Bratva’s Mercy (Bratva’s Undoing #3)

Prologue

SERGEI

Breaking into a man’s house on the day he buried his husband had to rank among the lowest things I’d ever done.

Yet, I didn’t feel any regret at all. My loyalty was not to morality or mercy but to Maxim Morozov.

And the widower stepping out of that pristine brick house was a potential threat to him, which made him mine to assess and eliminate, if necessary.

I was parked two houses down from the front steps of my target. Roughly two hundred feet, which I’d paced out nights ago under the cover of a late-night jog while I noted sightlines and mapped out the blind spots between neighboring cameras.

With its wide streets, the neighborhood was designed to discourage intrusion on personal property.

There were no on-street parking restrictions, which meant unfamiliar vehicles didn’t stand out immediately.

Camera placements were predictable—one above Leo’s garage, one covering the front walk, and another covering the rear yard, based on wiring conduits I’d noted the night before.

Overall, a good system, but I’d designed better for Morozov.

The front door opened at 13:14, enough time for him to get to the funeral before it was scheduled to start, but not so much time that he had to endure endless chatter beforehand.

I’d noticed that about him. He wasn’t too social, yet everyone I’d spoken to at his workplace had nothing but good things to say about him.

He wore a bespoke black suit. Nothing off the rack for him. The shoulders of the jacket were structured correctly, with the sleeves ending precisely at the wrist bone. There was no lint that I could see through my binoculars. No crease lines either.

He had on the sunglasses with matte-black frame and discreet gold hinge detailing from Cartier, which he’d purchased the day after Bradley’s death from a boutique on Chisolm Street, credit card ending in 4821.

He’d worn them twice already since Bradley’s death.

Once to the hospital and again to view his husband’s body at the morgue.

Leo locked the door behind him and paused at the top step.

He hadn’t parked his car in the garage for the last couple of days since he started storing his husband’s belongings inside.

The shiny black BMW sports car seemed inconsistent with everything I knew about him.

He seemed more practical than flashy, but I hadn’t ruled out that this seemingly impulsive purchase might be a clue to a man who was a lot more than he appeared on the surface.

He shifted his weight to his right foot, his left hand resting on the railing.

His shoulders rose, and he exhaled slowly.

From all the intel I’d dug up, he was a loving husband.

Burying a spouse he had hoped to spend the rest of his life with had to be hard.

I didn’t get it, loving someone so much that their passing brought on so much grief.

For a married doctor in this tax bracket, the absence of family and friends around him was notable.

Where was his support system? He had twin siblings who were older by ten years.

His parents were still alive. He had many coworkers, but none showed up for him to ensure he reached the funeral home in one piece.

He descended the steps, his gait steady for a man who’d been up for most of the night. His bedroom light hadn’t gone out until two thirty-seven in the wee hours of the morning.

Leo opened the driver’s side door but stopped, head lowered, staying in that position approximately four seconds with his right hand tightened along the frame. Then he straightened, gathered his composure, and entered the vehicle. He closed the door and started the ignition.

The car backed out of the driveway with a quick, practiced swerve, and I watched his taillights disappear down the street. I counted to sixty, then got into motion.

My maintenance truck was angled deliberately as if I were servicing the empty property with the For Sale sign out front. It was fitted with a magnetic logo on the doors and a ladder rack in plain sight. The kind of vehicle no one would look at twice in a wealthy neighborhood.

I stepped out, pulled on a pair of worn work gloves, and grabbed a small canvas tool bag. The standard maintenance clutter was on top. Beneath it lay what I actually needed: tools to hack into and download everything off the hard drives in that house.

The air smelled faintly of freshly cut grass. A woman across the street, watering her hydrangeas, glanced at me once. I gave her a polite nod, and she curled her lips as if in disgust, losing interest immediately. Another high society wife who thought the help was beneath her, no doubt.

I walked up Leo’s driveway with purpose, as if I belonged there.

Nothing drew attention more than a man who looked as if he were sneaking around.

His garage doors were shut, the cameras active, but I stayed beneath their lower field of vision, trusting my cap to shield my face as I rounded the side of the house toward the rear entrance.

The landscaping here was immaculate, the boxwoods trimmed tight, and the gravel undisturbed.

There was no loose soil to betray footprints.

The back door sat beneath an overhang, and the door could be unlocked with a keycard or fingerprint.

Four days ago, I’d lifted Leo’s fingerprint from the door handle of his car.

I’d transferred it to a thin silicone film bonded to a flexible overlay.

I pressed that overlay to the biometric pad next to the door, and a soft green blink appeared.

Bingo.

I slipped inside and closed the door gently behind me.

The interior of the house was pristine white and gray.

I followed the hallway to the entrance hall and looked through the glass panel to check that nothing on the outside looked strange.

Photographs lined the walls, showcasing beach vacations and holiday dinners.

A ski trip where Bradley had snow on his lashes and Leo was mid-laugh, head tipped back.

They seemed to have traveled extensively based on the photographs from Paris, London, Brazil, and Sydney, which I recognized from similar trips with Maxim over the years.

The doctor looked different in the photographs.

I studied them longer than necessary, cataloging angles, expressions, posture, until I figured out what seemed so strange about them.

In every frame, he was either smiling or caught mid-laugh, head tilted toward Bradley, shoulders relaxed.

There was no trace of the rigid control he wore now like armor.

None of the weight that seemed to cling to him.

Grief hadn’t merely altered his face. It had carved away whatever light used to live there and left the structure behind. The warmth I saw in the photographs was gone.

Had he loved his husband so much for his permanent absence to do that—to remake a man from the inside out?

What a pity.

Leo was handsome in his own way. Not delicate like my boss’s boyfriend, but no less striking for it. Where Wren carried a kind of fragile beauty, Leo was solid: a square jaw, stronger physique, the quiet authority of a man who had lived enough to have long shed the naivete Wren still had.

I let my gaze linger a second too long on one of his solo photos tucked in the corner of a larger frame.

It had been taken at a beach, the light warm and low behind him.

Leo stood barefoot at the water’s edge, trousers rolled, white shirt open at the throat.

His hair was longer and fell loosely across his forehead, softening the sharp lines of his face.

One hand rested in his pocket. The other held a pair of shoes by their laces, dangling loosely at his side. His head was tilted slightly, eyes narrowed against the sun, mouth curved into a smile so unlike the restrained expression I’d seen on the porch.

His shoulders were broader than they appeared beneath tailored suits.

Solid. The sea wind pressed his shirt against his frame, outlining the definition in his torso, which was consistent with what I knew about him.

He went to the gym twice a week and played tennis at the private residents’ tennis courts, accessible only to homeowners in this area.

He had the physique of the kind of men I paid for whenever I had the urge. Yet he was so different. His blue eyes gleamed with intelligence, and the way he carried himself radiated sophistication.

I tugged the photo from the frame and slipped it into my pocket, telling myself it was a test to see how observant he was. Would he realize it was gone and figure out someone had been inside his home?

Focus, Sergei. You’re not here to admire a widower’s bone structure.

His office sat at the rear of the house, the door half open.

I slipped inside and, fucking hell, had an honest-to-goodness erection at how exact everything was.

Shelves were aligned in perfect symmetry.

Medical texts tabbed, with their edges flush with precision.

Framed certifications were leveled exactly on the wall with no tilt or dust. The surface of the desk was immaculate.

Even the pens were parallel and facing the same direction.

I knew he was meticulous, but I hadn’t known he was this deliberate about it.

This wasn’t casual neatness but an architecture of thought.

A mind that required structure the way others required air.

It was discipline bordering on obsession, and I found myself wanting to understand the mind that required this much order to function.

I set my tool bag beside the desk and took in the diplomas lining the wall to the right.

Medical school from a top-tier institution, residency completed with honors, and a fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery.

Dates were paced evenly across the years with no gaps.

There were also certificates in advanced surgical techniques and robotics training.

Continuing education credits were renewed like clockwork.

He hadn’t plateaued. Every few years, he’d gone back to sharpen his mind.

Fuck, I couldn’t help being impressed.

His shelves were full of science texts, medical journals stacked chronologically, and encyclopedias on anatomy and surgical innovation. They weren’t just for decoration either. The spines were creased and flagged.

I moved to an adjacent bookshelf, which seemed more personal.

Biographies dominated the top two shelves—scientists, physicists, and pioneers in medicine.

People who pushed boundaries and endured isolation for their work.

A few volumes were on leadership, one on decision-making under pressure, and two on meditation and cognitive discipline. They showed more order again.

My gaze snagged on something mid-shelf, slightly recessed as if it had been pushed back unconsciously. It didn’t fit the image of Leo, the man who was anal about his life. The title was about rebuilding intimacy and repairing connection in a marriage.

Had the doctor and his husband been having problems?

I’d learned that they’d had somewhat of an open marriage. The arrangement itself didn’t bother me, but it didn’t seem to click with the doctor’s persona. Or maybe I’d built up an image of him too soon. Everyone had vices, and I hadn’t discovered the doctor’s yet.

The sound of an engine cut through the stillness, and I cocked my head. It was closer than it should have been. I shoved my bag beneath the desk and moved into the hall. Through the glass panel beside the front door, I saw Leo’s BMW roll into the driveway.

Fuck.

I scanned around for the best solution to avoid getting caught. The distance to the back exit was too far. The window in the dining room was possible, but it would expose me to the neighbor with the hydrangeas.

Leo stepped out of the car quickly, his sunglasses gone, his face pale, and his jaw tight. He ran straight toward the front door. I withdrew the gun tucked into my waistband. If he walked in and saw me, I would have no choice but to send him to join his husband.

I backed up into the living room, flattening myself against the wall beyond the sightline of the entrance. From here, I could intercept him if necessary. Close range. Clean shot. The suppressor would muffle it enough that neighbors might dismiss the sound.

The front door unlocked.

Opened.

Closed.

Footsteps fast, uneven, almost stumbling, rushed inside. Leo dashed past the entrance without looking left or right. He barreled straight into the half bath across from the foyer. A beat passed, then the sound of violent retching.

I lowered the muzzle a fraction, controlling my breathing as my pulse fluttered in my neck. The retching went on longer than I would have hoped before tapering off into silence broken by the rush of water. The faucet ran for a few seconds before shutting off.

I waited for the familiar reset, the careful reconstruction of composure I had come to expect from him.

Instead, a fractured inhale slipped through the open door.

It caught halfway, as if his lungs refused to cooperate.

Another followed, sharper this time, developing into uncontrollable sobs.

The sound seemed to be dragged from somewhere deep inside his chest, as if finally free after being suppressed for so long.

My grip on the gun tightened, reflexively anchoring myself in something cold and familiar. Steel made sense. Someone else’s grief did not, and I didn’t know how to react to it. It left an uncomfortable sensation in my chest.

He tried to stifle the sound of his crying, but it didn’t work.

The next sob broke through unbridled. He was alone in there, and that fact pressed against me with unease.

He had no family present to comfort him.

No friend to murmur reassurance. No coworker to remind him to breathe.

Just tile, plumbing, and the echo of his own grief bouncing back at him.

Maxim had tasked me with determining whether Leo posed a threat.

I had studied his routines, tracked his movements, and mapped his habits, but threats didn’t unravel like this.

The man was shattered because we’d killed his husband, and he had to live with the lie that the man he loved died by suicide after being rejected by someone else.

I could have moved then, while he was distracted, vulnerable, and unaware of my presence. A single step forward, a suppressed shot, and the assessment would have ended permanently. We wouldn’t have to guess anymore what he was capable of.

Instead, I remained where I was, listening to him break apart and despising the uncertainty buried inside my chest.