Page 18 of Bratva Baby

I let him up. He clutches his hand to his chest and stares at me with hate, fear, and sudden understanding all fighting for room in his face.

“You’ll have it by noon,” he says.

I hold his gaze. “I’ll have it now.”

He hesitates for one doomed second, then nods. Pulling out a checkbook from his drawer, he scribbles on it with his good hand and pushes it toward me.

I check it, and when I’m satisfied, I move to the door. At the threshold, I turn. “And Pavel?”

He’d been busy groaning over his injury, but he straightens and looks up.

“If I hear you used the word ‘absurd’ again in connection with Brotherhood money, we don’t stop at the fingers.”

He says nothing. I leave him there with his broken hand, his damaged pride, and a clear understanding of the cost of disrespect.

The club floor is fuller now. Some of the people here are probably here to take it easy. The others have come on different forms of business. I take a place at the bar where I can see the room in the mirrored back shelves without turning my head too much.

Prague is useful for another reason. Leonidov movement shows up here before it shows up on paper.

Too many shared routes and old channels. Lately, there have been whispers about increased Leonidov pressure around certain freight lines. Baltic-adjacent movement. Money’s being shifted sideways. I’m here to see whether any of that reaches the city in person.

The bartender pours my drink without asking for payment. I let the first sip sit on my tongue and think about my brother. Prague has that effect on me tonight, maybe because freight is involved, maybe because Leonidov pressure always circles back to the same old wound if you let it.

He died when the feud stopped being distant and became something that could reach us.

It was a freight ambush on a late route, built on bad intelligence. A convoy that should have made it through didn’t. I carry the date on my forearm because some things shouldn’t fade just because time moves on.

The Leonidovs call themselves civilized now. That’s fine. Civilized men still hide money under cleaner names.

I set the glass down and scan the room again. That’s when I notice the line of a woman sitting alone at the bar with a vodka she isn’t enjoying enough. Dark top. Hair partly pinned back. Tension running through her body as clean as wire. The angle of her jaw catches my attention. Then she shifts, and the mirror gives me her face properly.

Sofiya Leonidova.

For one second, I think the city is playing games with me. Then I look again. I’d know her anywhere. She’s strikingly beautiful. I remember the heat in her face when I looked at her in Moscow and the way she looked back anyway. I remember her manners, the way she held her head, the way her face tipped when she chose to smile. She also watched the room like she expected something in it to break.

She’s in Prague alone. Why?

Her presence here gives shape to all the Leonidov whispers. I watch her again, the tight line of her shoulders clear even from here. Women like her don’t drift into clubs like this on impulse, not carrying that kind of tension. She’s either running from something or walking into it. Maybe both.

She holds my gaze, her face half hidden by the glass now. She’s deciding whether to stay or leave. She stood in silk and diamonds with her shoulders straight and her mouth set like a woman who knew exactly how the family worked and had no intention of being mistaken for decoration.

I’m in the mood for danger. I’d like to see what it takes to break open that cool confidence.

I pick up my drink, say something quietly to the bartender, and cross to her in two strides.

“Well,” I say, stopping close enough to feel the heat coming off her, “either Prague is smaller than I remembered, or it’s luck.”

She turns toward me in stages, which tells me she’s controlling the movement. Good. If she were too calm, I’d trust her less.

I take a sip and look at her over the rim of the glass.

“You assume I’m pleased to see you?” she asks.

“You looked colder in Moscow,” I say.

“You looked farther away.”

That almost gets a smile out of me.