Page 60 of Secret Baby of the Bratva
The estate doubles in size overnight, not in bricks or land, but in muscle and vigilance. Guards flood the gates, patrols overlap until no shadow goes unchecked. Every vehicle that crosses the threshold is stripped down and rebuilt in front of my eyes—engines opened, trunks gutted, tires rolled until my men swear nothing is hidden. No courier, no guest, no ally enters unless my word clears them.
Moreno is dead, but the blood he spilled stains deeper than one grave. His network breathes still, gasping, ready to lash out like a dying beast. They will come for what they think is mine. They are right to. Annie and Henry live under my roof now, which makes them more than guests, more than liabilities. They are mine. Anyone who threatens them signs their own death warrant before they even reach my gates.
I move them into the private wing. No one questions me, not out loud, though I catch the flicker in a lieutenant’s eyes, the tiny pause of surprise before he bows his head. No one but I have ever lived in that wing. It has always been my silence, my solitude, my proof that even power requires walls within walls. Now it is theirs too.
Annie stiffens when she realizes what I’ve done. She tries to mask it with that sharp chin of hers, that stare that pretends to weigh me and find me wanting. But her fists clench at her sides, her mouth presses tight. Defiance is her armor, and she wears it even when the steel bars around her gleam too bright to ignore. Henry doesn’t see the prison yet. He touches the curtains, marvels at the polished floors, asks questions with a smile that hasn’t learned fear. Innocence is the cruelest currency.
I watch them adjust. Watch Annie pace, restless in a gilded cage, watch Henry settle into the bed like it’s another new adventure. I tell myself I’ve done this for safety, that I will keep them alive because I am the only one who can.
I know the truth. The truth is heavier, sharper: I do not trust the world with them, and I do not trust myself to let them go.
War isn’t on the horizon. It’s here, already clawing at the gates, breathing hot against the glass. I feel it in the silence between calls, in the coded messages that arrive at dawn, in the restless pacing of my men when night falls. This isn’t the chess game I’ve played for years. This is slaughter waiting for direction.
So I give the order. Eradication. Factions that lifted Moreno’s name, that whispered his protection, will burn until ash is all that carries them. Their families, their allies, their ghosts—I will salt the ground they stood on.
***
Retaliation is a language I speak fluently.
My men move like knives in the dark. Warehouses go up in smoke before dawn, flames swallowing steel beams and stacked crates until nothing remains but twisted skeletons of iron. Shipments vanish mid-transit, drivers pulled from cabs and left alive only long enough to spread the fear. Informants who thought themselves untouchable disappear, their silence louder than their whispers ever were. Each strike carries my signature—precise, merciless, impossible to ignore.
Every phone call brings news of another loss for them. Every report tastes like ash on my tongue, because it isn’t enough. It won’t be enough until every man who raised a glass to Moreno has been reduced to nothing but memory.
I direct it all with the precision of a surgeon. Names, addresses, bank accounts—I strip them clean. My captains follow me without hesitation, though I see it in their eyes, the awareness that something has shifted. This isn’t the usual calculus of profit and risk, not the measured game I’ve always played. This is vengeance. It leaks from my voice when I give orders, coils in my chest like smoke every time I watch another building crumble.
They don’t question me. Not when my fury is their shield. Not when my enemies’ corpses pave the road they walk.
Still, the nights are worse.
I stalk the halls of the estate long after the last call ends. My footsteps echo against marble, down corridors gilded with silence. More than once, I find myself standing outside her door. The guards in this wing avert their eyes, as if my shadow might swallow them if they look too long.
I tell myself I’m checking for threats, that my instincts drag me here because the enemy could breach these walls. When I stand in the stillness, listening, I know that’s a lie.
I hear her moving inside—soft footsteps, the shift of fabric, sometimes the faint creak of a bedframe when she turns restlessly. Once, I hear Henry stir, a cry muffled against her shoulder, and her voice follows, low and soothing. The sound is too intimate. It reaches past the armor I’ve built, hooks into something buried deep.
I never open the door, but the pull is magnetic, heavy enough that my hand hovers near the handle more than once. I imagine stepping in, watching her eyes widen, hearing her sharp breath when she realizes she isn’t alone. I imagine the tension, the defiance, the heat of it.
Instead, I turn away. Always away.
Back in my study, I pour vodka. The bottle empties too fast, the glass refills without memory of my hand moving. I tell myself this is control, not obsession—that keeping her behind locked doors, within my private wing, is strategy. I need her where I can see her. I need her contained.
The truth stalks me the way I stalk her door.
It isn’t control. It’s hunger.
Every time I close my eyes, her face rises unbidden—the stubborn tilt of her chin, the fire in her eyes when she dares to argue, the softness she doesn’t realize slips through when she soothes Henry. I remember the way she looked at me that night in the corridor, fear trembling against defiance, both refusing to yield.
Vodka burns, but it doesn’t cleanse her from me.
War has already begun. Moreno’s allies will bleed until their networks are nothing but ghost lines in forgotten ledgers. Yet even as I build a campaign of eradication, my thoughts return to her.
Annie.
She is the one variable I cannot calculate, the one weakness I cannot excise.
I stare into the glass, the clear liquid trembling with the shake of my hand, and I admit the truth only to myself.
I don’t trust the world with her. I don’t trust myself, either.
