A video loads automatically.
It’s old and grainy, a feed from a camera that predates half the servers in the Bratva archive.
The angle shows a long table made of dark wood and ornate chairs. It’s a meeting room inside the Ignatov estate, I recognize as much. I’ve never been here physically, but I recognize the layout from maps.
Five men sit around the table, one at the head.
Damian’s father.
His face is harder, sharper, than the framed portraits I’ve seen in the estate hallways. Those painted versions polished his brutality into something ceremonial. Here, he looks alive, angry and terrifying.
Across from him sits another man with a lean build, severe face, his posture almost defiant even in stillness. It can’t be anyone other than—
Anton Lebedev.
I inhale sharply. My heart knocks against bone.
The audio crackles, fading in and out like a dying heartbeat. But even broken words carry weight.
“…betrayal…”
“…you always were…”
“…the cleanse…”
Cleanse.
The word lands like a blade across my throat. This is a Bratva term, but not one spoken openly. Cleanse means erasing witnesses, removing liabilities. Sometimes whole families.
Damian knew. Damian hid this.
But before the thought fully forms, the footage stutters. The image lurches and the men dissolve into gray fog.
Static hisses across the screen, loud enough to scrape down my spine. I reach for the terminal. But then the distortion shifts intentionally.
Letters jerk into form, glitching, reappearing in violent flashes. A burst of code spits across the display:
you’re next
My breath leaves my body all at once. The screen fractures into static again and the terminal shuts itself down. The room feels suddenly too small and exposed.
This is not a warning anymore.
This is apromise.
Fear rolls in in waves. It coils around my ribs, icy and merciless. If they breached my apartment without breaking the lock, if they stripped my system clean like peeling skin from bone, if they had this video—
They are inside the Ignatov network.
Inside Damian’s world.
I stand abruptly, adrenaline flooding fast enough to make my fingertips go numb. Pride claws at me, tells me I don’t need him, tells me I can run, disappear, fight alone.
But I know when to let survival beat my pride.
I throw clothes into a bag, my movements mechanical and sharp. My laptop, external drives, the emergency passport I never thought I’d need again get tossed along too.
My breath comes quickly, but I shove down the panic until it’s something manageable, something I can weaponize.
