Page 117 of Bratva Brother’s Bride

“We have something to show you,” she says.

She places the ledger on the table and leaves it closed. Konstantin’s eyes drop immediately to the leather cover. Only for a second. But I see it, and so does Vera.

“You know what this is,” she says.

He leans back, unbothered. “I know an old book when I see one.”

“Mm. Interesting.” She slides it toward the center of the table. “You went pale over something you don’t recognize.”

Across the table, Pavel’s gaze sharpens.

Konstantin smiles. “Dramatics do not become you, Vera.”

“Neither does lying, apparently.”

A murmur moves through the elders. Pavel reaches for the ledger before Vera can, and I let him. They’ll believe one of their own before they believe my wife.

Pavel opens the cover and begins turning pages. His expression doesn’t change at first. Then his brow furrows, and the elder beside him leans in to look.

“What is this?” he asks.

“That,” Vera says, “is Dmitri’s private record of his operations.”

Konstantin gives a dismissive laugh. “My dead son’s handwriting in an old book proves nothing.”

“Then let’s not rely on his handwriting.” Vera places a thin stack of documents beside the ledger: bank records, shipping manifests, the financial files we pulled from Dmitri’s study. Not accusations. Corroboration. “The dates in the ledger match the transfers in those accounts. The amounts match. The shipping numbers match manifests Roman recovered weeks ago.”

One of the elders looks up sharply. “Shipments of what?”

Vera’s jaw tightens. She doesn’t answer.

Pavel does. “People.” He turns another page. “Women.” Another. “Children.”

Silence settles across the table, heavy and ugly. There are rules even men like us obey: lines that separate criminals from animals. Pavel slowly raises his eyes to Konstantin. “Did you know?”

Konstantin leans back in his chair. “Dmitri ran his own affairs.”

Not a denial. I see several elders notice it, too, and so does Vera. She lets the silence expose him before she goes on. “Dmitri wasn’t working alone.” She nods toward the ledger.

Pavel flips farther through it himself. His finger stops. “Anton Grishin.” He reads the name aloud, and another elder reaches for the page.

Pavel keeps going, quieter now. Anton’s initials beside transfers, dates, payments, instructions. Fabricated evidence, planted. Witnesses paid off.

I know these entries without needing to see them. I lived the other side of every line.

Pavel looks toward me. “These dates...”

“Are the weeks before I was accused,” I finish.

Konstantin’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t break. Of course he doesn’t. My father has spent a lifetime watching other people bleed without allowing so much as a wrinkle in his suit.

“This proves Dmitri and Anton conspired against Roman,” he says. “Nothing more.”

For a moment, nobody contradicts him. And there it is. The problem with truth is that it doesn’t win just because you put it on a table. These men have followed my father for decades. Some owe him their positions, some their lives, and a few probably owe him bodies buried where no one will ever find them.

Pavel closes the ledger, and my stomach drops. Konstantin sees it, and smiles.

“You came here expecting a book written by a dead man to overthrow thirty years of leadership?” he asks me. “Siberia has made you more foolish than I thought.”