Page 93 of Bratva Bride
The stairwell was narrow, designed for staff to move unseen through the house's bones. Our footsteps should have echoed, but Dmitry moved with predator silence, and Ivan matched him,pulling me along in their wake. My bare feet made no sound on the worn wooden steps—a blessing, since my legs were shaking too hard to manage anything requiring coordination.
Halfway down, Dmitry raised his fist—military signal for stop. We pressed against the wall, and I felt Ivan's chest against my back, his arm banding around my waist to hold me steady. Below us, voices drifted up. Male. Russian. Multiple guards having a conversation that shouldn't be happening here, shouldn't be happening now.
"—lost fifty on that match. Fucking referee was blind."
"You always lose, Oleg. Should stop betting."
"Like you did better with the horses last week?"
Three of them, maybe four. They were directly below us, in the small alcove where the servants' stairs met the main hallway. Not their usual patrol route. Just bad luck, the universe's reminder that escape was never meant to be easy for people like me.
Ivan's hand moved to cover my mouth—gentle but firm, preventing any sound I might make. I could feel his heart hammering against my spine, matching my own panicked rhythm. Dmitry had gone statue-still ahead of us, one hand on his weapon, calculating angles and odds and acceptable losses.
One of the guards paused mid-laugh. "You hear something?"
My lungs seized. Everything stopped—heartbeat, breath, thought. This was it. They'd look up, see us, raise alarms. Viktor would return to find Ivan in custody, me back in my room, everything worse than before.
"What, like your wife finding out about your girlfriend?" Another guard laughed. "Relax, Pavel. The house is secure. The girl's locked up, the old man's gone for hours."
A phone rang—sharp, electronic, cutting through their laughter.
"Da?" The guard who answered sounded annoyed. "What? No, sector seven is clear, we just—" A pause. "The cameras are what? For how long?"
Ivan's arm tightened around me. They'd discovered Elena's sabotage. We had seconds, maybe less, before they started checking everywhere, before the servants' stairs became a trap instead of an escape route.
But the phone call was pulling them away, the guard who'd answered already moving toward the security office, the others following with the lazy confidence of men who thought they had hours to solve a technical glitch.
We waited ten seconds after their footsteps faded—Dmitry counting on his fingers where I could see—then moved. No more stealth, just speed. Down the remaining stairs, through the narrow hallway that led to the kitchen, Elena's domain where she'd promised us safe passage.
The kitchen door was cracked open, afternoon light spilling through. Safety was twenty feet away. Then ten. Then—
Anatoly stood at the kitchen island, eating a sandwich.
Viktor's head of security. Six-foot-four of bratva violence, a man who'd hurt people for my father since before I was born. He looked up from his meal, processed what he was seeing—me in a nightgown and cardigan, Ivan in tactical gear, Dmitry looking like death incarnate—and his hand was already moving for his weapon.
"What the—"
Dmitry moved faster than physics should have allowed. The distance between them evaporated, and his hand clamped over Anatoly's mouth before the shout could fully form. They crashed into the island, Anatoly's sandwich scattering, plates shattering on the tile floor with a sound like gunshots.
The third operative was already there, helping Dmitry wrestle the much larger man into submission. But Anatoly was afighter, trained, experienced. His elbow caught Dmitry in the ribs with a crack I heard across the room. A knife appeared from somewhere—kitchen drawer, boot, didn't matter—slashing toward Dmitry's throat.
Ivan shoved me behind him, his own weapon drawn but unable to fire without hitting Dmitry. The fight was too close, too chaotic, bodies crashing into cabinets, more dishes breaking, any second someone would hear—
Then Dmitry got his arm around Anatoly's throat. He squeezed—so tight that I could see the effort in his eyes. Anatoly thrashed harder for a few seconds, then his movements became sluggish, uncoordinated. His eyes rolled back. The knife clattered to the floor as his body went limp.
"Not dead," Dmitry panted, lowering the unconscious man to the floor with surprising care. "But he'll have one hell of a headache. Maybe some memory issues."
Blood ran from Dmitry's nose, and his breathing sounded wrong—definitely bruised ribs, possibly cracked. But he was already moving toward the door, checking sight lines, signaling us forward.
"Go!"
We ran. Through the kitchen door, across the back garden where I'd tried to grow roses as a child—they'd all died, nothing beautiful survived in this place. My legs were failing, five days of barely eating combined with adrenaline crash making them shake like a newborn colt's. Ivan ended up half-carrying me, his arm around my waist practically lifting me off the ground with each stride.
The wall loomed ahead—ten feet of stone topped with decorative ironwork that was actually razor wire painted black. But there was a rope already in place, thrown over from outside, knotted for climbing. Inside help again—it had to be Elena.
Dmitry went up first, surprisingly agile for someone with damaged ribs. The operative followed. Then Ivan was lifting me, hands on my waist, and I grabbed the rope with fingers that barely remembered how to grip.
"Climb, kotyonok. I'm right behind you."
