Page 59 of Forced By the Bratva

“Show me.”

I hesitated half a second, then decided there wasn’t much point holding back now.

I walked him through it page by page—the payment cycles, the dissolved companies still moving money, the transport dates that didn’t match anything I understood about the family’s actual operations, et cetera.

At first he looked skeptical, jaw tight, like he assumed I’d misread something or misunderstood how the business worked underneath.

But I didn’t stop there. I kept going, laying out each inconsistency in order so he’d clearly see for himself that I knew exactly what I was talking about.

Somewhere around the fourth or fifth example, his expression started to shift.

“This route,” he said, tapping one line. “This shouldn’t be active. This account closed two years ago.”

“According to the paperwork, yes. According to the ledger, it processed three payments last month.”

He went quiet, reading it again himself. I watched something change behind his eyes. Not disbelief anymore. Recognition.

We ended up at the desk together, papers spread across the surface, both of us working through the details for hours.

He pulled additional files from a locked drawer, cross-referencing dates against operations he remembered personally, comparing what I’d found against internal records I didn’t have access to.

For the first time since he’d taken me from my apartment, he wasn’t treating me like something fragile to manage or contain. He was listening. Actually listening. Weighing what I said instead of deciding in advance how much of it mattered.

At one point, he leaned over my shoulder to look at a ledger entry more closely. In such proximity, his hand settled on the table beside mine, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him along my side.

Neither of us mentioned it. The air had shifted anyway—quiet and heavy, as if the numbers in front of us had nothing to do with it.

“You see it too,” he said, low, close to my ear. “The pattern.”

“I’ve been seeing patterns like this for years. It’s what I do.”

He didn’t answer right away. When I glanced up, he was looking at me instead of the page. Something unfamiliar settled in his expression. Something that looked almost like respect.

That alone melted my heart and almost made my cheeks flush.

I’d felt his possessiveness plenty of times by now.

This was different.

This was him trusting my mind instead of just wanting my body.

And somehow, that hit me harder than anything else he’d done since the night he first knocked on my door.

Chapter 20 – Ilya

Iris had outdone herself in a way I hadn’t really expected. She’d found something that I had missed this whole time; a potential traitor within the Bratva ranks.

She wasn’t just easy on the eyes; she was also brilliant. And that brilliance was the reason she was able to breach our network and bypass our security.

I just realized I hadn’t actually given the level of genius enough thought this whole time. After spending all that money on our tech team, a twenty-three-year-old girl managed to hack the system without even trying.

A part of me hadn’t completely believed her claims until I saw for myself how these numbers weren’t adding up. These inconsistencies in the ledger were too glaring to be ignored.

If I’m being honest, though, if she hadn’t opened my eyes to what was right in front of me, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the money being rerouted.

We didn’t have a name yet. But one thing was certain: There were traitors in our midst. And whoever they were, they weren’t floor members or foot soldiers. These were high-ranking officials who had the power to make things disappear.

The council had been so focused on me being “emotionally compromised” that they all missed those who were actually compromised.