Page 38 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

I pulled Val behind me before I'd consciously decided to move, years of training overriding whatever confusion the rest of the room was drowning in. My mind was already registering exits and distances.

Emergency lighting flickered on in scattered sections a few seconds later. It was dim and insufficient, throwing everything into an uneven half-light that made shapes and shadows equally impossible to trust.

This wasn't a simple technical failure. It wasn’t a single circuit failing; it was the whole system going down at once.

My earpiece crackled, security comms breaking through static in fragments. Perimeter breached. Multiple points. The muffled sound of splintering wood reached us even through the chaos filling the main hall. Someone was forcing doors somewhere deeper in the estate.

An intrusion, armed and coordinated.

"Stay behind me," I told Val, my hand finding hers and gripping tight enough to keep her anchored against my back as I started moving.

She didn't argue, her whole body trembling faintly even as she kept pace with me through the darkened hall. We moved past panicked guests too disoriented to move efficiently, stepping around a collapsed decorative column that had toppled somewhere in the initial chaos.

Roman found us near the far end of the hall, materializing out of the gloom with an expression of controlled urgency.

"Multiple entry points breached along the perimeter," he said, turning to guide us toward the nearest secured corridor. "East wing, service entrance, and the garden gate all compromised within the same ninety seconds. Whoever's doing this knows the layout. This wasn't improvised."

"How many?"

"Unclear yet. At least six confirmed, possibly more."

Gunfire cracked somewhere outside the main hall, three shots in careful succession rather than a chaotic spray. I identified the direction immediately, adjusting our route toward the secured lower exit Roman had already started clearing.

Val stumbled once, her heel catching against something in the dark, and I caught her without breaking stride, one arm looping around her waist to keep her upright and moving.

"I've got you," I said. "Keep moving."

She nodded, though I doubted she could see the gesture herself in the near-total darkness.

There was no room left in me for flirtation or the careless charm I usually wore through every room I entered. No distraction, no performance. There was only the narrow, focused clarity that came from years of training for moments like this one, every unnecessary thought stripped away until only the essential mechanics of getting her out alive remained.

We passed through a service corridor lit only by the faint red glow of emergency exit signage, shattered glass crunching under our shoes where something decorative had come down during the initial panic. I heard more gunfire behind us, further away now, one of my security teams engaging whoever had breached the east wing.

"Almost there," I told Val, feeling her grip on my jacket tighten further at the sound of the exchange.

By the time we reached the secured lower exit, Roman had already cleared a path toward the evacuation vehicles staged in the estate's private lower lot.

I pushed Val into the back of the first car without pausing to look behind us, slamming the door as the driver already had the vehicle moving before I'd fully settled into the seat.

Roman took the second car, already coordinating with the teams still working to regain control of the estate, his voice low and urgent through the earpiece even as our own car cleared the property's gates and merged onto the main road.

Only once the estate had shrunk to a glow behind us in the rear view mirror did I finally allow myself to look at her properly.

She was alive. Unhurt, as far as I could tell in the dim interior lighting—no visible blood, no obvious injury beyond a small scrape along one forearm where she must have caught it against something in the dark.

But her whole body was trembling in a way that went past simple adrenaline into genuine shock. Her hands were pressed flat against her knees like she was trying to hold herself together through sheer physical pressure.

"Val. Baby." I reached over, taking one of her hands gently, feeling how cold her fingers had gone despite the warm night outside. "You're safe. It's over."

"Is it?" Her voice came out thin, barely holding steady.

“We're out. My men's teams are already working to secure the estate fully. You're safe in this car right now."

She nodded, turning her face from mine to the window.

I sat there beside her, running through everything Roman had reported.

Nothing about tonight seemed like a robbery, or even a targeted assassination attempt against any single guest in that room. This had been staged and timed specifically to hit during the one event guaranteed to gather every important figure connected to my family's operation in a single location.