Page 78 of Prey of the Bratva

There was a pause before the question came, quieter this time, “Is it true?”

“Is what true?” I asked, even though a part of me already knew what he meant.

“There have been rumors that you are here to get a girl back. Misha Chernykh. Is that true?”

I leaned back slightly, my gaze fixed on the passing city as we pulled away. “Yes, it is true. They took her, and I won’t return until I get her back.”

Silence stretched for half a second too long.

“Understood.”

That was all. No questions and no hesitation, because men like him knew exactly what that meant.

War.

***

The first safe house was operational within the hour. It was not large, but it did not need to be. What mattered was control and the layers of security my men had already arranged. The place had limited access points, and all the blind spots were already mapped and eliminated. I could not risk anyone getting here if I didn’t want them to. I still had enemies in Russia who would go running to Sidorov on the first sign of my arrival. I needed to be careful.

Inside, the room had already been transformed.

Maps were stretched across the central table, and screens displaying port activity, financial routing chains, and surveillance feeds lit the walls. Viktor had made sure that everything was done and all information and footage pulledfrom both Russian and international networks were before me. Everyone was here. My men. Chernykh men. And Misha’s team. No one wanted to be left behind since getting Misha back was the number one priority. I noticed the Chernykh tech specialists were already working alongside Romanov analysts without friction, their focus absolute.

This was not an alliance born of trust. It was one born of necessity. And it worked.

Nico stood near the far end of the table, arms crossed, and his expression unreadable as he reviewed incoming data. Jarek was beside him, pacing like a caged animal, energy barely contained. Across from them, Avgust leaned over a screen, speaking quietly with one of Misha’s operatives. Iosif stood behind him, silent but fully engaged, his presence as controlled as ever. For a moment, I watched them all. Two empires that should have been tearing each other apart were standing in the same room, and it was all because of her. For her.

“She would hate how slow this whole process is,” Timofey muttered from somewhere to my left.

I did not look at him.

“She would call it inefficient,” I said.

A faint, humorless smirk touched his mouth. “She would call all of us inefficient, grab a laptop, and begin working on it herself. It had always been hard for her to relinquish control, even in the smallest of things. We could be deciding something as simple as what to have for dinner, and everyone would be fighting for their options, and Misha would simply get up, announce a decision, and force all of us to follow through. Always.”

I could see that Timofey was missing her. The two of them were rather close from Misha had told me one day when she had discussed her family with me.

“We will get her back, Timofey,” I reassured him once again, but the reassurance was more for myself than for him.

“I know.”

I stepped forward, the room shifting almost imperceptibly as attention redirected.

“I need the status on everything,” I said.

Sera spoke immediately, her eyes glued to the screen while she continued talking. “We’ve mapped recent port traffic tied to Sidorov’s known routes. There’s a gap of approximately twelve hours between his last confirmed activity in Miami and the first flagged movement here. We have confirmation that he is here, but we just need confirmation on both his and Misha’s locations.”

“What was the transport method?” I asked.

“Private, just as we figured earlier,” Viktor answered, already pulling up the data. “It was a shell company aircraft, and the data is clean with no direct ties to anything Bratva-related. He is playing it safe, or at least Volkov is forcing him to play it safe to keep us from finding anything.”

“Of course he is,” Jarek muttered.

“Any financial trails giving us possible locations?” I asked.

Another screen flickered, numbers cascading.

“Everything is fragmented,” Alina replied. “There are multiple currencies being used in the linked shell accounts, andeverything is layered and firewalled. It is almost impossible to gain access. But there are convergence points.”