Taken By The Bratva (Bratva Dominion #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

ALEXEI

Just before midnight, the elevator begins its descent.

Forty-seven floors to the Processing Room.

I count the levels by the subtle pressure changes in my ears, a habit from the Kennel that I have never unlearned.

The Kennel wasn't a metaphor—it was a factory that took children and manufactured weapons, and by the time it finished with me, counting had become as automatic as breathing.

The fluorescent panel above flickers at the thirty-second floor, as it always does, and resumes its steady hum. The flicker has become part of the descent, a reliable marker in an otherwise featureless journey.

Ivan Baranov stands to my left with his hands clasped behind his back, his posture suggesting nothing more urgent than a routine inspection.

His suit is immaculate despite the hour, despite the operation that preceded this moment.

Between us, two of his men support the weight of a hooded figure whose knees buckle every few seconds before catching.

The subject is conscious. His breathing pattern confirms this: rapid inhalations through the nose, controlled exhalations through the mouth.

Someone trained him to manage pain, though the technique is imperfect.

His diaphragm hitches on every fourth breath, and his bound hands tremble against his restraints.

“The file was accurate?” Ivan asks without looking at me.

“Preliminary assessment suggests so.” I keep my eyes forward. “Nikolai Petrenko. Thirty-one years old. Only son of Viktor Petrenko, though that designation became complicated six hours ago when your team extracted him from the family compound.”

“And his value?”

“To be determined. The extraction parameters are still being assessed.”

The elevator settles with a pneumatic hiss.

The doors part to reveal a corridor of poured concrete, illuminated by the same flickering fluorescents that run through every sub-level of the Tower.

The temperature here is maintained at sixty-two degrees—cold enough to produce physiological discomfort without causing medical complications.

I selected this number myself, years ago.

Ivan’s men drag the subject forward. His feet scrape against the concrete, and I note that he is attempting to walk despite the damage to his left knee. Pride, most likely. The Petrenko family cultivates it like a crop.

We pass three doors before reaching the fourth.

Each door is identical: reinforced steel, no windows, no markings.

The architects who designed this level understood that disorientation is a tool.

Subjects who are brought here blindfolded and then unhooded find themselves in a corridor without landmarks, without any way to construct a mental map.

I press my palm to the biometric scanner, and the lock disengages with a sound like vertebrae cracking.

The Processing Room opens before us: walls of acoustic paneling that swallow sound, a drain set into the center of the floor, a single chair bolted to the concrete.

Restraint points at the wrists, ankles, and throat.

The ceiling is painted the same matte gray as the walls, designed to feel simultaneously cramped and infinite depending on the subject’s psychological state.

The lights here do not flicker. I had them replaced after my third session in this room. Everything in this space serves a purpose.

“Put him in the chair,” I say.

Ivan’s men comply with mechanical efficiency.

They have done this before, though never with cargo of this particular value.

The subject struggles when they force him down, his muscles tensing against the restraints as they lock into place, but the resistance lasts only seconds before his body accepts the futility.

His chest heaves. His hooded head turns toward the sound of my footsteps as I circle behind him.

“Leave us,” Ivan says to his men.

They exit without acknowledgment. The door seals behind them.

Ivan moves to stand before the chair, studying the hooded figure with an expression I have learned to read over years of observation. He is calculating net worth. Leverage potential. The precise amount of suffering this man can absorb before becoming useless.

He gestures me toward the corridor. “A word. Outside.”

I follow him through the door. The subject remains hooded, restrained, unable to hear what comes next.

In the hallway, Ivan’s voice drops. “The father will negotiate?”

“Unlikely.” I match his low tone. “Viktor Petrenko has two nephews of viable age. Intelligence suggests he’s been grooming Dmitri Petrenko for succession since the subject displayed what the family considers ‘instability’ three years ago.”

“Instability.”

“The subject refused to execute a debtor who owed the family forty thousand dollars. Claimed the man had children.” I pause. “The father handled the execution personally and placed the subject on administrative duties for six months.”

Ivan’s mouth curves slightly. “Soft heart in a hard business.”

“A liability they’ve been waiting to shed. His extraction may accelerate a transition they were already planning.”

“Then we extract what he knows and determine his usefulness.” Ivan straightens his cuffs. “Everything, Alexei. Shipping routes, account numbers, the names of every captain and lieutenant he’s ever met. And then we decide what he’s worth.”

“Understood.”

Ivan turns toward the elevator. He does not look back. In the hierarchy of the Baranov Bratva, Ivan Baranov is the architect who designs the structure. I am the one who pours the foundation.

I return to the Processing Room. The door seals behind me.

I am alone with the subject.

The fluorescent hum fills the silence. I let it work, tracking the subject’s physiological responses through the visible indicators: the rise and fall of his chest, the tension in his shoulders, the small movements of his head as he attempts to locate me by sound.

He is afraid. The fear presents in standard patterns.

His heart rate is elevated—I can see the pulse hammering in his throat even through the hood.

Perspiration has begun to darken the fabric.

His fingers open and close in rhythmic cycles, a self-soothing mechanism that suggests a history of anxiety managed through physical motion.

“You’re just going to stand there?” The voice is muffled by the hood, but the tone carries clearly: contempt layered over fear, bravado stretched thin. “I can hear you breathing, you know. Standing in the corner like some kind of—”

I remove the hood.

The subject’s eyes struggle to adjust. His pupils contract from maximum aperture to a size appropriate for the room’s illumination. His irises are gray, unusually pale, shot through with darker striations that catch the fluorescent light like cracks in ice.

He blinks. Focuses. Sees me.

I wait for the recognition.

It comes in stages. First the confusion, the attempt to reconcile my appearance with whatever monster his imagination had constructed.

I am not large. I am not scarred or disfigured.

I wear a dark sweater and simple trousers, my sleeves pushed to the elbows, my hands clean and still at my sides.

There is nothing theatrical about my presentation.

This, I have found, is more unsettling than any costume.

Then the assessment. His eyes move across my face, cataloging features, searching for weakness or leverage.

He finds neither. His gaze drops to my hands, then to the small table against the wall where my tools are arranged in precise rows: scalpels, clamps, needles, vials.

Everything sterile. Everything organized.

Finally, the defiance. It rises in him like a tide, pushing back the fear. His jaw tightens. His shoulders pull back against the restraints. His mouth curves into something approximating a smile, though the expression does not reach his eyes.

“So you’re the one they send,” he says. “The Baranov Butcher. I’ve heard stories.”

I adjust the angle of the monitoring camera. The red indicator light catches the fluorescent panel above.

“They say you don’t feel anything. That you were born without whatever part of the brain makes people human.

” He tilts his head, studying me the way I am studying him, though his analysis is corrupted by emotion and therefore useless.

“They say you could cut a man apart and eat dinner in the same room without losing your appetite.”

I check the integrity of the ankle restraints. Adequate pressure distribution. No signs of circulation compromise.

“Is that true?” His voice is steady, but his pulse is visible in his throat, beating too fast for the calm he is projecting. “Are you going to cut me apart? Is that what happens in this room?”

I cross to the table and select a tablet from the second shelf. The screen illuminates at my touch, displaying the file I compiled over the past seventy-two hours.

“Subject is male, thirty-one years of age.” I read without inflection, my attention divided between the screen and his face.

“Born in Kyiv, relocated to Moscow at age seven following the subject’s mother’s death from cardiac failure.

Educated at private institutions in Switzerland and London.

Returned to the family business at twenty-two.

Current role: liaison to European shipping contacts, a position of moderate strategic value. ”

His smile falters.

“Subject demonstrates markers consistent with anxiety disorder, likely developed in adolescence. Preferred coping mechanisms include verbal processing and physical motion.” I look up from the tablet.

“Notably, subject was flagged by family security three years ago following a refusal to execute a standard enforcement action. Subject cited the presence of minor children as justification.”