Page 34 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

Vale’s easy composure cracked slightly, something colder emerging from underneath the practiced amusement. “You should be careful about the accusations you make, Dmitri.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything you haven’t already confirmed simply by how carefully you’re avoiding a direct denial.”

He held my gaze, and for a moment neither of us spoke, the polite fiction we’d both been maintaining starting to slip away entirely.

“Stay away from my operations,” I told him plainly, no longer bothering with careful diplomacy. “Stay away from my people. Stay away from anything connected to the poker network, the clubs, or anyone who works for my family. If I find another trace of you anywhere near my systems, I won’t be nearly this polite the next time we speak.”

“That’s a bold threat for a man whose own house isn’t fully secure yet.”

“My house is considerably more secure than you’re giving me credit for.”

“Is it?” Something sharper slid into his expression now, the mask finally dropping enough to show what had been underneath it the whole time. “Loyalty inside our world is always conditional, Dmitri. You know that better than most.”

“So is survival,” I said simply. “And I’ve survived considerably worse than you circling my family for a decade without the nerve to move directly.”

We stared at each other a moment longer, the tension between us fully exposed now. Neither of us moved to escalate it further, but the message had been delivered clearly enough on both sides.

I stood, buttoning my jacket, and left without another word, feeling his eyes on my back the entire way to the door.

Roman was waiting in the car when I finally emerged, reading my expression correctly before I’d said anything at all.

“That went about as well as I expected.”

“Vale confirmed it without confirming it. Same careful game he’s always played, right up until I mentioned Val, and then he showed exactly how deliberate this whole conversation actually was.”

“He went after her.”

“Implied I was compromised because of her. Implied my judgment couldn’t be trusted anymore now that I had something to lose beyond the family.” I stared out the window as the car pulled away from the club, the building disappearing behind us into the glow of the Strip. “He’s wrong about the specifics. He’s not entirely wrong about the stakes, though. I do have something to lose now that I didn’t have a month ago.”

“Does that change anything about how you’re handling this?”

“No,” I said it with more certainty than I probably felt. “If anything, it sharpens exactly how far I’m willing to go to make sure he never gets close enough to test that theory properly.”

“What about the person feeding him information from inside our own operation? Vale can’t have built this alone, not with the level of institutional detail Nikolai’s pulled up.”

“I know. That’s the piece I still don’t have, and it worries me more than Vale himself does, honestly. Vale’s an external threat. Dangerous, patient, but external. Whoever’s been feeding him from the inside is someone who’s had access to my life for longer than I’ve been comfortable considering.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t have proof yet, only instinct.” I rubbed at my eyes, exhaustion finally catching up with the adrenaline that had carried me through the last few hours. “Roman, I need you to widen the review again. Anyone with contact to Vale’s territory, anyone who’s had reason to travel there in the last year, cross-referenced against the access logs from the breach.”

“That’s a considerably bigger list than what we started with.”

“I know. Start it anyway.”

Whatever came next, I intended to make certain none of it reached her before I’d already dealt with it myself.

This was no longer internal suspicion; it was war.

Chapter Fifteen

Valentina

Returning to the lounge felt like stepping back into a shoe that no longer quite fit.

Everything looked the same. The same low lighting, same velvet chairs, same murmur of chips clicking against felt tables. But I also noticed things now that I’d never noticed before, from the rotation pattern of security along the walls and the coded half-glances dealers exchanged whenever a table’s stakes climbed too high too fast to the invisible thread of danger running underneath every polished surface in the room. I’d worked inside it for three years without ever fully seeing it. Now I couldn’t stop seeing it, no matter how hard I tried to lose myself back in the familiar rhythm of the floor.

Still, being outside the penthouse helped me breathe in a way I hadn’t expected. The weight of those walls, however comfortable, however carefully Dmitri had tried to make them feel like a home rather than a cage, had settled into my chest over the last several weeks.