Page 37 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
He was sitting up in bed, alive and conscious, with his left shoulder wrapped in pristine white bandages. A smirk played at the corners of his mouth—the same expression he’d worn when we were kids and he’d gotten into trouble but wasn’t sorry about it.
Before I could think, before I could process what I was doing, my hand connected with his cheek in a sharp slap that echoed through the room like a gunshot.
Hannah gasped. Trev’s head snapped to the side, but when he looked back at me, that infuriating smirk had only widened.
“Fucker,” he said, touching his reddening cheek with his good hand. “You can slap me, but can’t hug me?”
My jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth might crack. “Don’t you dare get yourself killed. You just came back from the dead.”
The words came out rougher than I’d intended, thick with emotions I didn’t know how to name. Relief. Terror. Love. Rage. All of it twisted together into something that felt too big for my chest to contain.
Hannah stood slowly, her eyes never leaving my face. “My boy,” she said, and then she was crossing the small space between us, pulling me into a hug that smelled like vanilla and memories I’d buried so deep I’d forgotten they existed.
For a moment, I let myself be eight years old again. Let myself believe that families could be rebuilt from ashes, thatlove could survive decades of lies and separation. Her arms felt exactly the same as they had all those years ago, and for the first time since Dad died, I felt something that might have been peace.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered against my shoulder. “I’m so sorry we had to leave you. I’m sorry we couldn’t find another way.”
I pulled back just enough to look at her face—lined with years of guilt and grief, but still beautiful in the way that had made my father fall in love with her when they were barely more than children themselves.
“We’re here now,” I said, and meant it. “That’s what matters.”
Trev cleared his throat from the bed. “Not to interrupt this touching family reunion, but we need to talk about what happened.”
I turned to face him, noting the way he winced as he shifted position. Professional assessment kicked in, cataloging his injuries, his alertness level, the likelihood that he was hiding more serious damage than he’d let on.
“Tell me everything.”
“Female. Young, maybe nineteen or twenty. Small build but moved like a dancer. Professional training, definitely not local talent.” Trev’s voice took on the crisp authority of a police officer giving testimony. “She came at me from the shadows beside Dad’s gate. Would have had me clean if I hadn’t heard her boot scrape concrete at the last second.”
“How close?”
“Close enough to kiss.” His expression darkened. “She had me dead to rights, Lev. Should have been a perfect headshot. But she hesitated.”
That detail sent warning bells clanging in my skull. Professional assassins didn’t hesitate. They certainly didn’t give their targets time to react and fight back.
“Why?”
“That’s the interesting part.” Trev leaned forward, his blue eyes intense. “Right before she pulled the trigger, she closed her eyes and started chanting some kind of prayer.Saint Michael, guardian of souls, guide this sinner to judgment. Some ritualistic bullshit that gave me the opening I needed to dive and draw my weapon.”
The Saint Michael connection confirmed my suspicions about the Kozak family’s involvement, but the behavior pattern was all wrong. Petro’s people were brutal but efficient. They didn’t waste time with religious theater when a simple bullet would suffice.
“She say anything else?”
“Just before she disappeared into the night.” Trev’s voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “‘Collecting Kozak’s debt in blood.’ Then something in Ukrainian I didn’t catch.”
I felt the pieces of a larger puzzle shifting in my mind, forming a picture I didn’t like. This wasn’t just about old grudges or blood debts. This was personal. Targeted. Someone was playing a game with rules I didn’t understand yet.
“How did you survive a close-quarters ambush?” I asked. “Even with training, the odds—”
“AFP tactical response training,” Trev interrupted. “Six years undercover with organized crime syndicates. You learn to expect death around every corner and react accordingly.”
“So you’re telling me you spent fifteen years learning how to destroy everything our family built.”
“I spent fifteen years learning how to protect what mattered most.” His voice was steady, unflinching. “And rightnow, what matters most is keeping the three of us alive long enough to end this war.”
I was about to respond when the door burst open with a sound like thunder, hinges protesting the violent force. All three of us tensed, hands moving instinctively toward weapons that weren’t there.
But it wasn’t an enemy who filled the doorway.
