Third: financial forensics. The payments had to leave traces. Banking records, wire transfers, blockchain transactions if they were using cryptocurrency. I didn't know how to trace thosethings, but I could learn. YouTube University had tutorials for everything.
Fourth: physical evidence from Brighton Medical. This was the dangerous part. I'd need to get inside, find the surgical suites where the harvesting happened, document the equipment. Maybe even find tissue samples, though that was probably impossible.
It would take weeks, maybe months. Every step would increase my exposure, make it more likely Brand would discover I was investigating. But what else could I do? Trust the FBI? Trust the police? Trust the Bratva enforcer who'd look at me with those dark eyes and make me want impossible things like safety and protection and someone else to carry this weight?
No. I'd do it alone, like I did everything.
My phone buzzed—the clinic handset. A text from an unknown number: "Returning tonight as discussed. 11 PM. –K"
K. It was the enforcer. Had to be. He'd be here in two hours.
My stomach did something complicated that had nothing to do with hunger. I was excited, and I hated that I was excited.
I curled up on the mattress with my legal pad, making lists and plans and contingencies while my body screamed for sleep I wouldn't allow. My thumb throbbed where I'd scraped it against my teeth, and I pressed it hard against my thigh to stop the unconscious movement toward my mouth.
Not again. Never again. I was Dr. Maya Cross, and I didn't need comfort or care or massive Bratva enforcers who made me feel seen. I needed evidence and planning and the strength to do what was necessary.
Alone. Always alone.
The legal pad blurred as exhaustion pulled at me, but I kept writing. Plans and backup plans and the lies I'd tell myself to make it through another day, another week, another lifetime of carrying weight that would crush anyone who tried to share it.
My thumb pressed harder against my thigh, leaving crescent marks from my nail, keeping it away from my mouth through pure will.
Two hours to become bulletproof again.
Chapter 5
Konstantin
Ihatedgettingtoldoff.
Ever since I was a kid.
Nothing got me more angry than being told, over and over again, that I’d done something stupid. Even more so when I knew that I hadn’t.
We were in the war room, which is where the dressings down normally happened. Nikolai sat behind the huge table like a king on his throne, fingers steepled, that particular brand of stillness that meant he was seconds away from violence. Maks paced behind him like a caged animal, laptop abandoned on the side table, his usual smooth-talker mask completely gone.
And me? I stood there like a naughty boy, trying not to think about the basement doctor who I’d be seeing in a few short hours.
I’d managed to put this meeting off for three days. Claimed I was recovering. But now I had to face up to it.
The office still smelled like Mikhail's pipe tobacco, even though our grandfather hadn't been up here in days. Outside the bulletproof windows, the Verrazano Bridge stretched across gray November sky, and I focused on counting the support cables rather than meeting my brother's eyes. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine.
"You went in without backup." Nikolai's voice cut through the silence, each word precise as a scalpel. "You engaged Belyaev soldiers in a public hospital. You nearly died." He paused, and I could feel his gaze boring into me even without looking. "And now they know we're investigating their operation."
The words hung in the air like an indictment. He wasn't wrong. I'd blown months of surveillance in ninety seconds of violence. But he hadn't seen that girl's eyes.
"We had a plan," Maks exploded, stopping his pacing to glare at me. "A fucking plan, Kostya. Gather intel. Build a case. Strike strategically. Not—" He gestured wildly at me. "Not whatever the hell that was. You turned it into a bloodbath. Three dead in a surgical suite? Security footage that's probably already in police hands? Christ, you might as well have signed your name on the walls in their blood."
"There were no cameras," I said, keeping my voice flat. "I made sure of it."
"Oh, well then." Maks's laugh was bitter. "Everything's fine. Except for the part where Brand knows someone's onto him, where the Belyaevs are mobilizing, where you've got two bullet wounds and a knife hole that nearly turned you into confetti."
My shoulder throbbed at the reminder, the fresh stitches Dr. Cross had placed pulling with every breath. Three days since she'd saved my life, and I could still feel the ghost of her steady hands on my skin. Small hands. Competent hands. Hands that wouldn't shake even while she pulled a bullet from my shoulder blade.
"There was a girl on that table," I said, finally meeting Nikolai's eyes. "Awake. Conscious. They'd strapped her down like an animal, and she was crying. Begging. They were going to harvest her organs while she could feel everything." My hands clenched involuntarily, remembering the terror in her eyes. "What was I supposed to do? Take pictures? Document it for your files while they carved her up?"
The room went silent except for the tick of the grandfather clock in the corner—another remnant of Mikhail's reign that Nikolai hadn't changed. Even Maks stopped moving, his face shifting from anger to something more complicated.
