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.