Page 43 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

“Come on, I’m simply well connected.”

“You are.”

I said it plainly, watching him carefully for whatever reaction the accusation would produce. He didn’t flinch the way an innocent man might have.

He left without another word, and I stood there in the quiet living room for a long moment afterward, feeling the calm settle over me.

I called Roman immediately.

“I need full containment protocols initiated. Now.”

“On who?”

“Varley Karelin.”

“Varley?” he asked, surprised.

“Yes. He practically confirmed it himself, standing in my own living room.”

“Understood. I’ll have a team moving within the hour.” Roman’s voice was all business, all the careful precision this situation actually demanded. “What level of containment are we talking about?”

I considered the question for exactly as long as it took to remember every uncomfortable conversation Varley had steered in that boardroom meeting weeks earlier, every careful suggestion he’d made about locking Val away and interrogating her, every moment of manufactured concern that had actually been calculated exposure dressed up as loyalty.

“Full containment,” I said. “This isn’t suspicion anymore, Roman.”

“What is it, then?”

I looked out toward the window Varley had been standing near minutes earlier, the city glittering below.

“It’s elimination,” I said.

Whatever this cost the family in the coming days, whatever ripple it sent through the operational structure Varley had helped run for three decades, it was necessary. And necessary things rarely came without weight attached.

It doesn’t change the consequence, anyway.

Elimination it is.

Chapter Nineteen

Valentina

I went back to work that evening under a level of security so carefully calibrated that most of the guests probably never noticed it at all. It was subtle enough not to disturb the ordinary rhythm of the floor, but present enough that I felt watched every single moment I moved between tables.

I’d hesitated at the door before my shift started, some instinct warning me the night carried a different weight than usual, though I couldn’t have named the feeling clearly enough to act on it. I’d told myself it was simply nerves left over from the reception attack, suppressing the feeling.

Dmitri came too, positioned in a private alcove near the back wall with clear sightlines across the entire floor—the vantage point I’d learned meant he wasn’t there simply to relax with a drink. He was quieter than usual, focused in a way that felt different from his normal, sharp attentiveness. There was something heavier underneath it that I couldn’t quite name.

I noticed it almost immediately. Several weeks of learning to read the small shifts in his mood had made me sensitive to this kind of quiet. I understood it as the stillness that settled over him whenever something significant was moving beneath the surface of an otherwise ordinary night.

I found a brief lull between tables and crossed toward him, unable to leave the unease alone any longer.

“Is something wrong?”

He looked at me for a long moment, and I saw something unreadable passing behind his eyes before he answered, “You’ll understand soon.”

The vagueness of it was not lost on me, but I’d learned not to push when he retreated into this kind of careful silence. Whatever he was carrying tonight, he’d tell me in his own time—the way he always eventually did.

Camila caught me near the bar a few minutes later, refilling a tray of drinks with her usual easy efficiency.