Page 64 of Forced By the Bratva

Boris and Yuri stepped forward, removing the man without a struggle. No one at the table looked at anyone else for a long time after that.

When the last of the guests left, I went upstairs without waiting for him. I needed space to clear my head.

I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to sort through the feeling that had been building all evening. It wasn’t a simple fear.

I’d seen violence from him before. What unsettled me was how easily the shift happened. How the man who adjusted blankets and brought tea could become someone capable of that kind of calm, public destruction without any visible effort.

A few minutes later, I heard the door open and close. He didn’t speak right away. He just stood there a moment, leaning against the door frame and watching me.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Don’t you think you were hard on him?” I turned to him, meeting his gaze.

“Who? Yevgeni?” He raised his brows. “Trust me, he wasn’t even invited.”

“You humiliated him, Ilya,” I said softly.

“I did, didn’t I?” He pushed off the door frame and crossed the room with a few long strides.

“You didn’t have to,” I insisted. “It’s okay for people to disagree with you.”

He halted in front of me. “Do you think I was hard on him because he disagreed with me?”

I thought for a second. “Is there another reason?”

“You, me, and Ivan are the only people who know about the missing funds,” he said.

Slowly, the realization set in and my heart skipped a beat. “He wasn’t supposed to have that information because it’s not public yet.”

“Exactly,” Ilya said. “Did you also notice that when he started talking, the rest of the men at the table suddenly lost their composure?”

I had. I’d noticed the covert glances they exchanged.

He was quiet for a few seconds. Then he sat in the chair near the window, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped.

“This world doesn’t run on trust,” he said. “That’s why I made a list of the people I suspected had a hand in this and invited them all to have dinner at my place.”

“You planned this?” I asked, amused.

“It was a trap. And they walked right into it,” he replied. “We might not have the identity of the traitor. But at least we now know everyone at the table tonight knows something.”

I was impressed. Very impressed.

“Now what?” I asked him.

“We wait,” he answered. “They know I’m on to them, and it’s only a matter of time before one of them makes a mistake. And when they do, I’ll be here.”

Ilya’s approach was smart. He handled the situation with the wisdom of a man who knows the game like the back of his hand.

After a while, he stood and came closer. I was still sitting on the edge of the bed. My sweater had twisted slightly at the collar during the evening; I hadn’t noticed.

He reached out and straightened it with two fingers, tugging the fabric back into place near my neck. The touch was brief. Almost absentminded.

He didn’t pull his hand away immediately; instead, he let the tips of his fingers rest against the side of my neck for a second longer than necessary. Warm. Steady.

Something in my chest pulled tight.

I’d spent weeks telling myself that the softness was temporary, that it was strategy or habit or nothing more than the byproduct of proximity.