Page 106 of Bratva Baby

Her lips part, and for one second I think she’ll argue. Instead, she leans down and kisses me, fast and hard enough to make the stitches pull. I don’t complain because I’m injured, not dead, and because Sofiya kissing me while angry is one of the few things in this life that feels worth getting shot for.

The doctor clears her throat. “If you tear my work open, I’m billing double.”

Sofiya pulls back, breathing harder than before, and points at me. “Don’t tempt me.”

Kolya turns toward the door. “I’m leaving.”

The first week after the yard is all blood, paper, and men pretending they don’t know they’re scared.

Grigor moves first. He sends a sealed Leonidov car with four older house men, takes Maks through the back entrance of the main residence, and makes him wait in the office wing under the Yantar clock. I hear that detail from Yuri, who has likely heard it from someone in their house, and when I tell Sofiya, she laughs so suddenly, she has to sit down.

“That’s cruel,” she says, one hand braced on the kitchen counter and the other over her stomach.

“From your uncle, that may count as sentiment.”

She looks at me over her shoulder. She’s wearing one of my shirts again, though now the buttons strain at the curve of her belly in a way that keeps ruining my focus. “You should never use that word.”

“Which one?”

“Sentiment. It sounds wrong in your mouth.”

“My mouth sounded fine to you this morning.”

She points a spoon at me. “Do not start while I’m making eggs.”

“You’re stirring an empty pan.”

“That’s because you walked in.”

I lean against the counter and watch her pretend to be annoyed. She has gotten softer in shape and more dangerous in mood, and every day I wake up with the same thought. She is mine, and she is still not tame enough to make that simple.

Grigor strips Maks with signatures.

By dawn, Maks loses access to three companies, two family accounts, the private driver pool, and every freight authorization tied to his name or his men. By noon, Grigor has his phones, his apartments, his side accounts, and his favorite lawyers sitting in separate rooms giving separate answers.

By dinner, Maks has nothing left except his name.

“He cried?” Sofiya asks when Yuri calls from Moscow three days later.

Yuri’s rough laugh comes through the kitchen speaker. “Not in front of the old man. Later, maybe.”

Sofiya folds one arm under her belly and leans closer to the phone. “What did Grigor do after the accounts?”

“Made him listen to your father’s recording twice.”

Her face changes.

I move closer, but I don’t touch her yet. Sofiya hates being handled when the pain is too clean. She likes choosing the moment she leans into me, and I’ve learned enough not to steal it from her when it matters.

Yuri continues, softer now. “Then Grigor asked him whether he had anything to say about his uncle’s death. Maks tried to blame pressure, bad advice, old family weakness. Grigor let him talk until he ran out of excuses.”

“And then?”

“Then Grigor broke his hand on the desk.”

Sofiya blinks. “His hand?”

“The hand that signed the first hidden authorization.” Yuri sounds almost cheerful. “Old men can still be poetic when they’re angry.”