Page 33 of Bratva Baby

That earns him a look, but he survives it because he’s one of my oldest men and on a good day, close enough to being my only friend.

I read the page again, then the next. Her disappearance overlaps too neatly with the route instability. They aren’t trying to coax her home, smooth over some scandal, and put her back in a silk dress beside the right chandelier.

They’re tightening around her, and that means she knows something worth hiding or she took something worth killing for.

I see her at the bar again, all that beautiful control pulled tight over nerves she was hiding better than most men could. I see the way she watched the room before she let me close and the way she came with me anyway. I see the way she left before dawn, fast and clean, and suddenly, it stops looking like arrogance and starts looking like timing.

“She was already running,” I say.

Kolya shrugs. “Looks that way.”

I lean back in the chair and smile without warmth. “That makes her night in Prague even funnier.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Funny.”

“She had half her family probably closing in around her, and she still found time to climb into my bed.”

Kolya says nothing. Smart man.

I tap the page once. “They’re not chasing her because she bruised someone’s pride. Maks wants her found because she can hurt him.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

I think about Maks, about his name sitting too close to hidden freight movement and side channels, and about Sofiya with those cool eyes and that very expensive body walking around with something risky enough to make her own people hunt her.

That lands well.

I already disliked Maks. Men like him are bad for business because they confuse appetite with intelligence and escalation with strength. Now I dislike him more because he’s confirmed what I thought he was, which is reckless enough to kick old blood awake if it helps him climb.

And somewhere in the middle of his mess is Sofiya.

Enemy blood. Gorgeous. Stupid enough to bait me. Smart enough to leave. Hunted enough to make it all more interesting. Private irritation and Brotherhood business finally sit in the same chair.

I get up, walk to the window, then turn back to the table and pick up her file again. There isn’t much in it yet, but there’s enough. Enough to know she isn’t hiding because she got embarrassed after a good night. Enough to know she didn’t leave me because she was bored. Enough to know she may be running for her life, which should make this less entertaining and somehow makes it better.

“She used you,” Kolya says.

I look at him and laugh once. “Maybe.”

“She left.”

“Yes,” I say, and I’m still smiling. “That’s why this has legs.”

He watches me for a second. “You’re taking this like a game.”

“No,” I say. “I’m taking it like a hunt.”

And that’s where it gets good.

At that moment, Kolya’s phone rings and he glances at the screen, then at me, and that tiny shift in his expression is enough. He steps away to answer, keeps it brief, then comes back already holding the phone out. “Prague contact,” he says. “Says it’s credible.”

I take the phone. “Talk.”

A man I know from the freight side answers without greeting. “We picked up movement tied to the Leonidov girl’s alias trail like you asked. Not confirmed on paper, but strong enough to move on. Budapest.”

Every part of me goes still in the useful way. “How strong?”

“Strong enough that I’d bet money. Small shipping office, cash wages, rotating rooms, and a woman matching her build and age moving under false documents. She’s been careful, but not invisible.”