Chapter 9 – Lev
I walked into my office after dropping Anya at hers, jaw tight, mood darker than the fucking storm clouds gathering outside. The scent of stale coffee and tension hung in the air like a noose. Every muscle in my body was coiled, ready to snap at the next idiot who dared cross my path.
But I froze when I saw him.
Trev sat in the chair across from my desk like he owned the place, blue eyes fixed on me with that same steady intensity I remembered from when we were kids.
Same face as mine, same build, same goddamn everything except those eyes.
Blue where mine were steel-gray. A constant reminder that we were two halves of something that had been ripped apart when we were ten.
My hands clenched into fists inside my gloves. The burned flesh beneath the leather protested, but I welcomed the pain. It kept me grounded when everything else felt like it was spinning out of control.
“Get the fuck out of my chair,” I growled, not moving from the doorway.
Trev didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink. “Hello to you, too, brother.”
The word hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. Brother. Like nothing had changed. Like he hadn’t been dead to me for twenty-seven years. Like I hadn’t mourned him every single day since that fire.
“I said get out.” My voice was low, deadly. The same tone I used right before I put a bullet in someone’s skull.
But Trev just leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not leaving until you give me a chance to explain.”
“Explain?” The word exploded out of me like a gunshot. “A chance? Did you ever fucking think of giving me that chance? The chance to not mourn you for more than half my goddamn life?”
For the first time since Dad’s funeral, I was shouting. Really shouting. All the rage I’d been swallowing, all the pain I’d been burying, came pouring out like blood from a severed artery.
“Do you know what it’s like to watch your brother burn?” I slammed my fist on the desk, papers scattering. “To hear him screaming for help while the fucking ceiling collapses? To carry that guilt for twenty-seven years, thinking I should have saved you?”
Trev’s composure cracked just a fraction. I saw it in the way his jaw tightened, the way his fingers gripped the armrests of my chair.
“You think I don’t know guilt?” His voice was quieter now, but it cut just as deep. “You think I don’t know pain?”
“Enlighten me.” I moved closer, looming over him. “Tell me all about your fucking pain while I’ve been living in hell, thinking I failed the only person who mattered.”
“You want to know about pain?” Trev stood up, meeting my height, meeting my fury with his own controlled burn. “Try living a lie for twenty-seven years. Try waking up every day knowing your brother thinks you’re dead. Try watching from afar while you build walls so high that nobody can reach you.”
My laugh was bitter, harsh. “Watching from afar? Like some goddamn guardian angel? How noble of you.”
“Do you think I wanted this?” His accent shifted, the Australian creeping in the way it always did when he was angry. “Do you think any of us wanted this? Mum cried for you every night for the first five years. Every. Single. Night.
The mention of Mom hit me like a physical blow. I’d tried not to think about her, about what it would mean to see her again. But now….
“Where is she?” The question came out rougher than I intended.
“At Dad’s mansion. Where you told us to stay.” Trev’s eyes searched my face. “She’s been waiting for you to come see her.”
I turned away, walking to the window that overlooked the Chicago skyline. The city sprawled out below me, all concrete and steel and corruption. My city. The only family I’d known for most of my life.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted, the words scraping against my throat like glass. “I don’t know how to pretend that everything’s fine. That we can just pick up where we left off.”
“I’m not asking you to pretend.” Trev’s voice was closer now. He’d moved to stand beside me. “I’m asking you to try.”
“Try what? To forget that you let me grieve you? To forget that Dad kept this from me? That everyone I trusted was lying to my face?”
“Dad didn’t have a choice.” Trev’s reflection in the window was grim. “Taras Kozak had marked our entire family for death. The fire was just the beginning. If we’d stayed together, if we’d let him think we all survived, he would have come after us again and again until we were all dead.”
Taras Kozak. The name sent ice through my veins.
“You know about Kozak?”
“I know Dad killed him. I know you think that ended it.” Trev turned to face me fully. “But it didn’t, did it? His brother Petro is still out there, still carrying that blood debt.”
I spun around, grabbing him by the shirt. “How the fuck do you know about Petro?”
Trev didn’t resist, didn’t fight back. Just met my eyes with steady calm.
“Because I’ve been tracking him for fifteen years.
Because the Australian Federal Police has been building a case against the Kozak syndicate since I joined the force.
Because I’ve been trying to end this war before it destroyed what was left of our family. ”
My grip loosened. “You’re a cop.”
“I’m a cop who’s been working to bring down the men who tried to kill his family.” His voice was steel wrapped in velvet. “A cop who’s been feeding information back to Dad for years, helping him stay one step ahead of his enemies.”
The room felt like it was tilting. Everything I thought I knew, everything I’d built my understanding on, was shifting beneath my feet.
“The pendant,” I whispered, reaching for the chain around my neck. “Dad gave this to me on my fifteenth birthday.”
“Because I told him to.” Trev’s smile was sad, broken. “Remember our code? The one we made up when we were eight?”
My fingers closed around the small fire symbol. “Together, we are fire.”
“Alone, we are just smoke.” He finished the phrase we’d whispered to each other in the dark after nightmares, after Dad’s harsh words, after the world felt too big and too cruel.
The memory hit me like a freight train. Two little boys, huddled together in a blanket fort, making promises about never leaving each other behind. About being stronger together than apart.
“How was I supposed to know?” My voice cracked like I was eight years old again. “A fire symbol? It could have meant anything.”
“It meant I was still fighting for us. Still trying to find a way home.” Trev took a step closer. “It meant that even though we were separated, we were still connected. Still brothers.”
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to scream and break things and demand answers to questions I didn’t even know how to ask.
Instead, I turned back to the window and let the silence stretch between us like a chasm.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I repeated. “I don’t know how to let you in again.”
“You don’t have to let me in all at once.” His hand touched my shoulder, hesitant. “But we’re here now. All of us. And Petro Kozak is still out there. Still planning his revenge.”
“I know about Petro.” I shrugged away from his touch. “I’ve been tracking him since Dad died. Saint Michael tattoo, Ukrainian Cossack codes, the whole fucking theatrical show.”
“Then you know we need to work together.” Trev’s voice was urgent now. “You know we can’t face him alone.”
I thought about Anya, sleeping in my bed this morning. About the way she’d looked at me like I might actually be worth something. About the enemies circling closer every day, hungry for blood and retribution.
“There’s something else,” I said. “I got married yesterday.”
The silence that followed was so complete I could hear the hum of the air conditioning, the distant sound of traffic, the beating of my own heart.
“Married?” Trev’s voice was carefully neutral.
“To Maxim’s sister. Anya.” I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. “It’s not…. It's complicated.”
“Love usually is.”
I whipped around. “Who said anything about love?”
But Trev was studying my face with those too-perceptive eyes, reading things I didn’t want him to see. “The way you said her name. The way you won’t look at me when you talk about her.”
“It’s a business arrangement.” The lie tasted bitter on my tongue. “Protection. Nothing more.”
“Right.” His smile was knowing, infuriating. “And I’m just a tourist from Australia.”
I wanted to argue, to explain how wrong he was. But the words wouldn’t come. Because maybe he wasn’t wrong. Maybe the way I’d felt when I saw Anya in my bed this morning, soft and vulnerable in the early light, had been something more than duty or lust.
Maybe I was more fucked than I thought.
“I need to get back to work,” I said instead, moving toward my desk. “The Kozak files won’t review themselves.”
But Trev wasn’t finished. “Mum wants to see you.”
The words stopped me cold.
“She’s been carrying your baby picture in her wallet for twenty-seven years,” he continued softly. “She’s been living half a life, just like Dad, just like me. Waiting for the day when we could be a family again.”
I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of all those years pressing down on me like a physical thing. All the birthdays missed, all the conversations never had, all the love that had been buried under lies and necessity and survival.
“I can’t.” The admission was barely a whisper. “I don’t know how to be someone’s son anymore.”
“You don’t have to figure it out all at once.” Trev’s voice was gentle now, the way it used to be when we were kids and I’d skinned my knee or had a bad dream. “Just come see her. Let her see that you’re alive, that you’re okay.”
“I’m not okay.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “I haven’t been okay since the day I thought I lost you.”
The room fell silent again. Outside, Chicago hummed with life and death and everything in between. Inside, two brothers stood in the ruins of their shared past, trying to figure out how to build something new from the ashes.
Finally, Trev moved toward the door. But before he left, he turned back one last time.
“You didn’t get the signal because you made peace without me,” he said quietly. “But I never made peace without you.”
And then he was gone, leaving me alone with my ghosts and my guilt and the growing certainty that everything I thought I knew about my life was about to change.
I slumped into my chair, the leather creaking under my weight. My hands were shaking inside my gloves. The fire symbol pendant felt heavy against my chest, a tangible reminder of the boy I used to be before the world taught me how to be a killer.
Together, we are fire.
The words echoed in my head as I reached for the locked drawer where I’d hidden the Kozak files. Because if Trev was right, if Petro was still out there planning his revenge, then I was going to need all the fire I could get.
And maybe, just maybe, I was going to need my brother.