Page 51 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

“The island.”

He nodded slowly. “I’ll start arranging transport. Quietly.”

“Good.”

He left without further comment, and I sat back down beside Val, watching her sleep for a while longer.

I thought about the moment right before the attack started. About the quiet truth we’d finally spoken to each other in our bedroom, the vulnerability of telling her I cared about her for the first time only to have the world explode around us moments later. I wondered whether some part of me had known, even then, that saying it out loud carried its own kind of risk, that admitting how much she mattered to me made her a considerably larger target than she’d already become.

I didn’t regret saying it. I regretted the timing and hated the cruelty of a universe that seemed determined to test our every moment of genuine tenderness with immediate violence.

Val stirred sometime later, a disoriented sound escaping her as consciousness slowly returned. I shifted closer immediately, my hand finding her shoulder, grounding her before the confusion of waking up among chaos could fully spike into panic.

Her eyes opened slowly, unfocused for a moment, searching the room before finally landing on my face.

“Dmitri.”

“I’m here.”

“Is it really over?”

“The attack is over. The building’s secure. Vale’s men are either dead or detained.” I kept my voice low and steady as I added, “You’re safe.”

She sighed, her hand finding mine where it rested against her shoulder, gripping it tight enough that I felt her pulse still racing beneath her skin.

The first thing I said to her, once I was certain she was fully present, wasn’t reassurance.

“I’m sorry.”

She blinked at me, clearly not expecting that. “For what?”

“For putting you in a position where this could happen inside what was supposed to be the safest place in this entire city. That safe room was meant to protect you, and Vale walked through its locks like they were nothing, because I failed to close a vulnerability I should have closed the moment I confirmed Varley’s betrayal. That’s not on Vale or some abstract failure of the system. That’s on me.”

Val tried to respond, her mouth opening, but her voice caught somewhere in her throat. Whatever she’d meant to say dissolved into a quiet, broken sound instead.

“Come here,” I told her, my voice low, already pulling her onto my lap.

She rested her head against my shoulder, and I pulled her closer without hesitation, wrapping my arms around her fully, holding her in a way that stripped away every ounce of composure I usually maintained in front of anyone else. There was no arrogance left in me in that moment, no careless charm, nothing except exhaustion and a quiet, burning anger at the entire situation that had put her in that room in the first place.

After a long moment, I pulled back just enough to look at her properly. My decision solidified as I thought of the safe room’s compromised codes again.

“We’re leaving,” I said. “For a few days. Somewhere Vale has no way to reach either of us.”

She looked up at me, her confusion clearing slowly into something more attentive. “Leaving where?”

“We can’t solve this standing inside a target, Val. Vale’s escalated past internal infiltration into direct, physical attacks on our home. Staying in Las Vegas gives him more opportunities, not fewer, every single day we remain reachable.”

“So where do we go?”

“My island.”

She blinked at that. “You have an island?”

“A private one, off the coast, far removed from anything connected to our usual operations that Vale has no infrastructure there at all. No networks he can breach. No surveillance vulnerabilities he can exploit. No access points he can use without announcing his presence from miles away.” I watched her carefully, gauging how she was taking this on top of everything else the night had given her. “It’s not a solution. It’s a withdrawal. A chance to regroup somewhere he can’t reach either of us while Roman and Nikolai work the actual problem from here.”

“Is it actually safe? Or just safer than here?”

“It’s safe. Nothing is absolute in this world. But it’s isolated enough that reaching it requires resources and planning Vale hasn’t had time to build. A boat, or a private plane, both of which we control access to completely. He’d need weeks to even locate it, let alone stage anything against it.”