Page 81 of Prey of the Bratva

My jaw tightened. “No one is untouchable. Do we have names?”

“Still compiling,” Viktor replied.

“Move faster.”

***

It came on the fourth day. It wasn’t loud or dramatic, but instead it came through just a single line of intercepted communication flagged by Alina, who had been tracing every possible piece of information she could find anywhere on the internet.

“Kliment,” she said, her voice tight. “You need to see this.”

I crossed the room in two strides, and she pulled it up on the main screen. It was an encrypted message that had been partially decoded already. It showed a buyer confirmation, but the location was redacted; however, the timings were confirmed. My blood pressure spiked as I read through the asset description, but I didn’t need to read the rest to know exactly what it was. My body went completely still because this was the first real sign that Misha was actually here. Actually alive.

“She’s here,” Sera whispered.

The room fell into silence, and Iosif exhaled slowly. Avgust’s hands curled into fists, and Timofey looked like he was about to tear something apart. None of us moved, and I didn’t look at any of them. I couldn’t. I continued to stare at the screen, which gave us the confirmation. The single, undeniable truth. Misha was in this city, which meant she was alive and waiting.

Something inside me shifted and transformed. I straightened slowly, my voice when I spoke quieter than it had any right to be.

“Lock it in.”

Viktor nodded immediately. “Yes.”

“Every route,” I continued. “Every access point. Every security layer.”

“It’s already in motion.”

I turned, my gaze sweeping across the room. “Volkov is going to die.”

Everyone already knew I was not kidding. I was here to get Misha back, and I was not going to return without her, and whoever came in my path was going to burn.

Chapter 23 - Misha

The fourth night was when they made their mistake.

It was not a large one, but it didn’t need to be big enough to be counted as a mistake. It was not the kind of mistake that men like them would even register as dangerous. For them, it was just a shift in rhythm and a fraction too much proximity. A second too long inside a room they believed was controlled. But I had been counting those seconds since the moment I woke up here.

It had been four days. Four days of stillness that were not stillness at all. Four days of watching everything.

I knew everything by heart now because I had been observing everything carefully. The guards changed every six hours. It was never exactly on the hour, but it was still close enough for the pattern to hold itself together without disruption. I had noticed how one pair always lingered longer than the others. They were less disciplined and more comfortable, and their biggest problem was that they talked too much and moved too casually. I knew they were the ones who underestimated the silence of a restrained woman more than anyone else.

The lock on the door clicked twice before it opened, and a heavier mechanism followed half a beat later. It was an electronic override paired with manual reinforcement that sounded expensive and efficient, but nothing perfect. I knew that really well. The camera in the corner rotated every twelve seconds, and there was a half-second delay at the far left sweep where the lens recalibrated. That was the blind spot that I hadn’t noticed the day I had come in, but now I knew. The window was small and brief, but it was real, and right now, something was better than nothing.

Meals were sent for me twice a day without variation or deviation. It was always two men who came to give them, and they always followed the same route.

They thought consistency was control, but they were wrong.

Consistency was going to be their death.

I sat exactly the way they expected me to sit, with my wrists bound and ankles restrained. My head slightly lowered, and I kept my breathing steady to show that I was compliant. I had learned the exact angle that made me look weaker than I was. It was almost insulting how well it worked.

The first day, they had watched me carefully, but the second day, less so. By the third day, I had sensed that they were already bored because I was doing nothing new. I wasn’t fighting or making noise or trying to run, and that made me easier to handle. What they didn’t know was that I was planning. By the fourth day, they were careless. And careless men die quickly.

The door clicked once and then twice as the heavy lock slid open. I lifted my head slowly, just enough to acknowledge their presence without appearing alert, and noticed the same two guards. The ones from earlier.

Good.

“Your dinner is here,” one of them muttered, stepping inside first.