Page 69 of Forced By the Bratva

“I’m afraid so,” he answered.

“That means someone gave them that information. Surveillance data. Routines. Something only your people should have had access to.”

Ilya’s jaw tightened. “That’s what concerns me most.”

“So either someone inside the Bratva sold that information to whoever’s outside it,” I said, voicing my thoughts. “Or the corruption I found in those ledgers isn’t just about money. It’s about information too. Someone’s been feeding details outward for a long time, probably longer than anyone realized.”

He didn’t answer right away, which told me I’d landed somewhere close to what he was already thinking.

I looked back down at the folder, at the payment trail, at the fragments of encrypted messages sitting there in a language none of us understood yet. Something cold settled in my chest as the full shape of it came into focus.

“That means the corruption I found,” I said quietly. “Someone else might have found it first. Before me. Maybe they’ve been watching this whole thing longer than we have.”

“That’s possible.”

“And if they’ve been watching that long, they knew about the breach. They knew someone accessed those files. They might have known about me before you ever did.”

Ilya went still across the table, and I watched the same realization settle over him that had just settled over me.

I wasn’t the reason danger existed in his world. I was the reason someone outside his world had started paying attention to him, specifically through me.

Whatever I’d uncovered, whoever had built that corruption in the first place, they’d noticed me noticing.

And now they were willing to send trained men into a fortified estate in the middle of the night to make sure I didn’t get the chance to notice anything else.

One thing was certain now: Ilya and I weren’t captor and prisoner anymore, hadn’t been for weeks now.

We were something else entirely. Two people standing inside the same set of crosshairs, whether either of us had chosen it or not.

Who were these people? And why were they targeting me?

The thoughts had yet to settle when another explosion beyond the estate walls shook the building.

My heart skipped a beat as radio chatter spiked and rapid gunfire filled the air again. Ilya’s hand closed around my wrist before I fully registered the sound behind it.

“Move. Now!”

He pulled me out of the room, through the hallway, and into a narrow interior corridor I hadn’t even known existed. The spot was tucked between the kitchen wall and a service stairwell. No chandeliers here. Just emergency strips, dim red-orange along the baseboards, barely enough to see by.

The space was tight. My shoulder pressed against cold concrete on one side. Ilya’s chest stayed inches from mine on the other. The corridor had been built for staff to pass through unnoticed, never meant to hold two people standing still.

Gunfire cracked somewhere outside. Closer than before. Muffled through the walls but unmistakable.

My breath caught hard in my throat, my hands trembling. This was the second attack in just a few hours, and to make matters worse, no one was sure it would be the last.

“Hey.” His voice dropped low, right against my ear. “Look at me.”

I couldn’t. My eyes stayed fixed on the door at the end of the corridor, waiting for it to open, waiting for whatever was happening on the other side of these walls to find its way to us.

Another burst of gunfire, further off this time. I flinched hard enough that my back hit the wall behind me.

“I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, I promise,” he assured me, swinging an arm around me immediately.

He pulled me fully into cover, his body angled between me and the corridor’s exit without a single moment of hesitation. No calculation in it. No possessive weight to the way he held me.

This was pure instinct. I felt it in the way his grip tightened around me now. Not controlling. Just holding on.

Pressed against him in the dark, I realized whatever calm he usually carried had cracked the same way mine had. His pulse hammered against my back where his chest met my shoulder blades. His breathing wasn’t steady either.