Page 58 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
Drew nodded and closed his laptop. “For what it’s worth, I hope I’m wrong.”
So did I. But hoping and knowing were two different things, and I’d learned not to bet my life on hope.
***
The next morning, my hospital room looked like a war council. Maxim leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, his face set in the kind of stone mask that meant he was ready to kill someone. Casandra sat in the chair Drew had occupied yesterday, her posture screaming skepticism about whatever was about to happen. Drew stood silent beside my bed, and Trev held position near the door like he was ready to bolt.
The tension in the room was thick enough to choke on.
I didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “We need to talk about the pendant. About the tracking. But more importantly—” I locked eyes with Trev, “—we need to talk about how you knew where I’d be that night.”
Trev glanced at Drew, then back at me, and sighed like I’d asked him to explain quantum physics. “I knew that smartass would figure it out eventually.”
My voice dropped into the register I reserved for interrogations. “Trev. Start talking.”
He held up both hands in surrender, that familiar grin tugging at his lips. “Alright, alright. Don’t give me those shady-ass interrogation faces. You look like you’re about to kill someone.”
“Trev.”
“Fine.” He pointed at my chest, at the pendant that had hung there since I was fifteen. “The tracker isn’t just GPS. It has audio—basically a bug—I can hear everything around you whenever I want. Your conversations, your plans, your meetings.” He shrugged, as if we were discussing the weather.“That’s how I knew you’d be on that service road. I heard you tell Maxim where you were going.“
The room went silent. I could feel the blood draining from my face as the full implications sank in.
“You’ve been listening to everything?” Casandra’s voice cut through the silence, sharp as a blade. “For how long?”
“Since we were kids,” Trev said. “Since I gave him the pendant.”
Maxim pushed off the wall, his voice deadly quiet. “And the attack?”
Trev’s grin finally faded. “I didn’t set that up. But yeah, I knew something was wrong when I heard it go down. That’s why I got there so fast.”
“Convenient,” Drew muttered.
I touched the pendant at my throat, feeling its weight differently now. Not a gift. Not a connection. A surveillance device I’d worn willingly for twenty-seven years, never knowing my dead brother was listening to every word.
“You heard everything.” My voice sounded foreign to my own ears. “All these years, whatever I was doing, whoever I was with—”
“No. God, no.” Trev’s face twisted in mock horror. “I wasn’t listening to your life, you perv. I had access, yeah, but I didn’t use it. Not unless…” He trailed off, jaw flexing.
“Not unless what?”
He sighed. “Not unless I got that feeling. You know, when something didn’t sit right. I’d open the channel for a second, just to be sure you were breathing.” His eyes flicked to mine. “That day with Maxim? Pure luck. I’d checked in because I couldn’t shake it. And then I heard you giving him your location.”
I stared at him, unsure whether to be angry or grateful. “So you were spying.”
“I was saving your ass,” he shot back. “Big difference.”
“Did you hear me when I was with—”
“No. Not your sex noises, you sick fuck.” He cut me off, looking genuinely disgusted. “What the hell is wrong with you? I have my own life. I don’t need to listen to yours.”
Despite everything—the betrayal, the lies, the twenty-seven years of manufactured grief—the room erupted in laughter. It was the kind of inappropriate, stress-induced hysteria that happens when people have been pushed too far for too long.
“You are actually disgusting,” Trev muttered, shaking his head.
For a moment, it felt almost normal. Like we were just brothers giving each other shit, like the past three decades of separation and lies and death threats were just a bad dream.
Then Drew’s phone lit up.
