Page 2 of Bratva Bride
Monitor seven showed social media analysis—posts from people near the restaurant, news coverage, speculation running wild on Russian community forums. Everyone had a theory. No one had facts.
The monitors blurred again. I rubbed my eyes. Pressed my palms against them until I saw stars. When I opened them, the screens were still there, still showing the same nightmare from forty-seven different angles.
Missing details gets people killed.
The thought arrived with my grandmother's voice. Her rule. The one she'd drilled into me from the time I was twelve years old and started really understanding what the family business meant.
"Patterns are in everything, Vanya. Water, leaves, time. You just have to pay attention. The detail you miss is the one that kills you."
I'd missed the detail with her.
My hands were shaking violently now. I gripped the edge of the desk. The medication hadn't kicked in yet. Twenty minutes. I could hold on for twenty minutes.
Focus. The bombing. That's what mattered now.
I pulled up the footage again. Watched the flash. Counted the seconds. 2.3 seconds of white light before the image returned. The blast originated under table nine. The couple celebratingtheir anniversary had been sitting at table twelve. If the device had been under table twelve instead, the angle would've taken out all three of our soldiers and none of the Morozov men.
Someone had miscalculated. Or the target had changed. Or—
The detail I was missing. It was right there. I could feel it like a splinter under my skin. Something in the timing, the placement, the federal response that was too coordinated.
I opened new windows. Started cross-referencing. The Morozov soldiers at the bar—who were they? I ran facial recognition. Names appeared. They were both low-level. Not the kind of soldiers you'd sacrifice in a bombing unless they knew something you needed to silence.
Unless they were the message.
Maybe the Morozov soldiers were the target? The bomb was meant to silence them. Our soldiers were collateral damage. The civilians were—
The door opened without a knock. Only two people had the override code for the war room—a security measure I'd implemented after realizing I'd locked myself in for eighteen hours straight during the Kozlov crisis last year.
Alexei entered first.
My oldest brother moved with the controlled precision of a man who'd been awake almost as long as I had. Of course, you'd never know it from looking at him. His suit was still pressed, charcoal gray with subtle pinstripes, white shirt crisp despite the hour. Three-piece. Perfect Windsor knot. He'd probably been in meetings all night with our lawyers, our accountants, everyone scrambling to prepare for the federal shitstorm heading our way.
But his ice-blue eyes tracked across my face with the assessment that made him Pakhan. Taking inventory. Cataloging damage.
I looked away. Went back to monitor three.
Dmitry followed, filling the doorway with his bulk. My middle brother wore tactical gear—black cargo pants, tight black t-shirt that showed every muscle, boots still caked with ash. He'd must have visited the bombing site. I could smell it on him, that acrid combination of burned plastic and wood smoke and something else. Something organic I didn't want to identify.
His dark eyes held the same concern as Alexei's, but Dmitry never learned subtlety. He wore his heart on his fucking sleeve. Right now it was breaking for me.
I hated that.
"You're still here." Alexei's voice carried that particular tone—not quite a question, not quite a command. The voice of a man used to being obeyed.
"The situation is complex." I pulled up the financial analysis I'd been running. Numbers I could control. Numbers made sense. "I've calculated the federal exposure across our seventeen legitimate business entities. The restaurant bombing gives them probable cause for RICO warrants. It’s going to cost us a lot. If they seize assets during investigation—"
"Ivan."
I kept typing. "—we're looking at $11 million across our businesses. That's assuming they only target the primary accounts. If they dig into the shell corporations, find the secondary—"
"Ivan." Dmitry's voice, closer now. He'd moved across the room while I was talking. "When did you last sleep?"
"Sleep is not the priority—" I gestured at monitor six, still showing the explosion on loop. "We have four dead civilians. Federal investigation. The Morozovs are silent, which means they're either guilty or preparing for war. I need to model probability outcomes before—"
"Vanya."
My fingers stopped. Alexei only used that name—our grandmother's name for me—when he was genuinely worried. Not just concerned. Worried.
