Page 5 of Captured By the Bratva

“My cover wouldn’t hold up there.”

“Then ask one of your colleagues.” Was he insane? He had to be to ask me to do him a favor like this. All my life, he’d wanted favors from me, and I knew how poorly those tended to end up.

“That’s not a great idea,” he argued.

Oh, he’d ask his daughter to be an accomplice with something at a sex club—a place I’d never consider visiting to begin with—but not his fellow officers. That right there told me this was another one of his corrupt plans, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

“Someone will have an envelope for me there. I just need you to get it and deliver it to me.”

“No.Hellno. I don’t trust you.”

“Okay.” He huffed. “Then I’ll tell Dom how to reach you so he can talk to you directly about this custody business.”

I narrowed my eyes, fuming and trying to find the fewest words to reply. He was threatening me, his own flesh and blood. The fact that he’d stoop so low to threaten me infuriated me.This was nothing but an ultimatum, but I wasn’t worried. I doubted Dom knew I had his baby. And he wouldn’t have cared.

“You’re lying.” I shook my head and turned, giving the gallery crowd my back as I glowered at the wall. “And I’msickof it.”

All my life, he'd looked out for himself, trying to score money and power. Not once did he ever care about me, and I was so damn tired of his attempts to control me.

“I’m not helping you with a single fucking thing, Steven.”

Then I hung up, pushed too far past my quota of patience to hear his voice. Pressing my fingertip on the screen to end the call did little to appease my anger. Scathing mad and annoyed, I drew in a deep breath and tried to get back into the spirit of being here.

It was hopeless. Once I caught my breath and slapped on what I hoped was a smile, I replayed the conversation in my head with the repeated awareness of what it all meant.

Control. Steven only wanted to manipulate me, to use me for his own gains.

Just like Dom had.

Zoning out on the crowd that praised Morgan’s artwork and not anyone else’s, I sank into a pit of despair, wishing this wasn’t how my life had to be.

Never mind my artwork. Most days, it felt like a pipe dream to wish for success in that field.

With a deeper sense of longing, I wished—not for the first time—that I could find someone who would care aboutme. Just the way I was. With no expectations or rules to follow. No burdens or obligations. No roles or chances of being used for something else.

Someone to love and support me, no matter what.

Keep dreaming, Bec. Keep fucking dreaming…

3

IVAN

Surveillance was Nik’s forte, but I’d handled searching for plenty of people too. We all did in our efforts to keep the Valkov Bratva strong and secure.

But finding Murphy proved to be harder than I thought it might be, and I hated that I’d underestimated my ability for rooting out the cop.

For over a week, I tried and failed to get a bead on where the officer was hiding. Officially, he’d taken a sabbatical from work. Informants verified that he’d put in paperwork with his superiors to have time off. Unofficially, he was taking cover and making my life difficult.

Yusef was a big help on the streets, tracking leads that took him nowhere. I tasked soldiers to remain alert near all the addresses we'd ever had for Murphy. He was slippery, changing residences often, but he didn’t show up at any of them.

Despite all the manpower I arranged to help me find Murphy, my only stroke of fortune was in the tracking software Dmitri handled most often. My younger brother showed me all the arrangements he and Yusef had set up to rifle through the calls Murphy had made. Most calls were to numbers associated with burners. Messages were encrypted, and the callscouldn’t always be traced. When they were accurately traced, the locations of the callers moved constantly.

My frustration scaled so high that the usual peace I found at the sex clubs didn’t make a dent on my mood. I was too pissed, thwarted, and impatient to have to struggle in hunting down Murphy.

The day a pattern showed up, though, I warned myself not to be too optimistic and get my hopes up high.

“Same number,” Yusef confirmed. He scrolled on the monitor at the mansion my uncle Pavel used to live in. Since Alek took over, he’d made it the Bratva headquarters. Upstairs, we lived and held meetings, parties too. Downstairs, the labyrinth of secret rooms housed all kinds of surveillance equipment. Maxim was trying to find more hackers, but they were fickle, almost like Murphy was—not willing to be loyal to any one provider. Opportunists at heart.

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