40. Chapter 40
Addy
It took me two full days to call Elena. Not because I wasn’t dying to get answers but because every time I picked up my phone, the same thought pushed its way in — persistent and impossible to ignore.
What if she had known all along who I was?
What if none of it had been accidental?
The grocery store, the easy conversations, the way we’d just clicked.
What if I had walked straight into a trap and played right into their hands because I was so desperate for a friend?
I sat on the edge of the bed with the phone in my hand, slowly turning it over as the lights from the terrace spilled across the floor in long, soft lines. Outside, I could hear the low murmur of voices — probably guards. They were always there, just out of sight.
I’d wanted a friend, but now I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined the whole thing. Exhaling slowly, I hit ‘Call’ before I could talk myself out of it again. Elena picked up on the third ring.
“Hey.” Her voice was steady and careful.
“Hey,” I replied, tucking one leg beneath me and tightening my grip on the phone slightly.
A pause stretched between us.
“That whole thing was insane, right?”
I let out a quiet breath, but my chest still felt constricted. “Yeah, it was.”
“Okay, good,” she said. “Just checking.”
Silence fell between us again. I stared at the floor, tracing where the light met the shadow.
“We’ve been having lunch together for weeks,” I finally said.
“I know.”
“Actual conversations. About our lives.”
“Mm-hm.”
I stared at the far wall, my jaw tightening slightly. “How did we not realize we were both dating men in organized crime?”
I could hear faint movement. Maybe she was pacing, or just shifting her weight.
“In my defense,” Elena replied after a moment, “that’s not usually something you lead with.”
Despite myself, I huffed out a quiet laugh, leaning back on my free hand.“I feel like it should have come up at least once.”
“You’d think that, huh?”
I swallowed; my throat felt so dry it almost hurt. “Did you know?”
There was no immediate answer, or even an attempt at deflection.
“No,” Elena said finally.
I closed my eyes for a beat and exhaled through my nose, but the unease refused to fully dissipate.
“That didn’t sound convincing.”
“I didn’t know who you were. Not when we met and not afterward. Not until I saw you in the warehouse.”
“You didn’t suspect anything?” I pressed.
“You told me you lived up the hill. It could’ve meant a lot of things.”
I stared at the wall, my fingers tightening in the fabric of the pillow in my lap.
“And you didn’t, like, ask around?” I said. “Check?”
A faint exhale came through the phone.
“I was just as blindsided as you were by all of this.”
There followed another silence, but it felt different now. It was less defensive, but no less fragile.
“I just—” I exhaled, dragging a hand through my hair. “I didn’t know if I’d been … stupid to believe you were actually my friend. Stupid not to have seen what was actually going on.”
Her answer was immediate and fierce. “You weren’t!”
“I might have been,” I muttered.
“You weren’t,” she repeated, her voice softer this time. “We both missed it. And what was going on was us meeting by chance and becoming friends. Nothing else.”
I huffed out a quiet breath and leaned back against the headboard.
“Okay. That’s … slightly reassuring.”
“Only slightly?”
“Well,” I said, glancing toward the open terrace doors, “given everything else, I feel like I’m allowed to be cautious.”
“That’s fair.”
The tension eased just a fraction, just enough to keep going.
“Still,” I said after a moment. “It’s kind of insane.”
“Yeah,” Elena agreed. “It really is.”
“I seriously can’t believe Sasha actually missed this.” I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. “He’s so fucking anal about all this security stuff.”
“He probably didn’t.”
That made me frown. “No, he definitely did. He would’ve said something.”
“Or,” she countered calmly, “he didn’t find anything.”
I stilled slightly. Consider me intrigued.
“That doesn’t happen.”
“It does if there’s nothing official to find.” I could hear the smile in her voice.
“Okay. You’re gonna have to explain that one to me.”
“My boyfriend isn’t official, if you will. We’re not engaged, there’s no sort of paper trail … nothing tying us together. And we’ve got our own people whose job it is to make sure it stays this way.”
I blinked. “That actually makes sense.”
“And my brother and I don’t share a last name. Half-siblings.”
“Of course you are,” I uttered.
I let my head tip back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. “So on paper you’re just … normal.”
“More or less.”
I thought about the way she had walked into the warehouse — calm, irritated, completely unbothered by half the room having guns.
“That’s deeply misleading.”
“The women aren’t supposed to be directly involved.”
I raised an eyebrow, even though she couldn’t see me. “You literally told your brother to move like he was in your way.”
“He was in my way.”
“In an active situation.”
“And?”
I smiled, shaking my head. “Nothing. Just … noting the contradiction.”
“I’ve been around this kind of stuff my whole life. You pick things up.”
“Evidently.”
“Okay,” Elena said. “Now I want to hear your real story. How did you really end up here?”
I let out a slow breath, my grip on the pillow tightening slightly. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Really? You still think so after everything that’s happened?”
I snorted. “Fair.”
“We were pen pals.” I paused. “Prison pen pals.”
“I’m sorry,” she said carefully. “What?”
“Sasha was in prison, and I wrote to him,” I clarified.
“You’re serious.”
“Very much so.” I shifted again, toying with a strand of my hair. “We wrote for a while. And then, well, he broke out.”
“Of prison?”
“Yeah.”
“And then?” Elena sounded positively riveted now.
I exhaled slowly. “He came to get me.”
There was a pause.
“I’m almost scared to ask … define ‘get’.”
“Kidnapped might’ve been a term that was thrown around.” I closed my eyes briefly. “But it’s complicated. I didn’t really stay kidnapped. Honestly, it’s really hard to explain.”
Now I was rambling. Great.
I could almost feel her processing my word vomit.
“Soooo you chose to stay?” she asked finally.
“Yeah. I know it sounds insane.”
“It does,” she agreed. “But so does just about everything else in my life.”
“I meaaaan … from what I’ve seen so far, you’re probably not wrong.”
A small smile tugged at my mouth.
We sat with it for a moment — the absurdity of it all, the overlap, and the fact that, somehow and against all odds, we had ended up in the same kind of mess, albeit from completely different directions.
“What are the odds of all this happening?” Elena mused softly.
“Still probably zero,” I deadpanned.
That got a quiet laugh out of her.
“… We’re still doing Thursdays, right?” she asked after a moment.
I didn’t even hesitate. “Obviously. You can’t leave me to fend for myself with all these Russians.”