Page 31 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
Trev didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink. “Hello to you, too, brother.”
The word hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. Brother. Like nothing had changed. Like he hadn’t been dead to me for twenty-seven years. Like I hadn’t mourned him every single day since that fire.
“I said get out.” My voice was low, deadly. The same tone I used right before I put a bullet in someone’s skull.
But Trev just leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not leaving until you give me a chance to explain.”
“Explain?” The word exploded out of me like a gunshot. “A chance? Did you ever fucking think of giving me that chance? The chance to not mourn you for more than half my goddamn life?”
For the first time since Dad’s funeral, I was shouting.Reallyshouting. All the rage I’d been swallowing, all the pain I’d been burying, came pouring out like blood from a severed artery.
“Do you know what it’s like to watch your brother burn?” I slammed my fist on the desk, papers scattering. “To hear him screaming for help while the fucking ceiling collapses? To carry that guilt for twenty-seven years, thinking I should have saved you?”
Trev’s composure cracked just a fraction. I saw it in the way his jaw tightened, the way his fingers gripped the armrests of my chair.
“You think I don’t know guilt?” His voice was quieter now, but it cut just as deep. “You think I don’t know pain?”
“Enlighten me.” I moved closer, looming over him. “Tell me all about your fucking pain while I’ve been living in hell, thinking I failed the only person who mattered.”
“You want to know about pain?” Trev stood up, meeting my height, meeting my fury with his own controlled burn. “Try living a lie for twenty-seven years. Try waking up every day knowing your brother thinks you’re dead. Try watching from afar while you build walls so high that nobody can reach you.”
My laugh was bitter, harsh. “Watching from afar? Like some goddamn guardian angel? How noble of you.”
“Do you think I wanted this?” His accent shifted, the Australian creeping in the way it always did when he was angry. “Do you think any of us wanted this? Mum cried for you every night for the first five years. Every. Single. Night.
The mention of Mom hit me like a physical blow. I’d tried not to think about her, about what it would mean to see her again. But now….
“Where is she?” The question came out rougher than I intended.
“At Dad’s mansion. Where you told us to stay.” Trev’s eyes searched my face. “She’s been waiting for you to come see her.”
I turned away, walking to the window that overlooked the Chicago skyline. The city sprawled out below me, all concrete and steel and corruption. My city. The only family I’d known for most of my life.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted, the words scraping against my throat like glass. “I don’t know how to pretend that everything’s fine. That we can just pick up where we left off.”
“I’m not asking you to pretend.” Trev’s voice was closer now. He’d moved to stand beside me. “I’m asking you to try.”
“Try what? To forget that you let me grieve you? To forget that Dad kept this from me? That everyone I trusted was lying to my face?”
“Dad didn’t have a choice.” Trev’s reflection in the window was grim. “Taras Kozak had marked our entire family for death. The fire was just the beginning. If we’d stayed together, if we’d let him think we all survived, he would have come after us again and again until we were all dead.”
Taras Kozak. The name sent ice through my veins.
“You know about Kozak?”
“I know Dad killed him. I know you think that ended it.” Trev turned to face me fully. “But it didn’t, did it? His brother Petro is still out there, still carrying that blood debt.”
I spun around, grabbing him by the shirt. “How the fuck do you know about Petro?”
Trev didn’t resist, didn’t fight back. Just met my eyes with steady calm. “Because I’ve been tracking him for fifteen years. Because the Australian Federal Police has been building a case against the Kozak syndicate since I joined the force. Because I’ve been trying to end this war before it destroyed what was left of our family.”
My grip loosened. “You’re a cop.”
“I’m a cop who’s been working to bring down the men who tried to kill his family.” His voice was steel wrapped in velvet. “A cop who’s been feeding information back to Dad for years, helping him stay one step ahead of his enemies.”
The room felt like it was tilting. Everything I thought I knew, everything I’d built my understanding on, was shifting beneath my feet.
“The pendant,” I whispered, reaching for the chain around my neck. “Dad gave this to me on my fifteenth birthday.”
