Chapter 19 – Lev
The crutches dug into my ribs with every step, metal biting through the hospital gown and into bruised flesh.
But moving beat lying in that bed like an invalid, staring at the ceiling tiles and counting the minutes until I could get back to Anya.
The physical therapy nurse had looked at me like I’d lost my mind when I demanded the crutches three days early, but I’d survived worse than a few broken bones and a punctured lung.
Drew sat in the corner, laptop balanced on his knees, fingers moving over keys with less than his usual precision.
He’d been off for the past two days—quiet in a way that didn’t fit his personality.
Drew ran his mouth about everything from Casandra’s coffee choices to Rafael’s expansion plans.
Silence from him was like blood in the water.
“You’ve been quiet,” I said, pausing near the window. The view was shit—parking lot and the back end of a strip mall—but it was better than staring at him while he pretended everything was normal. “That’s not like you.”
“I’m fine.” He didn’t look up from his screen.
I shifted my weight on the crutches, letting the pause stretch until it got uncomfortable. “Don’t bullshit me. Something’s off.”
That got his attention. Drew’s fingers stopped moving, and he finally met my eyes. There was something there—doubt, maybe. Or guilt. Both of which made my blood run cold because Drew didn’t do guilt, and he sure as hell didn’t doubt his instincts.
He exhaled hard, running a hand through his hair. “It’s probably nothing.”
“Spit it out.”
“It’s about Trev.” The words came out in a rush, like he’d been holding them back for days. “The way he found you. In the middle of nowhere, exact coordinates. It felt too…precise.”
I set the crutches against the wall and lowered myself into the visitor’s chair, giving him my full attention. “Precise how?”
“Your car was forty miles outside the city, down a service road that doesn’t show up on most GPS systems. No cell towers in range, no traffic cameras.
But Trev knew exactly where you were.” Drew leaned forward, his voice dropping.
“I pulled the timeline. From the moment Anya called to say you were missing to when we found your car? Forty-seven minutes. That includes drive time.”
The math didn’t add up, and we both knew it. Finding someone in that kind of terrain should have taken hours, maybe days. Not forty-seven minutes.
“We already know about the tracker in the pendant,” I said slowly, watching his face. “Right after the attack. So what’s really bothering you?”
Drew’s jaw tightened. “The tracker explains how he found you so fast. But it doesn’t explain why your car ended up on that specific service road in the first place.
Or why the attack happened exactly where and when it did—in a location where Trev could conveniently ‘rescue’ you.
” He paused. “I think he knew where you were going before you did. I think he’s been doing more than just passively tracking you. ”
The realization sat in my chest like a stone. Twenty-seven years of mourning a brother who was alive. Twenty-seven years of guilt and rage and grief, all of it manufactured. And now Drew was suggesting that same brother might have orchestrated my near-death experience.
“Get some sleep,” I told him. “Tomorrow morning, we’re having a conversation with everyone present.”
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.
His face changed in an instant, color draining like someone pulled a plug. “Guys, I got the picture.”
The laughter died. Everyone leaned in as Drew turned his screen toward us.
The face staring back was young, ethereal, beautiful in the way poisonous things often are. Pale skin, sharp cheekbones, eyes that looked like they’d seen too much death for someone barely out of their teens.
Casandra gasped.
Maxim went rigid against the wall.
My blood turned to ice in my veins.
Drew’s voice cut through the silence like a blade. “Mila Kozak has been inside our house for the past three weeks.”
The words detonated like a bomb in the small room. Three weeks. Three weeks of this girl—this professional killer—living under our roof, cooking meals for Anya, answering phones, handling schedules.
Three weeks of having a viper in our nest.
“Where the fuck is Sasha?” Trev’s voice was deadly quiet, his jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping. “I knew something wasn’t right.”
Sasha. Sweet, efficient, loyal Sasha, who’d been with Anya for two years. Who knew her routines, her preferences, her vulnerabilities. Who would have fought tooth and nail before letting some stranger take her place.
Which meant she was either dead or being held somewhere, probably as leverage.
“How long has Anya been alone with her?” I was already reaching for my clothes, pain be damned.
“Since you’ve been in here,” Maxim answered grimly. “Three weeks of daily access. Mila could have poisoned her, could have—”
“She wouldn’t kill her outright.” Drew’s fingers flew over his keyboard, pulling up surveillance feeds and communication logs. “Anya’s more valuable alive. Bait for you, leverage against the family.”
But even as he said it, I could see the fear in his eyes.
Because Mila Kozak wasn’t just any assassin.
She was Petro’s daughter, raised from childhood to kill without conscience or hesitation.
And if she’d been playing house with my wife for three weeks, she’d have been gathering intelligence we couldn’t even begin to calculate.
“We move now.” I was struggling into my shirt, ignoring the way my ribs screamed in protest. “Full tactical deployment. No warnings, no negotiations.”
“Lev, you can barely stand—” Casandra started.
“I don’t give a shit.” The words came out harder than I intended, but fear made me cruel. Fear for Anya, for our future, for the life we’d been trying to build in the ruins of this fucked-up world.
Trev pushed off from the door. “I’m with you.”
I looked at him—really looked at him—and tried to reconcile the brother I’d mourned with the man who’d been watching me from the shadows for nearly three decades.
The lies, the tracker, the theatrical rescue—all of it had been choreographed.
But right now, with Anya in danger and time running out, I needed every gun I could get.
Even if one of them belonged to a ghost who’d been lying to me since we were ten years old.
“Drew, I need everything on Mila Kozak’s methods. How she works, what she prefers, where she’d take hostages.” I was moving toward the door, crutches forgotten. “Maxim, coordinate with Rafael’s people. I want the penthouse surrounded but not approached until I give the word.”
“And if she’s already moved Anya?” Trev asked.
I paused at the door, my hand on the handle, and let the silence stretch until everyone understood exactly what kind of monster they were working with.
“Then we burn Chicago to the ground until we find her.”
Because some promises were written in blood, and the one I’d made to protect Anya was going to be kept even if it cost me everything I had left.
Including the brother I’d just gotten back.