Page 118 of Twisted Little Game

“You were using my Tate as fucking bait for a plan you never told me?”

I had noticed that Yegor didn’t shed a tear when I shot his knee.

But they fall from his face now, in long, slow streaks, as he answers my question.

“We already lost your mother, Roman,” he breathes. “I cannot lose you, too. I would not dream of betraying you. I did all of this for you.”

The ground feels like it’s swaying beneath my feet.

I step back, putting a hand to the column behind me, blinking as I stare at Yegor’s blood on the deck.

“How?” I whisper.

“Those fucking monsters inside my living room,” Yegor explains, “they have close friends in the police force in the city. Well, I have a fucking close friend there, too. The moment the incident with the Landrey boy occurred, I heard about it. My contact there is old friends with his brother, Luke. He’s one of the only clean people still left in that entire goddamn department.”

“Holy shit,” Maks murmurs.

“So you did manipulate the situation so that Tate would be sent here? To be under my protection? This… request wasn’t at all his brother’s idea?”

Yegor grimaces as he tries to move his leg. “Our mutual friend made Luke Landrey think it was his own idea. But yes. It was our design.”

“You were doing all of this strategizing and plotting without my knowledge. Under my nose. Under my father’s nose,” I say.

“Yes. I fucking was. Because if you knew of it, you would never have agreed to it. We would never have a chance to end the lives of the people who still have a chokehold on your heart, Roman. I want my cousin back. I want you back. My fucking family, Roman⁠—”

“Our family dissolved when she died,” I utter.

He shakes his head. “No. I loved your mother so much, too. But we are still us. The Petrov name…”

“You,” I tell him, my eyes wide, “are beneath the Petrov name.”

Information is dangerous.

It truly is something I’ve told Yegor a thousand times.

I underestimated him.

Entirely.

He has seemed like a baby to me for so long that I hadn’t noticed that he grew up, right there, beneath my nose, and I never stopped for long enough to see it.

“Your strategy is blindly dangerous,” I tell him. “You put all of us in danger. Tate, most of all.”

“All of it was going to work, cousin. All of it. You would trust me, if you let me carry out my plan.”

“I still never will,” I tell him.

I step forward and bend down, sliding my arm around his torso and lifting his crumpled body from the ground.

“Let’s get your leg fixed up now,” I mutter. “Handle the vermin in your living room. And then you will take me to this friend of yours in the police force, and I will handle what happens to you.”

“Hey. We’ve got movement,” Maks says quietly beside me.

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck,” I say under my breath. “Yegor, you will not bleed out from where I shot you. Not tonight, at least. Wrap yourself in a very tight towel. I need to handle this.”

“They’re armed, Roman,” Yegor warns me.

“Of course they are. But we are better.”