Page 32 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

“Security with you at all times, no exceptions, even for a five-minute walk down the street. Shifts only during hours I can personally account for where you are.”

“That’s more than a dozen conditions folded into two sentences.”

“I never claimed to be economical with my terms.” A faint smile crossed his face, brief but genuine. “I can add more if it makes the negotiation feel more balanced.”

“No, thank you.”

I considered it, weighing the loss of freedom in his terms against the alternative of staying locked inside that penthouse indefinitely, slowly losing whatever remained of the person I’d been before any of this started.

“That works.”

“You’re certain?”

“I am. This isn’t surrender, is it? What we just did.”

“No.” Something almost like approval flickered behind his tired eyes. “It’s negotiation. There’s a difference, and I’m glad you’re starting to see it.”

Then he added, “This is not about controlling you, Val. It’s about controlling the variables I actually have some power over.”

I nodded, smiling up at him as we walked back toward the car, his hand finding mine again without either of us commenting on it.

Chapter Fourteen

Dmitri

Nikolai called me down to one of the secured offices beneath the casino complex the following afternoon. And from the moment I walked in, I understood this wasn’t going to be a conversation about routine security updates.

The room was colder than usual, even accounting for Nikolai’s general preference for temperature settings that made most people reach for a jacket. He sat behind the desk with his tablet already open, no drink poured, no small talk offered, which told me everything about how seriously he was taking whatever he’d found before I’d said a single word.

“The raid on the poker operation wasn’t random,” he said, without preamble. He never wasted time easing into bad news because he believed that delay didn’t soften anything for the person receiving it.

“I assumed as much.”

“It was orchestrated.” I sat, and he shifted the tablet toward me, showing me a web of financial irregularities and timing overlaps laid out in his methodical style. “Communication trails, external contacts, timing that lines up too precisely with our own internal schedule to be coincidence. Someone planned this months in advance, coordinated the federal pressure with the raid itself, and built in enough redundancy that even losing the initial attempt wouldn’t have set them back significantly.”

“Who?”

“Adrian Vale.”

The name landed with some weight. It was familiar enough that I didn’t need Nikolai to explain who he was, though the recognition sharpened into something colder the longer I sat there. Vale ran a rival operation two territories over, old money dressed up as new money, the kind of man who’d spent a decade quietly building alliances with anyone who had a grievance against our family without ever making his own hostility obvious enough to act against directly.

I didn’t react the way Nikolai seemed to expect. I showed no surprise, no anger flaring up visibly. Just an unsettling calm as the pieces I’d already half assembled clicked into place with the rest of what he was showing me.

“Vale isn’t acting alone,” Nikolai continued, watching me carefully. “The scale of this required people inside our own operation feeding him information. But he’s the one directing the movement. The breach in your systems, the raid itself, likely whatever’s still coming, all of it traces back to him.”

“I already knew.”

Nikolai’s eyebrow rose slightly, the closest he ever came to open surprise. “You didn’t mention that.”

“He’s never made a direct move against us before. Not once, in ten years of circling. I made the mistake of assuming that meant he lacked either the resources or the appetite for it.” I closed the file on the tablet, handing it back to him. “Clearly I was wrong on both counts.”

“What are you planning to do with this?”

“Talk to him directly.”

“That’s not a plan, Dmitri, that’s an escalation disguised as conversation.”

“It’s both.” I stood, already feeling the focused clarity that came right before I moved on something instead of simply gathering information about it. “He needs to understand I know. Whatever comes after that depends entirely on how he responds.”