Page 15 of Captive Virgin of the Bratva

I walk to the far wall and light a cigarette with steady fingers, watching the smoke curl toward the ceiling as Yuri moans behind me. There’s a clock ticking somewhere. A soft, rhythmic pulse.

I exhale and let the silence stretch.

The doctor’s coming. Let’s see what she’s made of.

The sky overhead is thick and black, the stars obscured behind a layer of low-hanging clouds. Somewhere out in the woods, an owl calls out—sharp, distant, uncaring. The cold settles into my shoulders, seeping through the wool of my coat, but I don’t move to adjust it.

The two men I sent out stand near the porch, smoking in nervous silence. They straighten when they see me coming, the older one—Kostya, I think—dropping his cigarette and crushing it beneath his boot like it’ll make a difference.

I stop just short of them.

“You had one job,” I say, my voice low and level. “Keep him alive.”

Kostya swallows. The younger one, lanky and jittery, shifts from foot to foot like he’s deciding whether to speak or stay silent.

He chooses wrong. “We’re not doctors, Boss,” he blurts out. “You told us to hold him till help came, but you didn’t leave us anything. No meds, no gauze, no—”

I draw my gun and shoot him in the face.

The report is deafening in the quiet clearing. The sound ricochets off the trees, cracks through the cold like a thunderclap.

The kid crumples where he stands, half of his head gone, collapsing into a heap of limbs and slack muscle. Blood splatters the ground, warm and sudden, pooling fast against gravel.

Kostya doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t flinch. Just stares straight ahead like if he doesn’t move, maybe he won’t be next.

“You think I care what you are?” I ask, turning my gaze to him. “I don’t pay you to make excuses. I pay you to carry out orders. If I tell you to keep someone breathing, you keep them breathing. You crawl to the nearest pharmacy, you steal a medic from a street clinic, you dosomethingother than sit on your ass with vodka and rags.”

He nods, once. It’s stiff. Controlled. “Understood.”

I stare at him for another few seconds, weighing whether that fear in his eyes is the kind that keeps a man useful—or the kind that makes him useless.

For now, he stays alive.

“Clean this up,” I say, gesturing at the body. “Bury him deep. I don’t want anything left to find.”

“Yes, sir.”

I turn back toward the house, already pulling another cigarette from the inside of my coat. My gloves are slick with blood; I peel them off and drop them on the steps as I climb them, lighting the smoke with steady fingers.

The smoke doesn’t clear the stench.

Inside, the air still reeks of sweat, infection, and stale wood. Yuri’s low moans drift through the cracked door behind me like a dying animal. He’s not dead. Not yet. But he’s dancing on the edge, and I don’t have time for the slow shuffle toward death.

There’s someone out there. Someone who thought Yuri was stupid enough to trade our secrets and live long enough to profit. Someone feeding him orders. Names. Targets.

Whoever that is, they’re still out there, thinking they’ve gotten away with it.

I flick ash onto the floorboards and take a long drag.

They’re wrong. Yuri will talk. He’ll scream if he has to. He’ll bleed every last secret into my hands if it kills him.

I step back into the house with purpose, the door creaking shut behind me. The bulb above Yuri flickers weakly, casting twitching shadows across the floorboards. He’s still conscious—barely. His face is drained of color, mouth slack, one arm twitching like his body’s trying to fight its own collapse. I stare at him for a moment, breathing in the decay, the sweat, the sharp tang of blood soaking into the mattress beneath him.

This is what betrayal looks like. Soft, pathetic, dying.

Boris leans against the wall near the window, arms crossed, but he straightens when I enter.

“He’s getting worse.”

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