Page 117 of Twisted Little Game

Everything in my body goes calm.

The adrenaline wins out over every thought, and my heart stops racing.

The fear is gone.

The only thing left is to fight.

“Who the fuck are they, Yegor?” Maks says, and Yegor looks over at a second gun pointed at him now, too.

The blue light of the pool ripples behind him, old collected raindrops periodically falling from the trees down into the water.

“You will find out who they are, when you need to find out,” Yegor says.

His eyes are wide as he looks at me.

But he doesn’t look like he’s pleading for mercy.

He looks like he’s trying to make his own fucking rules.

“That is not how this is going to work, Yegor,” I say in a low tone.

I don’t even finish the sentence before I lurch fast, my finger depressing the trigger.

The gunshot pops in the air and Yegor falls to the ground, blood spilling from his knee where I shot him.

“Fuck!” he shouts, clutching at his leg as he collapses.

Blood starts to trickle into the pool, and in this light, it’s like black paint spilling into the water, blooming out into lighter red.

“Are you ready to speak yet?” I ask him, stepping forward fast, this time pointing the gun at his other knee. “Start. Now.”

“Roman, Roman,” he cries, groaning at the pain in his leg. “Fuck, they will have heard that gunshot, you impatient fool. You shouldn’t have done that⁠—”

“I don’t care what they heard. Maks has eyes on them as we speak. Maks, are they moving?”

“They are playing cards and doing coke,” Maks says. “One of them is on his phone, though. Could be bad. I don’t think your friends give a fuck that you were just shot, Yegor.”

“Tell me who they are,” I bark at him.

“You know who they are,” Yegor growls, looking up at me.

“I need to hear you say it. Fucking tell me how you betrayed me. Tell me you’re the next Petrov to turn on us, in a series of betrayals that only gets longer.”

“God damn it,” he says, heaving out the words as he winces at the pain. “I was trying to protect you. I needed one more day. Maybe two. But now you’ve gone and fucked it all up for both of us.”

I frown at him. “Explain. Now.”

“Information is dangerous,” Yegor roars. “You are the one who taught me that. I didn’t want you to know. I couldn’t tell you what I was doing. They are paid off by Maletti scum. Don’t you already know that? I had them in the palm of my hand. I was going to use the Landrey boy as a trap, and we were going to fucking kill all of them, Roman. Don’t you see?”

I clutch the metal of the gun tighter in my hand. “Bait?” I whisper.

“The Malettis would come here. For Tate. But we would never give him over to them. Luring them here, to us, has been my plan the whole time. We were supposed to kill them together.”

A cresting wave of realization hits me like a tidal wave.

“You were using Tate,” I whisper.

“Yes. But I was never going to hurt any of you. I would never.”