Page 30 of The Bratva Sinner

Damien crosses his arms. “Tell him what you told me.”

Briar takes a breath. "I was at the club last night with one of my clients. I didn't realize he was Albanian until he started talking. He must have gotten in under the radar somehow. Had to be a low-level guy. Got drunk and started talking. He was goingon about how Bekir fucked up some delivery. He said Arlind is furious. That he won't let it go."

Not Bekir. Arlind Derveshi. The man at the top of the Albanian food chain in this city.

“Go on,” I say.

"He said the girl was promised to Arlind years ago. That Bekir had her at your club, and you took her. He said you humiliated the Albanians in front of everyone."

I knew pulling Lila out would cause problems, but I didn’t think it would escalate this quickly.

Briar shakes her head. “He made it clear Arlind won't stop until he gets what he wants."

“Lila,” Damien says flatly.

“And revenge,” Briar adds. “My guy said Arlind doesn’t forgive disrespect. Ever.”

I run a hand through my hair. This is exactly what I didn’t need. Arlind Derveshi is not a street-level thug I can pay off or intimidate.

“Do you know how they found her?” I ask.

She nods. “My client told me he found her. He’s a computer guru. Set up a program to crawl the internet looking for images of her.”

“She was taken away when she was a child,” I say.

“He wrote a program that aged her. Some AI thing.”

“Fuck,” I hiss.

“She posted some pictures on Instagram or something.” Briar shrugs.

I wonder if she knows. Fucking social media. How stupid. I want to yell at her. She should have been smarter. Then again, she was probably just trying to live her life. She had no idea her father had sold her.

“Thank you, Briar,” I say. “You did good telling us.”

She nods and disappears down the hallway.

I turn to Damien. He’s shaking his head.

“Don’t,” I say.

“I’m going to,” he replies. “You’re the brother of a pakhan. You know how this works. You don’t take another man’s property. You don’t humiliate him in public. And you sure as hell don’t bring that property into your house and protect it like it’s yours.”

“She’s not property.”

“She is to him. She is to everyone in this world. You broke the rules, Maksim. For what? One girl?” He steps closer. “There are thousands of girls out there. We save who we can. That’s always been the rule. We don’t risk everything for one.”

“She’s different.”

“How?” His voice rises. “How is she different? Because she’s pretty? Because she looked at you with those big blue eyes and said ‘please’?”

I don’t have an answer that makes sense. Not one that I can put into words that won’t sound ridiculous.

Just the image of her on that floor. I've watched women in worse situations go completely still. Shut down. Survive by disappearing inside themselves. She didn't do that. She was half out of her mind on whatever they gave her, beaten and barely coherent, and she was still fighting. Not performing. Not calculating. Just refusing. Like she couldn't conceive of any other option.

“I couldn’t leave her there,” I say finally.

“Yes, you could have. You’ve done it before. We all have.” He’s not wrong. I’ve walked away from situations I knew were bad. I’ve had to. “So, what is it about her? Why is she worth starting a war over?”