Page 87 of Forced By the Bratva

“What’re you gonna do now?”

“I’m going to arrange a meeting,” I said. “Disguised. Somewhere he thinks is neutral. Once he’s there, we close the net.”

Iris’s brows lifted. “You’re going to kill him.”

“I’m going to end this once and for all,” I said. “Whatever that requires.”

She didn’t argue; she just locked her jaw with a dark expression.

The pieces had finally coalesced into a shape we could act on. Nexum had a name at the top. The traitors within our own ranks were secured. And the woman standing next to me was no longer just a target someone else had painted.

She was part of the reason we were still standing.

Chapter 29 – Iris

The shipping terminal smelled like oil and cold metal.

From the upper observation corridor, I could see everything through the reinforced glass. A long table sat in the center of the floor. Stacked containers formed a rough perimeter.

Ilya’s men moved in quiet pairs, covering the exits without making it look like a trap.

Ivan stood beside me, arms crossed, eyes on the floor below.

Ilya walked in first. Calm. Controlled, his expression blank and unreadable. Adrian Vale entered a minute later, two men at his back, coat still buttoned, posture easy. He shook Ilya’s hand like they were old partners repairing a small misunderstanding.

I watched him step fully into the light and something in my chest locked.

I knew that face.

Not from the files. From years ago.

Instantly, buried memories came flooding my mind.

I was sixteen. The house felt too quiet that night, the kind of quiet that made the clock in the hallway sound louder than it should.

I’d gone to bed early after arguing with my father about nothing important—curfew, school, the usual. Sometime after midnight I woke to voices downstairs. Not shouting. Low. Careful. I crept to the landing in my socks and looked down through the banister.

My father stood near the front door in his old sweater, one hand on the frame. Another man was on the porch. Tall. Dark coat. I couldn’t see his face clearly from that angle, but I saw the way he stood—still, patient, like he had all the time in the world. They spoke for less than a minute. Then the man left. My father locked the door and went back to his study.

In the morning, the police were in the house. They said it was a suicide. Gunshot. Study door locked from the inside. They were kind in the way adults are kind when they want a child to stop asking questions.

I told them about the man on the porch. I described the coat, the stillness, the late hour. They wrote nothing down. One of them patted my shoulder and said grief played tricks with memory.

I stopped talking about it after that. The funeral came and went. The house was sold. Life moved forward without any answers.

Standing above the terminal now, staring at Adrian Vale’s face under the industrial lights, the memory slammed into me completely. Same stillness. Same patience. The man who had stood on our porch the night before they found my father dead.

My father had never killed himself. This man had murdered him in cold blood and made it look like suicide.

Ivan noticed first. “Iris. What is it?”

I didn’t answer. My hand moved before the rest of me caught up. I pulled the gun from the holster at his hip and took off.

“Iris, wait!” He ran after me.

I shoved the door open and took the metal stairs down two at a time. Boots rang on the steel. Every head on the floor turned. Weapons shifted. Ilya’s men tensed. Vale’s men reached inside their coats.

“Vale!” I raised the gun with both hands. The barrel shook, but I kept it on him. “Gimme one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now!”