Page 51 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
What I couldn’t understand was why she wouldn’t take my calls directly.
***
That night, I waited on the couch in our penthouse, one hand resting over my increasingly uneasy stomach. My phone sat face up on the coffee table, silent and accusing. No calls. No texts from Lev, who’d left that morning with promises to check in regularly.
By sunrise, I couldn’t breathe from worry.
I called Maxim first, then Trev, my voice shaking as I explained that Lev hadn’t come home, hadn’t called, wasn’t answering his phone. Within an hour, they were at the penthouse along with Drew, all of them wearing the kind of grim expressions that meant the news wasn’t going to be good.
“His phone’s been off since yesterday evening,” Drew reported, fingers flying over his laptop keyboard. “Last GPS ping was from his car, but the trail goes cold after that.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded, pacing the living room like a caged animal. “People don’t just disappear. Cars don’t just—”
“It means someone who knows what they’re doing took him,” Maxim said quietly. “Someone professional.”
The words hit me like physical blows. I sank into the nearest chair, my hands shaking as I processed what he was saying. Lev had been taken. Kidnapped. Possibly hurt or—
No. I wouldn’t let my mind go there.
“We need to call the police,” I said, reaching for my phone.
“We can’t.” Trev’s voice was gentle but firm. “Not yet. If this is connected to Kozak, involving law enforcement could get Lev killed.”
“Then what do we do?” My voice cracked on the question. “We just sit here and wait?”
Drew’s fingers stilled on his keyboard. “I’ve got something. Faint GPS signal from his vehicle. Rural outskirts, about forty miles north.”
I was on my feet before he finished speaking, grabbing my coat from the back of the chair. “Let’s go.”
But Trev stepped into my path, his blue eyes serious. “No. Absolutely not.”
“You’re not leaving me behind—”
“Anya, listen to me.” His hands gripped my shoulders, forcing me to meet his gaze. “If this is a trap, if they’re using Lev as bait to get to you, then walking in there is exactly what they want. I promise I’ll bring him back. But you have to stay.”
The word “promise” shattered something inside my chest. Promises were what people made when they weren’t sure they could deliver. When the odds were stacked against them.
My knees gave out.
I collapsed right there in the middle of our living room, the weight of fear and helplessness crushing down on me like a physical thing. Eleanor, who’d been quietly making coffee in the kitchen, was beside me in seconds, her arms wrapping around my shaking form.
“You look pale,” she murmured, her hand cool against my forehead. “And you’re shaking. When’s the last time you ate something?”
I couldn’t remember. Food had been the last thing on my mind since Sasha disappeared, since Lev started coming home later and later, since my entire world began unraveling at the seams.
“I’m fine,” I whispered, but even I could hear how unconvincing it sounded.
“You’re not fine.” Eleanor’s voice was gentle but firm. “And falling apart won’t help Lev.”
“I can’t lose him,” I said, the words torn from somewhere deep in my chest. “Eleanor, I can’t. Not now. Not when we finally—”
“You won’t.” She squeezed me tighter. “He’s too stubborn to die, and too much in love with you to stay gone.”
But as the men prepared to leave, as they checked weapons and coordinates and spoke in the clipped, professional tones of people heading into battle, all I could think was that love might not be enough this time.
That all the promises and hope and desperate prayers in the world might not bring him back to me.
And if they didn’t—if Lev didn’t come home—I honestly didn’t know how I was supposed to keep breathing.
