had no right to touch her.
But she had been a virgin. The thought circled in my mind like a vulture, picking at details I should have noticed, should have handled differently. The way she’d tensed when I first touched her. The sharp intake of breath when I pushed inside her. The tears that had leaked from the corners of her eyes before pleasure replaced whatever pain I’d caused.
I should have asked. Should have taken more time, been gentler, made it everything her first time deserved to be, instead of the desperate, consuming thing it had become. But she hadn’t told me, and now the knowledge sat in my chest like a weight I couldn’t shift.
Her voice drifted in from the hallway—careful, controlled, lying through her teeth to whoever was on the other end of that call. Maxim, most likely. The brother who would put a bullet in my skull if he knew what I’d done to his precious sister.
My phone rang as I was pulling on jeans, the shrill sound cutting through my thoughts like a knife. I grabbed it without looking at the screen, expecting Casandra or Drew with some crisis that couldn’t wait until I dragged myself into the office.
“What?” My voice came out rougher than intended, gravelly with sleep and the aftermath of everything that had happened in this bed.
“Hello, brother.”
The world stopped. Literally stopped, like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed my heart until it forgot how to beat. That voice—slightly deeper than mine, carrying traces of an accent I’d never learned—was impossible. A ghost speaking from beyond a grave I’d visited for twenty-seven years.
“Trev?” The name felt foreign on my tongue, like a word from a language I’d forgotten how to speak.
Silence stretched between us, heavy with decades of separation. Then: “I know you thought we died in the fire.” His voice cracked slightly. “Dad told Mom and me that you both survived, made us swear never to contact you. Said it was the only way to keep us all safe. But you…you didn’t know, did you?”
My mind reeled. “He told you we were alive?”
“Twenty-seven years, Lev. Twenty-seven years of knowing you and Dad were out there somewhere, forbidden from reaching out. And now—” He broke off, struggling for composure. “Now he’s dead.” His voice broke. “One of my contacts told me. After everything—keeping us apart, making Mom live in hiding, forcing us to stay silent while you thought we were gone—he’s just…gone. And we never got to be a family again.”
