Page 84 of Forced & Owned By the Bratva Boss

I look into his eyes. “Yeah?”

He doesn’t look afraid; he looks hungry. Hungry for blood. He checks the slide of his weapon, the metallic click sharp and final in the enclosed space.

“I’m going to bring your brother back.”

I manage a smile. My heart does a small skip at his need to verbally reassure me.

I touch his face gently. “I know.”

To be honest, I don’t know. Serrano is unpredictable, and I’m scared of what he might have already put Simon through. Still, I put on a brave face.

When the SUV kills its lights and rolls to a halt in the shadows of the decaying industrial district, the air shifts. It’s freezing, smelling of salt water and rust.

I step out into the damp night air, flanked by a dozen heavily armed bratva soldiers. We approach the towering, dark silhouette of the warehouse.

“Not the loading dock.” I grab the arm of the point man before he can advance toward the wide bay doors. “What do you think? He’s obviously expecting a frontal assault. He’ll have his heaviest concentration of guards covering the main floor entries.”

I point toward a rusted, unassuming metal door buried behind a stack of rotting wooden pallets. “Do you see that? There. The side service entrance. It’s a maintenance access line. He won’t waste men on a door that isn’t even on the main grid maps.”

The point man nods, then signals two guys to quietly break the lock. The door gives way with a muted click.

Before they can rush the interior, I pull Igor back slightly and press my hand against the hard plate of his tactical vest. “Wait. The stairs. If it’s Serrano, he always places a secondary shooter on the catwalk overlooking the stairwells. You know, like in the movies? There’s going to be a fallback sniper to catch anyone breaching the lower level.”

Igor’s eyes darken with understanding. He looks over his shoulder at Sergei. “We’ll split. Team Two, take the fire escape on the west side. Clear the high ground first. And no one touches those stairs until the catwalk is dark.”

The men move quickly, blending into the upper skeletal structures of the building.

Igor turns to me, and his massive frame towers over me in the dim light of the doorway. The calm authority radiating off him is grounding.

“You stay back.” He brushes a warm hand against my frozen cheeks. “You’re my eyes out here. Keep us moving.”

“I’m in your ear,” I promise, adjusting my headset. “Don’t let him get to the roof.”

“He won’t even make it halfway there,” Igor says. He racks his weapons, turns, and leads his team into the throat of the warehouse, disappearing into the dark.

I pull up the tablet, dragging my fingers across the screen as the live comm audio crackles to life in my ear. “Ruslan, you and your team are clear for five meters. Please move.”

I hear the sound of heavy boots before the signals cut.

Dimitri’s voice comes through seconds later. He’s working with the tech operatives. “We’ve isolated the power grid.”

A second later, the mechanical hum of the building dies. The external floodlights blink out, plunging the dockside structure into a pitch-black darkness that’s orchestrated for our advantage.

With my heart hammering loudly against my ribs, I stare at the thermal feed on my tablet. “Igor...” I whisper softly. The line is quiet, but only for a few seconds, before I hear his familiar grunt. “The primary grid is down, but keep your eyes up.” I speak quietly into my headset. “Serrano’s interior alarms won’t trigger on a total blackout, but he’ll know we’re here the moment his feeds cut. From now, you have less than two minutes.”

“Understood.” Igor’s deep voice rumbles in my earpiece, entirely unfazed. “We’re moving.”

“Advance up the narrow stairwell on your left,” I tell them, my eyes tracking their glowing heat signatures as they ascend the spine of the building. “Remember, the corridor opens up directly to the reinforced office at the far end. There are no secondary exits.”

A heavy silence stretches over the comms, broken only by the sound of controlled breathing.

“Visual confirmed,” Sergei whispers. “Simon is inside the upper room. Three Mexicans stationed at the door, holding positions exactly as predicted.”

Knowing Sergei can see my brother causes a new wave of tears to spring to the corners of my eyes. But I hold my breath. We’re not done yet.

“Hold,” Igor commands. The thermal dots freeze.

For one terrifying second, I wonder if he’s going to order me inside. If he’s considered using my past connection to Serrano as bait to draw the bastard out into the open. It’s what a ruthless leader would do. It’s what Serrano would have done—thrown me under the bus without a second thought.