Page 6 of Bratva Stalker Kidnaps His Bride

She is no longer a variable. She is standing eight feet behind me in a place I built to be secure, and her refusal to step back when I released her is sitting somewhere in my chest in a position I do not have a name for.

She has introduced something into this operation that I did not prepare for.

The room is mine; the situation is mine. I control what happens next. I have done what I came to Dubai to do. She is alive, she is contained, and she is no longer in a position where the Irish syndicate can reach her.

But she is in it now.

Chapter 3 - Zara

Mikhail’s penthouse sits high enough that the city below me begins to lose its humanity.

From up here, New York stops looking like millions of individual lives colliding in beautiful, chaotic friction and starts looking more like arteries of light pulsing through concrete, traffic signals blinking in measured intervals, glass towers reflecting one another until the skyline feels like an endless hall of mirrors.

Distance does strange things to perspective. It smooths rough edges and makes noise look like order.

That, I think, is what this place is designed to do: create the illusion of order.

The penthouse is exactly what I would expect from Mikhail Korovin if someone translated him into a building, expensive without trying to be impressive yet minimal without feeling empty.

Dark stone, steel, smoked glass, clean angles, nothing soft. Even luxury here feels weaponized somehow, stripped of indulgence.

Never mind that a beautiful prison is still a prison.

Three days have passed since we returned to New York City from Dubai, and Mikhail has made his expectations painfully clear without needing to repeat them:

I am not leaving, not alone, not at all, if he can help it.

He said it in the same deadpan tone he uses, expecting zero rebuttals. Men who rely on shouting need volume because they lack certainty and control; Mikhail never raises his voice. He speaks all self-assured, with the assumption that resistance is temporary and ultimately irrelevant.

Which becomes his first mistake.

My gaze drifts from the windows to the reflection layered over them. My own face stares back, ghosted over the skyline. The exhaustion beneath my eyes has deepened in the past few days, but exhaustion isn’t the only thing that concerns me.

Every hour I spend here costs me something more than I can risk—leads decay, sources get cold feet, digital trails disappear because people with secrets rarely stay still long enough to be found twice.

Investigative journalism teaches patience, but it also teaches that timing is the difference between exposing truth and arriving just in time to document its burial.

Mikhail does not understand. If I stay here long enough, I lose authorship. He has confiscated my phone, my laptop, and my notes.

A bitter taste spreads at the back of my tongue when the realization settles unpleasantly. He may have taken my access, but he has not taken my mind.

That is his second mistake.

The first day inside this penthouse, fury burned inside me, too hot to be useful. By the second day, it cooled, so by the third, it could sharpen into a plan.

People reveal themselves through routine, and so do buildings.

The private elevator opens approximately every forty-five minutes. Two guards remain stationed outside the entrance corridor, though only one actively watches the interior camera feed. The second relies too heavily on peripheral awareness, which means his attention drifts in predictable waves.

Staff deliveries arrive through the service corridor twice daily, cleaning and meal service happen once.

I get four seconds in between, which isn’t anything.

But four seconds is a lifetime if everyone involved thinks nothing will happen.

I learn to disguise my steps as meandering through the penthouse. Restlessness is expected from a captive, which is useful camouflage. Pausing near the kitchen, I feign interest in a bowl of untouched fruit while watching the concealed seam in the wall opposite me.

The service entrance.