Page 52 of Secret Baby of the Bratva
In meetings, I sit stone-faced, listening to my captains argue over territory and tariffs, but my mind strays. I hear her voice instead of theirs, sharp and mocking. I see her eyes the night she reached for me, wide with something I can’t name. I run through possibilities. Was she reckless enough to let someone find her? Or is someone else searching, deliberately, the way I would?
I don’t allow unease to show. My men would smell it like blood. Instead, I lean back in my chair, voice clipped, questions sparse.
“Who was the source? How reliable?” Feigning disinterest while every muscle tightens with the answers.
Each one sharpens the knot in my chest. A diner shift schedule. A secondhand shop where cash is paid, no questions asked. A woman who keeps her head down but never blends as well as she thinks.
By the week’s end, it’s undeniable. Annie has surfaced.
If I know, others do too.
The report lands on my desk late, delivered with the careful tone my men use when they know the news will cut deep. Gabriel Moreno’s men, seen near the coast. Near that town.
My control fractures.
Moreno is many things, but subtle isn’t one of them. He doesn’t circle without purpose. If his eyes are on Annie, it isn’t out of idle curiosity; it’s because he wants leverage. And I know exactly how merciless he can be when he sees an opening.
The thought spirals fast. Annie, alone in some coastal backwater, exposed. Her fire won’t protect her from Moreno’s cruelty. He’d crush it out of spite, break her just to send me the pieces. My stomach twists, heat rising like acid. Rage grips me so sharp I have to curl my hand into a fist to stop it shaking.
Around the table, my men talk strategy. Doubling down on Bratva security. Watching Moreno’s shipments more closely. Tracking his lieutenants for signs of movement. I nod once, clipped, agreeing in appearance. They see a leader weighing risks, keeping his empire steady.
This isn’t about business. Not for me.
The second they’re gone, I lock myself in the study. The silence is heavy, broken only by the scrape of paper across wood. Maps spread across the desk—Moreno’s routes, Bratva holdings, the stretch of coastline marked with faint pencil notes. Each detail sharpens my focus tighter onto her.
My eyes track the distance between his known outposts and the town. Too close. Far too close.
I remember her the last time I saw her—defiant, furious, broken but unbowed. The way she looked at me as they dragged her out, her voice raw with my name. I told myself it didn’t matter, that I’d cut her out like a liability.
The memory fuels the storm building inside me.
If Moreno lays so much as a finger on her, there won’t be a town left standing.
I resist the urge to go myself. Every instinct screams at me to get in the car, drive straight to that coastal town, and drag her back where I can see her. But instinct makes men sloppy, and sloppy gets them killed.
Instead, I choose two of my best. Not just skilled, but loyal—the kind of loyalty money can’t buy, the kind that comes from blood and history. Men who know when silence is worth more than questions. I give them the order in clipped tones: keep eyes on her, maintain distance, do not interfere unless absolutely necessary.
I don’t explain who she is. I don’t tell them what she means to me. The fewer who know, the safer she remains. The secrecy grates.
Annie is my secret to keep, my problem to solve. And the longer I keep her hidden from even my own men, the more it feels like something fragile I’m clutching too tight.
Nights stretch long in her absence. I imagine her walking freely, hair tangled from sea wind, carrying groceries home, moving through streets where no one whispers my name. Living a life without me. It claws at me—half fury, half longing.
I tell myself it’s because she knows too much. She saw things she shouldn’t have. If she ever speaks, she could unravelthreads I’ve spent years tightening, pull down men who trust me to keep them safe. That’s why I can’t let her go. That’s the excuse I cling to when the anger coils hot in my gut.
Excuses don’t silence the truth.
In quieter moments, when the vodka burns a path down my throat and the house is too silent to ignore, the thought scratches closer. It isn’t only about power. It isn’t only about secrets.
It’s her. Annie.
Even cast out, she fills every space I try to bury her in. Her voice in my head, her eyes in my memory, her defiance in every silence I try to convince myself is peace.
I told myself I cut her loose, but the truth is, I never did.
The storm lashes the estate like it wants to tear it apart. Rain hammers the windows, a relentless percussion that drowns out even the sound of my own thoughts. Wind rattles the panes, the old house groaning under the force.
I sit alone at my desk, the study lit only by the yellow glow of the lamp. A map lies spread before me, paper heavy with inked routes, borders, and markers. One circle pulls my eyes again and again—the coastal town. Her town.
