Page 117 of The Wrong Brother

“The story won’t stay in Colorado.”

His gaze finds mine again.

“And Kate gets dragged into it.”

Everything inside me goes still.

Kate. Kate?

I stare at him, trying to connect the dots. Trying to understand how a revenge plot against a politician somehow involves the little girl who cried when we left California.

Rus doesn’t elaborate. He just keeps staring into the fire, a crease between his brows, glasses reflecting the flames.

I know I should ask more questions. I should figure out how Kate fits into this. Why? Because my decision about whether to keep this child,ourchild, could hinge on just how far Ruslan is willing to go and who he is willing to destroy.

Would he really put a pre-teen girl in the path of destruction, all for revenge?

Therehasto be more to it, more than he’s telling me right now.

That’s what I tell myself over and over as the warmth of the fire soaks into my bones and finally makes me drowsy.

There has to be more.

He can’t really be a monster.

Can he?

Chapter 31

Ruslan

The first thingI notice when I wake up, before my eyes even open, is the cold. It’s not enough to be uncomfortable, but reminds me that summer is finally behind us. Especially here, higher up in the mountains.

For a few seconds, I keep still beneath the blankets, staring at the rough-hewn ceiling overhead while pale dawn light filters through the curtains. The cabin creaks softly around us, settling into another morning as wind moves through the pines outside.

Then Emma wiggles slightly, shifting closer.

She’s tucked against my side, one arm draped across my stomach, curls spread across the pillow. Sometime during the night she’d stolen half the blankets and nearly all the space in the bed. Which might be why I’m chilly.

I’ve never slept better.

That fact should be irritating, but somehow I find it…amusing?

For weeks, I’ve been surviving on a few restless hours at a time. Colorado has a way of dragging old ghosts out of the shadows,and Andrei has ensured that every one of them has surfaced since the moment I set foot on the tarmac.

Yet here, in a cabin I haven’t seen since childhood, with a pregnant woman curled against me, I slept like a man with nothing to fear.

I carefully ease myself off the mattress. Emma stirs slightly but doesn’t wake. Her hand briefly searches the warm spot I’ve abandoned before she pulls herself into it sleepily, curling up tighter.

My heart thuds once, twice, hard—a warning or a promise. I’m not sure, but I don’t want to examine it any closer, and drape a blanket on her before moving away into the rest of the space.

The cabin is quiet in the early morning light. A faint layer of mist hangs between the trees beyond the windows, stirring with the morning breeze. The mountains in the distance glow gold beneath the rising sun. The simplicity of it all feels almost foreign after years of penthouses, private jets, and security teams.

My father would have loved this morning.

For a moment, I can almost see him standing on the porch with a mug of coffee in one hand, surveying his mountains like a king inspecting his kingdom. Ready to tug me out into the nearby meadow and identify every wildflower in it.

Then the image fades.