Page 84 of Forced By the Bratva

No one looked at me like I was still the outsider who’d been brought in under force. Boris answered my questions directly.

Yuri didn’t hesitate when I asked for clarification on the tracking.

Even Ivan, who’d spent weeks treating me like a liability, spoke to me as if my conclusions mattered.

The change wasn’t dramatic. It just existed now, quiet and solid, in the way they waited for me to finish speaking before they added their own pieces.

I was no longer inside this system because someone had decided I couldn’t leave. I was inside it because I was useful. Because I saw what they missed. Because the same mind that had dragged me into this world was now helping keep it from collapsing from the inside.

The files on the desk, the names on the photographs, the quiet confirmation that Nexum was real—all of it had my fingerprints on it.

I’d found the first patterns. I’d pushed when the others wanted to dismiss them. I’d run through gunfire to secure the package that finally gave them names.

That made me part of this.

And I was so proud of this version of myself.

I was no longer just Ilya’s wife on paper anymore. No longer the woman he kept behind high walls for my own protection. No. I was part of the work now.

I was part of the inner circle that sat in this office and decided what came next. I was part of the organization that would hunt Yevgeni and Markov down before they could disappear.

I, once Iris Hart, was now part of the family that, for better or worse, now had a reason to keep me alive beyond obligation.

I looked at Ilya across the desk. He was already watching me, a hint of pride flickering in his gaze.

“We’ll need to move fast,” he said. “Once we have their location, we don’t wait.”

“You do realize I’ll be tagging along, right?” I leaned back in my chair, lips curling into a mischievous smirk.

He held my gaze for a second, then nodded once. No argument this time. He didn’t remind me to stay in the car. Just acceptance.

Boris closed the folder. Yuri checked his phone. And Ivan said something about additional men at the ports. The room kept moving around me, but I was no longer standing on the edge of it.

I was in it.

For the first time since the night Ilya had walked into my life, that fact didn’t feel like a cage. It felt like solid ground.

Chapter 28 – Ilya

Yevgeni and Markov were brought in just after dawn.

We’d caught them at the private airstrip outside the city, bags packed, false documents already stamped.

They’d been hours from wheels-up when Boris’s team closed the net. By the time they reached the warehouse, there was no fight left in them. Just the dull acceptance of men who knew the math had finally turned against them.

The room was the same one we always used for this kind of work. Concrete walls. A single metal table bolted to the floor. Two chairs on their side, one on mine.

A bare bulb hung overhead but never flickered. No windows. The air smelled of old dust and the sharp cleaner someone had used on the floor the night before.

A camera in the corner recorded everything, but I didn’t need the footage. I needed answers.

I sat across from them and let the silence stretch. Yevgeni kept his eyes on the table. Markov stared at a point somewhere past my shoulder.

Both still wore the clothes they’d been grabbed in—expensive, wrinkled, the kind of outfits men chose when they thought they’d be on a plane by morning.

“You know why you’re here,” I said.

Neither answered.