Page 12 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
All of it was true. None of it was something I could say out loud.
I raised my hand to knock and then let it fall, the weight of my own cowardice pressing down on me like a physical thing. This was a mistake. Lev was grieving, vulnerable, probably drunk. The last thing he needed was me showing up at his door with my complicated feelings and my desperate need to make sure he was all right.
But as I turned to leave, I remembered his voice on the phone five years ago, the night after that kiss. How he’d called me at three in the morning just to hear me say his name. How he’d hung up without saying a word, but not before I’d heard the longing in his breathing.
I turned back to the door and pressed the bell before I could lose my nerve again.
The sound echoed in the hallway like a gunshot, and I held my breath, waiting for footsteps or voices or some sign that there was life on the other side of the door.
Nothing.
I tried again, holding the button longer this time, the chime stretching into something that sounded almost desperate.
Still nothing.
Maybe he wasn’t home. Maybe he was at some bar, drowning his grief in vodka and the company of strangers. Maybe he was with someone else, seeking comfort in ways that didn’t involve his best friend’s little sister showing up uninvited.
The thought made my stomach clench with something that felt uncomfortably like jealousy.
I was about to give up, about to retreat to my car and pretend this whole impulsive journey had never happened, when I heard it—the soft sound of a lock turning, the whisper of a door opening just wide enough for steel-gray eyes to peer through the gap.
When Lev saw me standing in his hallway, his expression shifted through surprise, confusion, and something that might have been hunger before settling into the careful mask he wore like armor.
“Anya.” My name sounded different in his voice now, rougher than I remembered, like grief had scraped away all the smooth edges. “What are you doing here?”
Chapter 3 – Lev
The vodka burned going down, but not nearly as much as the memories that crawled through my skull like acid. I sat in the dark of my living room, black leather gloves still covering my hands, staring at the half-empty glass like it might hold answers to questions I’d stopped asking years ago.
The apartment was tomb-quiet, all sharp edges and cold surfaces that reflected nothing back. Just like me. Just like the man I’d become after that night when everything burned.
I lifted the glass again, let the vodka coat my throat, and tried to drown the images that played behind my eyes like a film reel from hell. But alcohol had never been strong enough to kill the past, and tonight it felt particularly useless against the weight of my father’s final words.
They’re alive.
Two words that had shattered everything I thought I knew about myself, about the grief that had shaped me, about the reasons I’d become the kind of man who wore gloves to hide scars and kept everyone at arm’s length.
The fire had been my origin story. Ten years old, trapped in a house that was turning into an inferno while my father’s enemies celebrated their revenge outside. I could still smell the smoke, still feel the heat that had turned the air into something that clawed at my lungs with every breath.
I’d been upstairs when it started, playing some stupid game with Trev while our mother read in the living room below. Twin brothers, identical in everything except the color of our eyes—mine gray like storm clouds, his blue like summer sky. We’d been inseparable, two halves of the same whole, finishing each other’s sentences and sharing dreams about futures we’d never live to see.
The explosion had come first—a sound like the world cracking open. Then the smell of gasoline and burning wood, the orange glow creeping under doorframes like liquid hell. I’d grabbed Trev’s hand and we’d run toward the stairs, toward our mother’s voice calling our names through the growing roar of flames.
But the staircase was already engulfed. A wall of fire that might as well have been a portal to another dimension, one where everything we loved turned to ash and smoke.
“We have to jump!” I’d screamed, pulling Trev toward the window.
He’d jerked his hand free, his blue eyes wild with panic. “Mom’s down there! We can’t just leave her!”
“The stairs are gone—there’s no way down!”
But he wasn’t listening. He was already turning back, already running toward the inferno that separated us from her. “I can make it through! I can get to her!”
“Trev, no—”
He didn’t stop. Didn’t even look back. He just plunged into that wall of flames like he could will himself through it by love alone.
I screamed his name until my throat was raw, until the smoke choked the sound from my lungs. The heat drove me back to the window, and I had no choice—jump or burn.
