Page 13 of Bratva Bride
His weathered hands turned a page in the Code, though he wasn't reading it. The gesture was ceremonial. Reminding us that rules existed. That chaos had consequences.
He looked at Alexei first—proper protocol, acknowledging the Pakhan of one of the warring families. Then his gaze shifted to Viktor. The temperature in the room dropped another degree.
"This ends today," Besharov said. Not a suggestion. Not a request. A statement of fact backed by five families' worth of soldiers who'd enforce his decision if necessary. "One way or another."
Viktor Morozov spoke first, because of course he did—the man had never met a silence he couldn't fill with calculated poison. His voice came out smooth as expensive vodka and twice as toxic, each word placed with the precision of a chess grandmaster who'd already calculated twenty moves ahead.
"The Volkovs planted that bomb." He let the accusation hang in the air for exactly three seconds. I counted them. "Killed their own soldiers to justify escalation. Classic false flag operation—create the crisis, control the narrative, expand territory during the chaos."
Interesting. Even though I’d called ahead, told Morozov of my plan, my offer, he was still going for us. Maybe to keep up appearances, maybe for some other reason. Whatever his motivation, it was fascinating to watch.
He reached into his briefcase with theatrical deliberation. The leather was Italian, clearly expensive. Everything about Viktor Morozov was designed to project sophisticated menace.
"We have evidence." He slid a manila folder across the table toward Besharov. The paper whispered against wood like a threat. "Communications intercepts from three days before the bombing. Financial transfers to a Besharov demolitions expert named Krupin who—conveniently—disappeared two days after the blast. Forty thousand dollars. Enough to buy a lot of C4 and a one-way ticket to Moscow."
My fingers moved across my tablet before my conscious mind caught up. The analysis programs were already running—pattern recognition, metadata extraction, encryption signature comparison. The intercepts appeared on my screen in real-time as Besharov opened the folder. Viktor had made them available on an open server, wanting everyone to see his "proof."
The forgeries were sophisticated. Good enough to fool most intelligence analysts. The Russian was perfect, the syntax matched our communication protocols, the encryption looked authentic at first glance. Someone had put serious work into these. Professional work. The kind that required inside knowledge of how we structured our operations.
But they'd made mistakes. Small ones. The kind only someone like me would notice.
The timestamp formatting was wrong—used the American MM/DD/YYYY in the metadata while displaying the European DD/MM/YYYY in the visible text. Real Volkov communications used Unix epoch time converted to Moscow timezone. Always. It was one of my protocols, implemented three years ago to prevent exactly this kind of forgery.
The encryption signature claimed to use our proprietary algorithm—a modified AES-256 I'd developed myself. But the mathematical pattern was off. They'd tried to replicate it, gottenclose, but the prime number sequencing in the key generation was wrong. Used Mersenne primes instead of Sophie Germain primes. Subtle difference. Fatal tell.
The financial transfers were the most damning evidence against Viktor's story. They routed through accounts that hadn't existed until three weeks ago. I pulled up the blockchain records, traced the digital footprints. The accounts were created seventeen days before the bombing, funded twenty-four hours later, then used for these specific transfers. No history. No other activity. Shell accounts created for one purpose—to frame us.
I slid my tablet across to Besharov without a word. Let the data speak for itself.
I had my part to play, too. Had to project strength, before I put forward my offer. I knew he’d accept—there’s no way he would have confirmed his daughter was a virgin if he didn’t plan to.
Besharov's eyes scanned the screen. His expression never changed—seven decades of bratva leadership had taught him to show nothing—but I caught the micro-tell. A slight narrowing of his left eye. He knew manufactured evidence when he saw it.
He slid the tablet to his son, who examined it with the same carefully neutral expression. Then to his grandson, representing three generations of Besharov authority reviewing my work. Each one nodded slightly. Message received. Evidence evaluated. Judgment pending.
"The Morozovs killed their own soldiers to silence them," Alexei said. His voice carried that particular sub-zero temperature that meant someone was about to bleed. "They knew something about Viktor's operations. Something worth killing civilians to keep quiet. The bombing was housecleaning that got messy."
Viktor's jaw tightened—barely visible, maybe half a millimeter of muscle tension, but I cataloged it instantly. Alexei had hitclose to truth. Maybe not the exact truth, but close enough to draw blood.
"Absurd." Viktor recovered quickly, but that split-second tell had already given him away. "Why would I sacrifice my own men? Konstantin Volkov and Pavel Drugov were valuable soldiers. Loyal. Productive. Their loss costs me more than any strategic gain."
"Because they were liabilities," Dmitry growled from my left. His massive frame shifted forward, telegraphing aggression that made Viktor's soldiers tense. "Because you're losing control of your organization and needed to look strong. Because dead men tell no tales, and those men knew too many of yours."
The temperature in the room plummeted. Hands moved toward concealed weapons with the subtle shifts of men who'd practiced the motion until it became instinct. The Kozlovs were practically vibrating with anticipation—they'd love nothing more than to watch the Volkovs and Morozovs tear each other apart, then pick over the corpses for territory.
"Careful, Dmitry," Viktor Chenkov's replacement, Antonov, spoke for the first time. His voice had a wet quality, like he was always about to swallow. "Your brother makes accusations without proof. That's dangerous territory."
"Your boss presents forgeries as evidence," I said quietly. Didn't raise my voice. Didn't need to. "That's equally dangerous."
The word 'forgeries' rippled through the room like a stone dropped in still water. Viktor's pale eyes locked on mine. For a moment, the mask slipped completely. I saw the calculation underneath, the raw intelligence that had kept him alive and in power for thirty years. He was already running scenarios, trying to figure out how I'd identified the forgeries so quickly, what else I knew, what other evidence I might have.
"You're calling me a liar?" Viktor's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. More dangerous than shouting.
"I'm calling your evidence manufactured." I kept my tone clinical, emotionless. "The data doesn't lie. People do."
Sergei Kozlov laughed—harsh bark that sounded like a dog choking on a bone. "Volkovs, Morozovs, you're both fucking liars. The only truth is who's strong enough to take what they want."
"Enough." Besharov's single word cut through the rising chaos. He closed the folder of false evidence with deliberate finality. "Accusations without proof. Evidence that contradicts itself. We're no closer to truth than when we started."
