“Had worse. Tricky conversation when I got back, though.”
“Embry?”
“Hmm. Didn’t want to keep it from him in case he went fucking rogue.”
“How’d he take it?”
“Hard to tell. I figured he’d be as fucked up about it as he was with Sambini, but I didn’t get much from him.”
“Maybe he’s calmed down.”
Cam skewered me with a glare. “You think that’s likely?”
Nope. But I’d told him Embry was a closet psychopath before he’d patched him in. He had to be. No one was that nice without a dark side to balance it out. Black and white. Night and day. It was how the world worked.
Cam reeled me in, holding out a hand I couldn’t resist.
His fingers wrapped around mine.
I squeezed them.Alexei?
“Shower.”
“Is he okay?”
Cam shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. Do you remember the Russian dude who was with Sambini that night?”
I remembered Nash bound and unconscious on the ground.
I remembered Cam bleeding and hovering as close to death as I’d ever seen him.
I remembered a Russian voice that wasn’t Alexei’s, but not his face.
Taking a seat, I gestured for Cam to explain.
“He was at the Sambini meet tonight. Last night. Whatever. He was there, and he came up on Alexei outside. They had words.”
“What kind of words?”
“Russian words. Shame you weren’t there.”
“I don’t speak Russian.”
Cam rolled his eyes. “Okay.”
“I don’t.”
“You understand it, though, don’t you? You understandhim.”
Not even close. “I know, like, three sentences. What happened?”
“They talked. I’m pretty sure Alexei told him to fuck off—that shit doesn’t need translating—but he’s been weird ever since. Maybe his old boss asked him to come back.”
“So what if he did? If Alexei wanted to be there, he’d have never left.”
“He left because that cunt set him free. Before then, he was a prisoner. Since he was fifteen years old.” Pure, molten fury seeped from Cam. Shaking him. He pulled his hand from mine and scrubbed it over his face, gritting his teeth. Then he blew out a sigh. “It fucks me up when I can’t read him. It scares me that I’ll miss something, and then he’ll be gone and we’ll never know why.”
“You think he’d leave?”