Page 13 of Tattooed Heart

My throat tightens, but I don’t look away. “Yes. I do.”

He sets the phone down with a dull thud and leans in, his voice low and hard. “This world doesn’t forgive love. It chews it up and spits it out. Especially when it comes from people like us.”

I hold his gaze. “Then maybe it’s time someone makes it choke.”

He pauses, then nods slowly. The kind where words mean less than action. “I’ll reach out to someone I trust,” he states. “If there’s a trail, we’ll find it.”

I turn toward the hallway but stop just before crossing the threshold. “Lev?”

He glances up.

“Thank you.”

He doesn’t answer. Just gives a single nod, quiet and firm. The type that doesn’t ask for loyalty but returns it anyway. The kind that meansI’ve got your back.

I step out of the kitchen and into the dim hallway. The estate is cloaked in quiet. My phone feels lighter in my hand, but my heart feels heavier in my chest.

Dimitri is still locked away in a concrete box for crimes he didn’t commit. But for the first time since he was taken, I have a weapon. And I plan to wield it like hellfire.

5

DIMITRI

They move me without ceremony or warning. There is a knock on the metal door, and a look is exchanged between the two guards, who don’t bother hiding that they know exactly what they are doing.

“General population,” one of them mumbles like it’s nothing.

But it’s everything.

Solitary might be hell, but it’s controlled. Predictable. I can manage my time, keep my head down, and wait for Aleksandr's next legal move. But gen pop? That is open season. A concrete jungle with no order, alliances, or rules. Just men crawling over each other to prove who the biggest monster in the cage is. And now I’m just another beast dropped into the pit.

The door clangs behind me with a finality that feels like betrayal. I step into a cavernous, echoing space where every surface is made of steel and concrete. The air stinks of bleach, sweat, and something sour that lingers in the back of my throat. The din of voices dips for half a second as I cross the threshold, just long enough for the entire room to take notice.

Eyes track me. Heads lift. Bodies tense.

I feel the shift in the atmosphere, the tightening tension like a pulled wire straining before the snap that comes right before the first punch is thrown.

I don’t slow my pace. Don’t glance left or right. It will be blood in the water if I give them a moment of hesitation. I spent a lifetime cultivating the ice in my veins, and now it is the only currency that matters.

I walk through the center of the room like I still rule a goddamn empire. The concrete walls and steel bars are just temporary inconveniences in the grand scheme of my life. Like the men watching me are nothing but footnotes in my story.

They don’t know me, but it doesn’t matter. Men like me wear the aura of danger like a tailored suit. They'll either sense it and keep their distance or test it and find out the hard way why I’m the last man they should cross.

In the Bratva respect isn't given. It's taken by force if necessary. These prison walls might change the battlefield, but they don't change the rules of war.

I claim a corner table, my back to the wall, my hands flat on the cold metal. I don’t touch the tray they shove in front of me. I don’t react when the guards disappear behind the security glass like shadows retreating into the fog. I simply watch and wait. Each muscle is pulled taut and ready.

That's when he appears.

He is older than most of the meatheads milling around the mess hall. Hard, scarred, and as still as a loaded gun on a bedside table. His eyes have the flat, dead look of a man who's seen toomuch and lost everything that matters. He drops into the seat across from me without a word.

His arms are covered in ink. Military ink. He is the man who has walked through fire and didn't flinch when it scorched him.

“You're not stupid,” he says quietly, his Russian clean and clipped. “So, I won't insult you by pretending this isn't what it is.”

I don’t speak. In my world, words are cheap unless they are backed by blood or bullets.

“That transfer wasn't random. It wasn't policy. It was a death sentence,” he continues, voice low and even. “Morozov has men in here. Not many but enough to make you bleed if you're not careful.”

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