Page 17 of Bratva Baby

“Has there been a misunderstanding?” Pavel asks as he flops into the chair.

“You know fucking well what the misunderstanding is. I’m going to give you one shot at clearing it up.” I say, looming over him.

He glances at my arm, at the tattoo stretched across my shoulder and upper arm, and swallows.

“It’s old-style Russian criminal iconography,” I say smoothly. “It marks loyalty. It also marks a life sentence in the underworld.”

Pavel lets out a laugh that tries for embarrassment. “The quarter was messy. A few entries lagged. My accountant’s an idiot.”

“Kill him if he’s stealing from you,” I reply shortly. “But that won’t explain why you’re stealing from us.”

His face blanches as I push a thin file across the desk. Pavel looks down, then back up. “This can be fixed.”

“It already is,” I say. “The question is whether it gets fixed cleanly.”

He swallows once. “How much?”

I snort. Correction is a number. It’s also a reputation.

I push off the sideboard and take a chair across from him. Sitting lowers the temperature and frightens men more.

“You skimmed from a Brotherhood channel,” I say. “You delayed tribute, then you let a woman at the bar tell one of my people you were tired of provincial debt collectors reaching into Prague.”

His eyes lift to mine, bloodshot and already calculating. “That was drunk talk.”

I don’t even blink. “I don’t care.”

He wets his lips, glances once at the door, then back at me like he’s still trying to find a version of this room where I’m negotiable. “I can pay back double.”

A laugh leaves me, short and dry. I straighten from the desk and smooth one cuff with my thumb. “You’ll pay back triple.”

He stares. “Triple?”

“You heard me.”

“That’s absurd.”

I move before the last word fully leaves his mouth. My hand closes around his left wrist—not the one he needs to write—and I twist hard. The crack that follows is satisfyingly audible. Pavel howls and half rises from the chair, but I yank him forward and keep hold of the broken hand.

“No,” I say quietly. “What’s absurd is thinking Prague puts distance between you and our money.”

He’s panting now, face gone gray around the mouth. Sweat breaks along his upper lip. “Anton, listen, I only took a little, and I was going to settle it.”

“A little,” I repeat, like I’m testing the shape of the lie. I shove him back down, then catch his shoulder and drive his arm flat across the desk. Papers slide. A glass tips and spills amber across wood. My other hand presses the back of his neck until his cheek grinds against the polished surface.

He curses, voice breaking.

“You skimmed bottle service, padded security invoices, and bled cash through fake event costs,” I say. “You stole in small amounts because you thought small meant invisible.”

His breathing turns ragged.

I lean closer, my mouth near his ear. “Three fingers, or triple payment. You choose.”

He goes very still.

That’s the thing men like Pavel never understand until it’s too late. A channel survives because the penalty arrives faster than the excuse. Once people learn that, you don’t have to explain the rules twice.

“Triple,” he chokes out.