Page 2 of The Bratva's Hostage

“Pakhan…”

I followed the gaze of the man who’d drawn my attention and found a wet boot print on the white bathroom wall.

She’s short, so she must have hopped onto the sink, then the wall for momentum, to get to the window.

“This is the second floor; how did he escape?” the guy continued to speak.

I stepped on the toilet to look out the window and found a pipe running down the side of the building. I shut my eyes to calm the irritation that boiled up in my chest.

“She,” I gritted out as I stepped down from the toilet and shoved his gun back into his hands.

He fumbled collecting it as he hurried to follow me out of the bathroom. “What? I don’t think I heard you-”

“The intruder was a fucking woman!” I yelled.

The men murmured amongst themselves in clear surprise.

“A woman who dares to go head-to-head with our boss?” I heard someone whisper. I whipped my head in the direction of the voice, enraged.

Head-to-head?! She took me by surprise because I didn’t intend to kill a woman!

Fuck. Now it sounds like I fought with a woman and lost.

She was fucking skilled to escape from me like that.

The men had gone quiet once I turned, now standing at attention like soldiers doing drills. There was no way to tell who’d been speaking.

“All of you, out.” I turned away again as they all scurried out. “And where the hell is Fyodor?”

“Right here, boss,” the man in question popped up from where he’d been squatting under my desk. Fyodor Agapov was my right-hand man. He’d been by my side when we were kids. His job was to jump when I asked him to jump.

I frowned as his blonde head surfaced from a rather unlikely place. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“You seemed to have it handled with the intruder so when I came in, I decided to check what might have been stolen, or if anything dangerous had been installed,” he said.

“Right.” That made sense. “Was there anything?”

It was his turn to frown. “No. She didn’t take anything, and I swept for bugs and bombs. Nothing.”

I raised a brow at the mention of bombs. It wasn’t farfetched, given there were lunatics in our line of work, but I hadn’t offended anyone badly enough recently to put in that kind of effort.

“You said it was a woman?” Fyodor asked as I headed to the scotch on the side table, needing a stiff drink to cool my anger.

“Yeah?” I asked as I poured myself a glass.

“Maybe don’t drink anything that was in here. Just in case it was poisoned.”

I flung my glass to the wall. “Goddammit!”

Fyodor watched me pace like an angry lion for a few seconds. “How did she manage to escape?” He was the only one brave enough to ask.

I whirled around to face him. “She took me by surprise. I was shocked when it was a woman and even more shocked when she knew how to defend herself.”

“You fought her?!” Fyodor was aghast, his brown eyes widening.

My face scrunched up in irritation. “No, I didn’t fucking fight her,” I scoffed. “She was just very skillful.”

I sighed, walking to look out the window. My anger was dissipating a bit now. “She could hold her own…” As annoying as it was, I never had a woman spin me around like that. I hadn’t had anyone spin me around like that.

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