Ruined By My Brother's Best Friend novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Smoke Alarm

Hollie rips the hidden camera out of the smoke alarm and calls her brother herself, and Freddie walks in to hear Lev say he kissed her back.

"Who took that?" I said.

Lev didn't answer.

He was looking at the ceiling.

"He owns the building," he said. "Sokolov House. It's his. All of it."

"Your dad sent you a photo of us."

"From in here." He turned, measuring the room with his eyes. "From above the window. Looking down."

I followed his gaze.

There was nothing up there but white plaster and a smoke alarm.

A small round smoke alarm, right above the sofa, with a tiny green light.

The light wasn't blinking.

It was just on. Watching.

"That," Lev said quietly.

His face had gone very still.

"How long has it been there?"

"I don't know." He laughed, and it was a horrible sound. "Three years? Since I moved in. He gave me the keys himself."

I kicked off Kirsty's heels.

I climbed onto his sofa in my bare feet, wobbling on the cushions.

"Hollie, don't."

I reached up.

The alarm came off its plate with a crack, and a thin black wire came with it.

Behind the plastic was a lens no bigger than a lentil.

I yanked until the wire tore out of the ceiling and a little puff of plaster dust fell on my hair.

Then I stood on his sofa holding his father's camera.

"Get down," Lev said. "Please. You'll fall."

"I'm a baker. I stand on things all day."

But I let him lift me down.

His hands stayed on my waist a second longer than they needed to.

I looked at the thing in my palm.

Then I thought about the guard downstairs.

The way he'd typed something into his phone. The way his face had changed when it buzzed.

"He let me up," I said. "The guard. He texted someone and then he let me up."

Lev closed his eyes.

"My father's head of security. He wanted you in this room."

"Why?"

"Because he knew I'd send you away. And he knew if I didn't, he'd have this."

He held up the phone. The photo of me with my legs around him glowed between us.

"Freddie's sister," Lev read out, flat. "He's been waiting three years for me to give him something he could use."

"So get on the plane, or he sends my brother a video."

"Yes."

"And you were going to just go."

"I was always going to go." He looked at me. "Tonight I nearly didn't."

My hands were shaking.

Not from fear. From something hotter and much angrier.

I held out my hand.

"Give me your phone."

"Why?"

"Lev. Give me the phone."

He gave it to me.

I scrolled past Otets and found Freddie.

It rang twice. Behind my brother's voice there was a whole pub singing.

"LEV! You came back! Get down here, you miserable..."

"It's me."

A pause. The singing went on without him.

"Hol? Why have you got Lev's phone?"

"Because I'm at his flat."

The pause got longer.

"I came here to tell him I liked him," I said. "I kissed him. Twice. Somebody took a photo of it and they're going to send it to you. So I wanted you to hear it from me first."

Lev made a sound behind me. I didn't turn round.

"Where are you?" Freddie said. His voice wasn't drunk anymore.

"Thirty-first floor. Third door."

"Don't move."

He hung up.

I put the phone face down on the counter.

Then I picked it back up, opened the message from Otets, and typed.

"Freddie knows. Send him whatever you like."

I pressed send before I could think.

Lev was staring at me.

"You've no idea what you just did."

"I took away the thing he was holding over you."

"He'll find something else."

"Then he'll have to find it. He doesn't get to use me."

I zipped the camera into the little inside pocket of my clutch.

Nobody else needed to see it tonight.

Lev took one step toward me.

Then another, until my back was against the counter.

"Nobody does that," he said. "Nobody tells him no."

"I didn't tell him no. I told him Freddie knows."

He put one hand flat on the counter beside my hip.

He looked at my mouth.

"Your lipstick," I said. "It's all over you."

"I know."

"You should wipe it off before my brother gets here."

"No," he said.

We stood like that for twenty-five minutes.

He made me tea. I drank it sitting on the counter in my bare feet with his jacket round my shoulders.

He told me the flight was at nine ten from Heathrow.

He didn't say if he was getting on it.

Then the lift chimed at the end of the corridor.

Feet. A lot of feet.

Kirsty's laugh, cut off sharp.

The door banged open, because I'd never locked it.

Freddie stood there in his graduation suit with his tie still round his head.

Kirsty was behind him in my trainers, because I had her heels.

Behind her were six or seven lads from the party, still holding pint glasses they'd walked out of the Anchor with.

Freddie looked at me on the counter.

He looked at Lev's jacket on my shoulders.

Then he looked at Lev's mouth, red with my lipstick.

The whole room heard him breathe in.

"Tell me she kissed you," he said. "Tell me you stood there."

Lev didn't look at me.

He looked straight at my brother.

"I kissed her back."

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