Page 8 of Bratva Bride
And that’s when it hit me.
The idea.
The big idea that would change everything. Bigger than a bomb, and a thousand times more dangerous.
Chapter 2
Anya
Thiswasit.Finally.My moment had come.
I sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor, surrounded by one hundred and twenty-seven days of meticulous planning. I’d calculated all the variables, identified all the patterns, mapped all the weaknesses in my father's surveillance.
My escape would happen today at 2:17 PM—not a minute before, not a second after.
The papers formed a perfect semicircle around me. Guard rotation schedules stolen one page at a time from the security office when I delivered my father's decoded intelligence reports. Shift patterns analyzed until I could predict each guard's location at any given moment with 94% accuracy.
2:17 PM. That's when Yevgeny would take his cigarette break on the east side of the estate. Six minutes of nicotine, like clockwork. Meanwhile, Maksim would be at the front gate, processing the shift change with the methodical thoroughness that made him excellent at his job and terrible at multitasking.Seven minutes and thirty seconds of overlap where neither guard could see the maintenance gate on the north wall.
Seven minutes and thirty seconds to change my entire life.
I reached under my bed and pulled out the small notebook where I'd tracked their patterns. Yevgeny: smoker, divorced, checks his phone constantly during breaks. Takes exactly six minutes per cigarette, never more, never less. Punctual about his addiction if nothing else. Maksim: former military, still runs protocols like he's securing a combat zone. Takes eleven minutes to properly sign in the new shift because he checks every detail twice. Never deviates.
My fingernails pressed into my palms. Four crescents of pain to keep me grounded. This would work. It had to work.
The go-bag waited in the air vent behind my bookshelf. I'd practiced retrieving it until I could do it in under forty seconds. Inside: $3,400 in cash, saved from birthday gifts over six years. Twenty dollars here, fifty there, never enough to be noticed missing. The forged ID had cost $1,800—purchased through a Dark Web vendor using cryptocurrency I'd mined on my contraband laptop, the one currently hidden under the loose floorboard beneath my desk.
Emma Graves. That's who I'd become once I left this estate. Generic enough to be forgettable. The photo showed me with my hair down, glasses I didn't need, a smile I'd practiced in the mirror until it looked natural instead of desperate.
The bus ticket to Montreal lay folded inside the front pocket. Purchased three weeks ago from a public library computer during my last "doctor's appointment"—the one where I'd convinced my guard I needed to use the bathroom and slipped out the back exit for twelve precious minutes. Departure 3:15 PM from Port Authority. Arrival 11:43 PM. The hostel was already booked for two nights under Emma Graves's name. After that, I'd figure out the rest. Maybe Toronto. Maybe Vancouver.Somewhere far from New York and the suffocating weight of being Viktor Morozov's daughter.
I pulled out my mother's death certificate, the only thing I was taking that truly belonged to me. Acute myocardial infarction. Age thirty-one. Sometimes I pressed my hand against my chest and wondered if her weak heart lived in my body too. If anxiety could literally break the muscle that kept us alive.
Weather app showed clear skies, 67 degrees. Perfect running weather. I'd mapped the route perfectly. Four minutes to reach the maintenance gate if I ran full speed. Another six minutes to the subway station. The 2:31 train would get me to Port Authority by 3:05. Ten minutes of buffer time in case something went wrong.
Nothing would go wrong. I'd calculated every variable.
Traffic patterns for Tuesday afternoons: moderate but predictable. The school three blocks away released students at 2:45, creating enough foot traffic that one more young woman wouldn't stand out. I'd wear the Yankees cap and oversized Columbia hoodie—invisible in their normalcy. My heartbeat accelerated just thinking about it. Walking among people who didn't know my name. Who didn't track my every movement. Who didn't see me as a tool to be used or a possession to be guarded.
The contraband laptop showed 11:18 AM. Three hours. Three hours until I stopped being a chess piece and became a person.
I began collecting the papers, feeding them one by one into the shredder I'd claimed I needed for "security purposes." Each schedule, each pattern analysis, each carefully drawn map disappeared into strips too small to reassemble. The evidence of my planning erased as methodically as I'd created it.
My hands trembled as I destroyed months of work. Hope was a dangerous thing. It made you vulnerable. Made you believe theimpossible was possible. But I couldn't stop the feeling building in my chest—light and terrifying and absolutely real.
At 2:17 PM, I would walk out of this estate.
At 3:15 PM, I would board a bus as Emma Graves.
At 11:43 PM, I would arrive in Montreal, where no one knew that Anya Morozova had ever existed.
I pressed my fingernails into my palms one more time. Four crescents of pain. Four counts of breathing. In four hours, I would be free.
The intercom crackled.
"Anya. My office. Now." My father's voice cut through the intercom like a blade through silk.
My stomach dropped.
