Page 71 of Forced By the Bratva

“And we’re certain it’s the same men?” I sat in my chair, already going through the files.

“Absolutely. Same M.O.” He tapped the page in front of me. “Same forged credentials. Same rotation of the signal keys. The exact same method each time.”

I checked the timestamps. “These aren’t amateurs.” My voice was barely a whisper.

“No, they’re not. Whoever they are, they sat and watched how our systems checked keys, then built something that slides past the first layers without waking the deeper stuff.”

“It takes a lot of time to do that.”

“Time and access.” Boris’s jaw flexed. “You don’t build that kind of precision from pure outside knowledge. Someone had to see the real process first.”

I kept reading, a myriad of thoughts tugging at my mind.

“They were testing us. Feeling out the defenses before they came here.” He paused. “This wasn’t the first try. It was the third.”

Something wasn’t adding up. Why attack multiple Bratva properties if Iris was the main target all along?

I turned another page and stopped.

The analyst notes sat near the bottom, full of the usual codes. Liabilities. Threats. Assets. One line stood out.

Iris. Reclassified.

I turned the page so he could see it. “Persistent target node. What does that even mean?”

Boris’s face didn’t change much, but something in his eyes did. “It means the system doesn’t list her as a liability anymore.” He met my eyes.

I knew exactly what this meant, and it made my blood boil.

“Mrs. Tarasov is useful to whoever’s running this. Useful enough that grabbing her—or putting her down—is worth throwing real resources at.”

“They already tried twice.” My fingers clenched into fists.

“They’ll come again.” No soft edges on it. “People don’t spend this kind of money and then walk away.”

I closed the folder and left my hand on the cover. Outside the window, the estate looked quiet under the morning light. Guards still walked the perimeter from last night.

“Get me everything on Vetrov’s breach,” I said. “And the Kyiv warehouse. Full files, not the summary.”

“Already on it.”

“And Boris.”

He stopped at the door.

“Triple the security. Make sure every man is fully armed and on high alert.”

He nodded once and left.

I sat with that for a long time before calling her into the office.

The weight of it settled differently than the usual threats. Men came after me because of what I was. They came after her because of what she knew and what she could still find.

I’d built my career on solving problems alone. Violence when it was needed. Discipline when patience worked better. I never needed anyone else’s mind in the room with mine. Not for anything that mattered.

But this time, it was different.

Iris understood the financial architecture better than anyone on my payroll. Better than the analysts Ivan trusted. Better than men who’d spent years inside this world and still missed the patterns she’d caught in a single afternoon.