Page 6 of Forced By the Bratva

He cleared his throat, his eyes avoiding mine. “I’m afraid some encrypted operational ledgers have been accessed in the breach.”

My expression remained neutral, my gaze unwavering even though I was already running the risk assessments in my head. Those ledgers contained information about our organization that could do a lot of damage in the wrong hands.

Payment routes connected to unexplained disappearances, bribed officials, and off-book enforcement jobs were all in there.

“Have you tracked the hacker?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “The tech team traced the breach to an employee account during the cleanup.”

“Who is he?”

A pause.

“It’s not a ‘he,’ Boss,” he said.

My brows knit by a fraction.

“The digital trail led us to a woman named Iris Hart,” he began. “A freelance marketing and systems consultant.”

Interesting.

He handed her file to me. “No criminal record. No suspicious affiliations. She’s clean.”

I accepted the file and flipped open the front page. “How much information does she have?”

He hesitated. “Enough, Boss. She downloaded all the encrypted files before disconnecting from the network.”

The moment my eyes fell on the photograph of her, something shifted inside me. I was expecting to see a picture of someone calculating or opportunistic.

But what I saw was a beautiful woman with chestnut hair tied back in a low bun. She was sitting in a café booth, staring out the window, completely unaware of the shot.

The oversized brown sweater draped loosely over her body, the long sleeves swallowing her arms. There was nothing provocative about that photo. Yet it stirred something strange inside me.

I stared at the picture for a moment, drinking in the details of her face: the faint freckles on her nose and the curve of her lips. Her warm hazel eyes revealed a kind of innocence I hadn’t seen in a long time.

“What should we do with her?” Yuri’s voice cut through my thoughts.

“Nothing,” I said, calm and composed. “I’ll handle this myself.”

The room fell silent for a moment as my men exchanged covert glances.

“Recover the files before they spread further.” I met Yuri’s gaze. “And keep an eye on our nosy friend. But do not engage. Understood?”

He nodded and walked away without another word.

Boris stepped closer, wiping his bloodied palms on a clean cloth. “Don’t you think handling this yourself is beneath you?” he asked. “Anyone else can do that.”

I didn’t respond, even though I knew that getting involved myself made no sense. Usually, in situations like this, the witnesses are removed quickly and efficiently. However, something about this woman felt different, in a way I couldn’t explain. Perhaps that mystery was exactly what was pulling me to her.

Chapter 3 – Iris

I hadn’t left the house since the computer “glitch” last night, and I couldn’t stop worrying about what I found in those files. I barely slept because I kept waking to even the faintest noise outside my apartment. A myriad of thoughts filled my head, and the more I dwelled on them, the more my anxiety spiked.

Maybe this was all just me being needlessly paranoid. Maybe the frozen computer screen meant nothing. Maybe it was indeed some kind of glitch.

There was no way simply accessing those files set off an alarm to those who actually encrypted it. Right? It wasn’t like whoever was manually deleting records from Tarasov Imports had pinned my location or anything. Right?

These uncertainties unsettled me in ways that made me feel sick. And to make matters worse, my supervisor wasn’t returning any of my calls.