“That doesn’t happen.”
“It does if there’s nothing official to find.” I could hear the smile in her voice.
“Okay. You’re gonna have to explain that one to me.”
“My boyfriend isn’tofficial, if you will. We’re not engaged, there’s no sort of paper trail … nothing tying us together. And we’ve got our own people whose job it is to make sure it stays this way.”
I blinked. “That actually makes sense.”
“And my brother and I don’t share a last name. Half-siblings.”
“Of course you are,” I uttered.
I let my head tip back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. “So on paper you’re just … normal.”
“More or less.”
I thought about the way she had walked into the warehouse — calm, irritated, completely unbothered by half the room having guns.
“That’s deeply misleading.”
“The women aren’t supposed to be directly involved.”
I raised an eyebrow, even though she couldn’t see me. “You literally told your brother to move like he was in your way.”
“Hewasin my way.”
“In an active situation.”
“And?”
I smiled, shaking my head. “Nothing. Just … noting the contradiction.”
“I’ve been around this kind of stuff my whole life. You pick things up.”
“Evidently.”
“Okay,” Elena said. “Now I want to hear your real story. How did you really end up here?”
I let out a slow breath, my grip on the pillow tightening slightly. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Really? You still think so after everything that’s happened?”
I snorted. “Fair.”
“We were pen pals.” I paused. “Prisonpen pals.”
“I’m sorry,” she said carefully. “What?”
“Sasha was in prison, and I wrote to him,” I clarified.
“You’re serious.”
“Very much so.” I shifted again, toying with a strand of my hair. “We wrote for a while. And then, well, he broke out.”
“Of prison?”
“Yeah.”