Page 42 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

“You, me, Nikolai, Mikhail, and the four men on the operational team. Nobody else had the specific date and location together in the same conversation.”

“Val.”

The name left my mouth before I’d fully decided to say it out loud. I felt Roman go still beside me, clearly waiting to see where I intended to take it.

“She didn’t have the specifics,” I said almost immediately. “I told her a strike was coming. I never told her when, or where. And even if she had known, the pattern doesn’t match her at all. This required someone canceling a scheduled game, coordinating with staff, clearing a building on short notice without raising suspicion inside Vale’s own organization. That’s not panic or accidental disclosure. That’s someone with actual authority, acting deliberately.”

“You’re certain.”

“I’m certain enough. She doesn’t think like this, Roman. Whatever else this marriage has complicated, I know exactly how her mind works by now, and this isn’t it.”

“Then we’re looking at someone else with access to the operational circle. Or someone adjacent to it who picked up enough to guess.”

“Or someone who’s been feeding Vale information for considerably longer than we’ve understood.”

“Pull the team back,” I said finally. “Quietly. No engagement, nothing that confirms to whoever’s watching that we know the operation was compromised.”

“And you?”

“I’m going back to the penthouse. I need to think this through properly, away from the noise of tonight.”

The drive back gave me more time than I wanted to sit with the growing list of names circling in my head, narrowing steadily as I cross-referenced access and opportunity against everyone who’d had even partial exposure to the planning conversations over the last two weeks. Most of the operational team I trusted completely, men who’d been with the family for a decade or more, whose loyalty had been tested in situations far more dangerous than a canceled poker night. That left a narrower circle, people close enough to overhear fragments without being formally briefed, people whose access to the penthouse or the security offices might have let them piece together more than any single conversation should have revealed.

I ran through the list methodically. Staff at the penthouse, vetted years ago, none of them showing any unusual activity in their histories. Members of the extended security detail who rotated through various properties, several of whom had contact with Vale’s territory through entirely legitimate business, any one of them theoretically capable of passing information along without ever fully understanding what they were compromising.

I didn’t speak much on the ride, running the same mental exercise Viktor had taught me over a decade earlier: when a piece of information didn’t fit, you didn’t force it into the shape you wanted; you kept turning it over until the actual shape revealed itself.

By the time I reached the penthouse, I still didn’t have a name. I had a narrowing set of possibilities and a controlled, simmering anger that I kept carefully contained rather than let show on my face. It was a discipline that had kept me alive through considerably worse nights than this one. But now, it was a skill I used because of the woman I was coming home to. Because I didn’t want to give her another reason to be worried.

Varley was already in the main living area when I walked in.

The sight of him there tightened something instinctive in my chest. He stood near the window with a drink in hand, relaxed and composed.

“Dmitri.” He turned, offering the familiar warmth he always did. “Long night.”

Varley was not just staff. He was one of those men who watched me work to gain a hold of what I called my empire today. He was one of those, aside from family, who didn’t discourage my reckless tendencies. Roman often called him my ‘professional uncle.’ So he was one of the few staff members who could show up in my penthouse without the fear of being carried out horizontally.

“You could say that.”

“I understand there was quite a bit riding on tonight.” He said it lightly, almost conversationally.

“More than a bit,” I answered.

“Games get canceled more commonly than you might think at Vale’s pub. It’s nothing.”

I stood very still.

Because Varley had never been told about the operation. Not directly, in any conversation where I’d personally briefed him. Not indirectly, through any channel Roman or Nikolai would have used to loop in someone outside the operational circle. The strike had been confined entirely.

Varley shouldn’t have known at all, let alone that the game had been canceled.

The silence stretched between us as the realization settled. I saw his eyes move warily for a second as he realized he’d slipped.

“How did you hear that?” I asked, keeping my voice level, giving nothing away yet.

“Word travels, Dmitri. You know how this business is. Everyone in this world hears things eventually,” he answered lightly.

“Not everyone hears about a canceled game at a rival’s private pub the same night it was canceled, before I’ve even mentioned it to my own family.”