Page 67 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

I held onto that story tightly. To the hope it carried.

Mikhail arrived shortly after, the weight of leadership visible in every controlled movement, though something in his eyes carried a genuine fear I’d never seen from him before. He studied his brother for a long moment before speaking quietly to Roman, coordinating something about security around the facility, about managing whatever fallout the operation might still generate through the family’s usual channels.

“He’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” he told me, his tone certain.

I nodded, wanting to believe him.

Viktor and Alexei arrived looking more shaken than I’d ever seen them, their usual sharp edges absent, replaced by something rawer that they clearly struggled to keep contained. They said little, mostly looking out the window and pacing slowly.

Elena, Sofia, and Isla arrived together sometime near dawn, immediately pulling me into gentle, careful embraces, understanding without needing explanation exactly what kind of comfort I needed.

Isla sat with me for a while, holding my hand, sharing quiet, steadying stories about times she’d sat in rooms like this one herself, waiting for a Golovin man to prove, once again, that this family survived things that should have killed them outright.

“They’re stubborn,” she said, something almost fond in her tired voice. “All of them. It’s infuriating, and it’s also, somehow, exactly what gets them through nights like this one.”

Camila arrived as soon as I’d managed to text her, abandoning her shift the moment she’d read my message, and the sight of her familiar face crossing that sterile hallway toward me broke something loose in my chest that I’d been holding tightly contained for hours.

She didn’t say anything useful or reassuring. She simply pulled me into a fierce, tight hug, holding me while I finally let myself cry properly for the first time since Roman had appeared in our doorway.

“I got here as fast as I could,” she said, pulling back just enough to study my face. “God, Val, look at you. When did you last eat anything?”

“I don’t remember.”

“That’s what I thought.” She guided me toward a chair near the wall, sitting me down. “I brought you something. You don’t have to eat much, but you’re going to eat something.”

“Camila, I can’t—”

“You can, and you will, because passing out from exhaustion isn’t going to help him, and it’s certainly not going to help me, watching you fall apart on top of everything else happening tonight.” Her voice softened slightly, some of the forced briskness giving way to genuine worry. “Let me take care of you for a few minutes. Please. It’s the only thing I actually know how to do right now.”

I managed a few bites, more to satisfy her rather than any real hunger, though the small act of caring for my body made me feel lighter after. Like things would be normal again.

“He’s going to be okay,” she said finally.

“You don’t know that.”

“No. But I know you, and I know that man, even from the outside looking in. Neither of you strikes me as the type to give up on something this important without a fight.”

No one in that room tried to comfort me with false certainty. Nobody offered the hollow reassurance that everything would definitely be fine. Instead, each of them had offered something quieter and more honest, their own memories of watching this family survive impossible things, their own stubborn faith built not on blind hope but on years of watching Dmitri specifically refuse to accept defeat when defeat seemed like the only reasonable outcome.

Because everyone in that room understood something fundamental about the man lying unconscious in that bed.

Dmitri Golovin didn’t survive by luck.

He survived by will, the same stubborn determination that had carried him through decades of this kind of danger.

“You promised me,” I whispered at one point, when the room had finally emptied enough that only Camila remained dozing quietly in the corner chair. “You promised me you’d come back. I need you to actually mean that, Dmitri. I need you to fight your way back to me, the same way you’ve fought your way through everything else this world has thrown at you.”

His hand didn’t move. His breathing stayed the same steady, machine-assisted rhythm it had carried since I’d first arrived. But I stayed there anyway, holding on, refusing to let go of either his hand or the stubborn hope that had settled into my chest despite every reasonable argument for despair.

The doctors came through periodically, checking monitors, adjusting medication, offering measured updates that gave me neither full reassurance nor genuine cause for panic. Stable, for now. Vitals holding steady. The next several hours would tell us more than anything they could currently predict.

I held onto stable like it was the only word that mattered in the entire English language.

This silence cannot be final.

It dare not be.

Chapter Thirty