Page 61 of Secret Baby of the Bratva
***
The office is quiet but for the hum of the computer. I sit behind the desk, sleeves rolled back, cigarette untouched in the tray, the air heavy with anticipation. Milan places a flash drive between my fingers and leaves without a word. His eyes tell me enough—whatever is on it matters.
I plug it in and begin the slow work of peeling back layers of encryption. The files open one by one: ledgers, shipment schedules, coded lists of payments and names buried under aliases. My eyes skim with practiced indifference. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Money always leaves a trail, and I’ve learned to read the ink as easily as blood.
Then I see it.
Richard Vasile.
The name freezes me where I sit. For a moment, the room itself feels colder, smaller. I scroll back to be sure, but it doesn’t change. His name is here, not in passing, not hidden at the edge of some ledger, but woven deep. Account codes, signatures, payments funneled through shell corporations that only exist for men like him.
I lean forward, the chair groaning under the shift. My fingers tighten on the mouse until the plastic creaks. Richard Vasile was no ghost accountant. He was central. Trusted. One of the men who made families like Moreno’s possible.
I drag the files wider, eyes sharp, tracing connections. Dates. Transactions. Cross-referenced meetings in cities where blood still stains the streets. And then—an image.
The resolution is poor, black-and-white, but the face is unmistakable. Richard, older than the last photo I ever saw, shoulders squared, eyes hollow but alive. Two men flank him, men whose corpses now rot in the dirt because I put them there. He is in custody, not hiding. Not dead by chance.
The timestamp sears itself into my mind. It matches the year he vanished, the moment the rumors began. They said he’d run. They said he’d stolen. They said he’d been cut down for betrayal. All of it was noise. The truth is clearer than any myth: he was executed. Not for weakness. For secrets.
I sit back slowly, drag a hand over my mouth. Smoke curls upward, the cigarette still burning untouched. The image glares at me from the screen.
Richard Vasile wasn’t random. He was marked. Annie—her breaking into my office, her restless curiosity, the way her eyes narrowed at ledgers she wasn’t meant to see—it wasn’t idle rebellion. Blood pulled her there. Blood demands answers, even when the questions can kill.
The weight of it settles deep in my chest. Annie isn’t caught in my world by accident. She was born into it, tied to it by a man who played with fire until it consumed him.
I close the files, but the name lingers in my head like a wound that won’t clot. Richard Vasile. Father. Traitor. Ghost.
Annie, whether she knows it or not, is chasing his shadow.
The screen burns my eyes, but I don’t look away. Richard’s face lingers there, grainy, ghostlike, and all I can see is Annie holding that photo in my office, clutching it as though it might speak if she stared long enough.
I thought it was trespass, arrogance, maybe betrayal. Now I know better. It was desperation. It was blood calling her into shadows she didn’t choose.
She was never naive. Never clumsy enough to stumble into danger by accident. She was already in the web, born into it by the choices of a man who sold his life to the same darkness I walk in.
The weight presses into me like stone. For a moment—brief, unwanted—I feel pity. Pity for her father, for the girl who grew up never knowing the truth, for the inevitability that brought her to my door. It’s a poison I haven’t let myself taste in years. Like all poisons, I burn it out quickly.
There are no innocents here. Not Richard Vasile, who thought himself clever enough to play with money that wasn’t his. Not Annie, whose curiosity has already dragged her into a war she doesn’t understand. Not me. Especially not me.
Still, something shifts. Her trespass wasn’t malice. She wasn’t searching for leverage, she was searching for answers. Scraps of the same truth I now hold in my hand. I tell myself that changes nothing—that she crossed a line, and in my world lines are carved in stone. But the fire I carried that night, the fury that drove me to cage her, cools in ways I don’t like. It complicates what I should keep simple.
I shut the files. The name sears itself into me anyway, echoing with every blink: Richard Vasile. Annie’s father. That blood runs in her veins, whether she accepts it or not.
The war already burns, flames rising higher with each body my men leave in the street. But now it sharpens into something crueler. Annie isn’t outside of it. She never was. She was born in the ashes of betrayal, and whether she wants to or not, she carries the stain.
I pour vodka, the liquid clear as glass, and let it settle heavy in my chest. A second glass waits across the desk, untouched, a shadow of a gesture I won’t allow myself. I stare at it longer than I should.
One day soon, I’ll put the truth in her hands. I’ll show her what her father was, what his choices cost, how deep the roots of his betrayal run. When I do, it won’t be to soothe her. It won’t be comfort.
It will be a lesson. A reminder that in my world, there are no clean escapes. Not for her. Not for anyone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven - Annie
The estate doesn’t breathe the same anymore. Guards move in pairs along the halls, radios crackling low, weapons always at hand. Doors that once stood open now click shut behind heavy locks. The air hums with tension, thick and metallic, as if even the walls are braced for impact. To everyone else, this is safety. To me, it feels like a gilded cage.
The private wing is quieter than the rest of the house, too insulated, too polished. The marble floors mute footsteps, the drapes swallow outside noise, and the chandeliers glow warm no matter how dark the night.
My son thrives here. He sleeps through the night without waking, sprawled across sheets that smell faintly of lavender, his small breaths steady and even. In the mornings he plays on rugs so soft they could swallow his toys whole. He laughs more often, full and unguarded, the sound bouncing against walls that have never known joy.
