Page 34 of The Bratva's Secret Baby
Her breath shudders once, then steadies again. She doesn’t cry. Her fingers twist into my jacket like she’s grounding herself through me, and I let her, even though it tightens something raw in my chest.
I press my brow to hers and hold it there. “We’re leaving,” I say.
She just nods.
We’re halfway down the corridor when I hear boots charging from the far end, and there are too many of them to be handlers. I shove Ana behind me and bring the SMG up.
The first man rounds the corner and I put a burst into his chest, and he drops hard and stays down. The second comes right after him, too close to stop, and I catch him with the next squeeze of the trigger, and he folds where he is.
The third one sprays the hall blindly, and rounds chew into the wall above our heads. I step into the angle, shift left, and put him down before he can get a clear line on us. The hallway stills, and I don’t wait for it to get loud again.
Ana waits until my hand hits her shoulder.
“Go,” I say.
She goes. I follow her. On the way out, I torch the server room. Pull drives. Smash cameras. Set charges where it matters. This place won’t be usable again. By the time we’re in the car, flames are licking the roof.
Ana stares straight ahead as I drive.
“They weren’t going to kill me,” she says.
“I know.”
“They wanted me agreeable.”
“I know.”
She doesn’t ask how I found her. She doesn’t thank me. That’s not who she is.
We clear the city before dawn, and I switch cars once, then again, because Maksim keeps a vehicle waiting at the location I gave him, parked and ready so I don’t have to circle or improvise. The roads thin as we push north, and only then do I notice how tightly I’ve been holding myself since the rescue.
This won’t stay contained. The speed, the precision, the bodies—everything will tell. And someone will audit this. Someone will ask who had the training, the memory, the restraint to do it this way.
And when they do, my name will surface.
9
DOMINIK
After a hit like that, the city doesn’t explode. It keeps moving, and the people who run things make small changes that matter. A number that used to pick up goes dead. A gate that used to open makes you wait. A supplier suddenly “can’t help”. A car you don’t recognize sits on the same street twice. I watch for those things because they tell me whether they’ve clocked what happened and started closing access.
I switch us out of the first car on the edge of town and into the second one Maksim sent for me, a beat-up Lada Niva that doesn’t stand out.
Once we’re inside, I tell Ana to buckle in, then I pull the blanket from the back corner and cover her legs, and I tuck it tight so it won’t slide when we take turns hard. The driver glances back, waits for my nod, and pulls out fast.
I sit beside Ana and keep my eyes on the mirrors while the engine pushes through traffic and heads for the highway without easing up.
My mind keeps returning to the breach. Did I make mistakes? A camera could be placed at an angle I didn’t account for. A mirror catching the car’s plate from a window I didn’t see. It was a rental, the plate swapped, parked three blocks away. By now, one of Maksim’s crew has picked it up and moved it, which means it won’t be sitting where I left it if anyone goes looking. Still.
I don’t hear a tail or catch eyes on us yet, but that doesn’t mean no one’s watching.
And that isn’t the only thing sitting wrongly.
Boris told me he’d text once the corridor cleared. I sent our confirmation code. Nothing comes back, no acknowledgment, no clipped response, not even the usual checkmark. Just silence where there used to be speed. That absence sits wrongly, heavier than a refusal would have.
An hour later, I try Yuri for back routes. The call rings until it dies. A moment after, his number goes dark on the registry. I ask the driver to stay on course anyway, and we head for a corridor I’ve used since before Markov learned how to smile in public. That’s when I see something sitting across the route.
An unmarked roadblock. Men standing loose and watchful, no insignia, no uniforms, just bodies angled to stop anyone who tries to slide past without inspection. A few streets beyond, a patrol sets up a paper check, stopping cars with a focus that’s got nothing to do with routine.
