Page 55 of Secret Baby of the Bratva
I lower my chin to my son, whispering into his damp hair, the words trembling out low and fierce.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I swear.” My voice is steady for him, even when my insides quake. He quiets by degrees, sobs softening to small hiccups, though his fists don’t release my shirt.
One of the brutes mutters something in Russian, his mouth twisted in a sneer. The sound drips with mockery, a joke at my expense. My son. My fear.
The leader silences him with a single word, the command sharp as a blade. The brute shuts his mouth, but I don’t relax. The quiet that follows is worse.
Silence has teeth. Silence is where decisions are made.
I keep my breathing even, though my blood runs colder with every passing mile. This isn’t random. It never was. They didn’t stumble onto me by chance, didn’t just happen to find the street I walk each morning.
They’ve been watching. Waiting.
Now they’ve finally made their move.
Every bump of the road carries me further from safety, further into a snare I can’t see the edges of. My arms tighten around my son until he whimpers, but I can’t ease up.
The hours blur into a haze of motion and dread. The van rattles through streets that grow quieter, emptier, until the city itself falls away behind us.
Neon signs and crowded sidewalks give way to rolling fields, stretches of forest, narrow roads that wind deeper and deeper into isolation. Each passing mile stretches the distance between me and safety, between me and the fragile little life I’d built for us. My bakery mornings. The sea air. My son’s laughter under the gulls.
All of it slipping farther from reach.
I force myself to breathe evenly, to keep my arms tight around him, though my muscles ache. His weight against me is the only anchor I have left.
Fear sharpens my memory, my mind racing even as the world outside the windows blurs. I piece it together, pulling threads I’ve tried to bury. Dimitri’s rivals. Gabriel Moreno’s name whispered in the city, sharp and hushed, always carrying danger. The Bratva’s enemies circling, waiting for an opening.
This isn’t about ransom. This is some kind of strategy.
They want to hurt him where he is weakest. Now—with me, with my son—they’ve found the blade to cut him.
The realization hits like ice in my veins. My stomach knots, but I don’t let my face break. I can feel the leader’s eyes on me, heavy and deliberate. Watching. Measuring. As though he knows I’ve reached the truth.
His calmness terrifies me more than if he’d struck me. Violence would have meant urgency. Control means he has time. That he knows he’s already won.
I won’t give him the satisfaction of tears. I won’t beg. I tilt my head down to my son instead, whispering softly against hishair, words meant as much for me as for him. “I won’t let them take you. I swear. I won’t.”
My hand strokes over the fine strands of his hair, soothing him as best I can. His breathing steadies, small hiccups still shuddering through him, but he clings tighter to my shirt, trusting me without question. The trust shatters something in me and forges it again, harder.
Inside, fear churns so violently I feel sick, but beneath it there is steel. Dimitri may have cast me aside, may have seen me as nothing but a liability, but I will not let his enemies use my child as a weapon.
If they want to bleed Dimitri, they’ll have to go through me first.
I straighten a fraction, though my back screams against the van’s metal wall. My eyes lift to meet the leader’s gaze, and for the first time, I don’t look away.
He studies me, cool and detached, but I let him see the fire anyway.
Let him know I understand.
Let him know I will fight, even if it kills me.
***
The countryside thickens outside the windows, trees crowding closer, roads narrowing until the van jolts over every rut and stone. Time feels unmoored, stretching and folding in on itself, but the truth keeps circling back: this is no mistake. I was never safe.
I whisper again, softer now, as my son drifts against me, eyelids fluttering shut from exhaustion. “Sleep, baby. Mama’s got you.”
My chest tightens. My arms hold steady.
