Kidnapped Innocent By the Obsessed Bratva (Sharov Bratva #23)

Chapter One - Eden

I step out of the rideshare and the city hits me all over again, the way it always does; it’s loud, impatient, full of motion that never matches my breathing.

New York isn’t new to me. I lived here for four years during my bachelor’s program, rushed through midterms and subway delays and too-expensive coffee like everyone else. I survived it, but I never learned to love it.

Now I’m back for my graduate research placement, standing on a cracked stretch of pavement with my suitcase at my ankle and the usual cocktail of nerves curling low in my stomach.

The air tastes of exhaust and roasted peanuts from a street cart, a mix that shouldn’t work but somehow does.

People skim past without looking at me, eyes pinned to phones or fixed on the next place they need to be.

Nothing has changed, and yet everything feels sharper, heavier, as if the city learned new ways to intimidate me while I was gone.

I drag in a steadying breath and remind myself why I’m here. Behavioral psychology. Observation hours. Real-world environments. My mentor’s voice rings in my head, warm and encouraging: You have a gift for reading people. Trust your instincts. I do trust them… mostly.

Still, when I reach the neighborhood he assigned me for today’s observation exercise, instinct prickles at the base of my skull.

The street looks ordinary enough at first glance. Cafés, convenience stores, cracked sidewalks, the distant wail of a siren, but the energy isn’t right. People walk faster here. No lingering. No chatting on stoops. Doorways swallow them whole and lock behind them.

I tuck my notebook against my chest and pretend I’m unaffected, though my pulse gives me away. This is New York; strange tension isn’t unusual. My job is to watch, record, and analyze behavior—not let my overactive brain turn shadows into threats.

I spend a while observing from a safe, open corner.

A woman sets down grocery bags and rubs her wrist. A teenager flinches whenever a car backfires.

A man argues on the phone, pacing in tight circles, his hand slicing through the air in agitation.

Micro expressions everywhere—stress, irritation, worry. Nothing new.

Eventually I wander down a quieter block.

The buildings push close together, old brick worn by decades of smoke and rain.

A narrow alley cuts between them, barely wide enough for a delivery truck to squeeze through.

I don’t step into it, but I pause a few feet from the entrance and jot down the graffiti patterns on the walls, the overflowing dumpster, the empty beer cans rolling near the curb.

When I lift my pen again, something muffled breaks the rhythm of the street. A voice. It’s strained and sharp, the tail end of an argument. I look toward the alley. There’s no one visible, but the sound came from inside.

I tell myself not to go closer. Curiosity tells me otherwise. I inch forward until the alley widens enough to let me glimpse deeper in.

It’s dim, the light blocked by the buildings on either side, shadows pooling thick against the walls. Two figures stand farther back, half obscured by a stack of wooden pallets.

One man gestures wildly, his movements jerky, panicked. The other says something I can’t hear. His voice is low, controlled, almost bored. Something in the posture of the second man makes my stomach knot. He isn’t arguing; he’s waiting. Watching.

I lean a fraction too far.

The next sound cracks through the air—a gunshot.

The panicked man drops, his body folding to the concrete like his strings were cut.

My breath lodges in my throat. I jerk back instinctively and drop behind the nearest dumpster, crouching low before my mind fully catches up with what I’ve just seen. My notebook nearly slips from my grip. My hand clamps over my mouth to smother the sound clawing at my throat.

I shouldn’t look. I do anyway.

The shooter shifts his arm, checking the weapon with the ease of someone who’s done it many times.

The real shock isn’t him. It’s the man behind him—the one standing perfectly still, as if this isn’t violence at all, just an expected interruption.

He’s tall, shoulders broad beneath a dark shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms. His hair is black, swept back but slightly mussed, the kind of careless styling that somehow draws the eye.

His posture is controlled. Quiet. Intent. He didn’t fire the gun, but the scene belongs to him.

My heart thrashes against my ribs, fast enough I’m terrified someone might hear it.

Fear slides cold through me, but training kicks in and my mind seizes on details.

His stance lacks tension. His breathing stays steady.

His attention is focused, razor-sharp, tracking the moment the way a predator tracks movement in grass.

Then his head lifts.

Those eyes—pale, assessing—cut through the shadows. He scans the alley with unnerving precision. It isn’t random. It’s deliberate. Searching.

Then he turns, very slightly, toward my hiding spot.

He can’t see me. He shouldn’t see me. The dumpster blocks most of me and I’m pressed tight to the wall, hardly breathing.

Still, something in the way he pauses makes my skin prickle. His focus sharpens. His body shifts in a way I recognize instinctively; a man aware he’s being watched.

Move.

My legs finally respond. I ease backward, slow and silent, keeping to the shadows. Every step feels like it drags seconds into minutes. When I reach the mouth of the alley, I don’t run. Running screams guilt. Running screams witness.

My pulse races so hard it hurts.

I slip into the stream of pedestrians, matching their rhythm, their pace. I don’t look back. Not yet. Not until I reach the next corner, where I let myself steal a single glance.

The alley sits empty. No movement. No silhouette. No sign of him. Except the air still feels tight around me. My bones buzz with the memory of his gaze.

I turn away quickly, clutching my notebook like something solid might hold me steady. I keep walking, blending into the noise, the crowd, the city’s relentless rush. But the truth has already settled in my chest like a weight I can’t shake.

I force myself to keep walking, blending into the foot traffic the way I used to when I lived here, when anonymity felt like a relief instead of a necessity.

My pulse hasn’t settled. It thumps fast and uneven, pushing hot pressure through my chest. I keep my notebook tucked tight to my side, fingers numb from how hard I’m gripping it.

Every few steps I tell myself to breathe, but each breath comes thin, clipped, as if the air itself is too heavy to pull in.

The city moves around me, loud and uncaring, and for once that should comfort me. New York is good at swallowing people whole, turning them into background noise. I should disappear easily.

I count storefronts, passing cars, the squeal of a subway grate, anything familiar to ground myself. Yet something prickles at the back of my neck, a cold thread tightening from my spine up to my scalp.

It feels like someone is watching me.

I don’t turn around. My instincts scream not to.

Instead, I shift lanes on the sidewalk and slip between a pair of women arguing about rent, hoping the extra bodies hide me.

My bag strap digs into my shoulder. My breath fogs slightly as cooler air moves through the street.

I try to focus on the normal things. A food truck blasting pop music.

Someone handing out flyers. A line forming outside a tiny café.

None of it cuts through the feeling curling beneath my ribs.

I tell myself it’s shock. My mind is processing something violent and horrifying, and this is a textbook stress response.

Adrenaline. Dissociation. Heightened threat perception.

I list the symptoms in my head like I’m reading from a manual, but the logic does nothing to quiet the twisting sensation deep in my gut.

The feeling isn’t panic alone. It’s specific. Focused. Like a single pair of eyes marking my steps, narrowing each time I drift too close to a crosswalk or too far toward an open space. I don’t know how I know, but I do.

I saw something I wasn’t meant to see, and someone knows I saw it.

I rub my free hand over the back of my neck and try to shrug the shiver away. The evening wind moves through the street, stirring wrappers along the curb. My hair brushes my cheek, loose strands catching in the breeze.

The city smells of hot asphalt, spices from a street vendor, stale cigarette smoke. All familiar. All normal. Yet beneath it lies something faint, something colder, as if the memory of that alley still clings to my clothes.

The face I saw—or rather, the parts I saw—flash through my mind in blurry fragments. A jawline sharpened by shadow. The faint shape of a scar near his temple. A pair of pale eyes fixed on the dark.

I never saw the whole picture. I didn’t need to. The pieces alone were enough to wedge themselves deep into my memory.

He wasn’t surprised by the gunshot. He wasn’t unnerved by the body hitting the ground. He watched the moment unfold with focus, not hesitation. There was a calmness in him that terrifies me more than the violence itself.

Normal people don’t stand like that.

I hurry across the next intersection when the light changes. A cab swerves wide as I move, honking loud enough to make me flinch.

I raise a hand in apology, even though the driver has already moved on. My feet ache inside my shoes, but I don’t slow down. If anything, I move faster.

Block after block stretches beneath me until the neighborhood shifts, the buildings softening into a slightly nicer district with brighter storefronts and more foot traffic. The tension in my shoulders eases a fraction.

People linger here. They talk, laugh, smoke outside delis, argue over directions. It feels less hostile, less charged.

Still, something cold coils low in my stomach. I stop near a bus shelter under a flickering fluorescent light and pretend to check the route map.

My reflection stares back at me from the plexiglass: wide eyes, flushed cheeks, hair a little messy from the wind. I look like someone who’s running from something.

I angle my body slightly and glance past the edge of the shelter, making it appear casual. The street behind me spills out into traffic and pedestrians, nothing out of place. No dark figures. No lingering shapes. No pale eyes watching me.

It doesn’t make the feeling go away.

I push onward, letting the city swallow me again. The noise loosens the tightness in my chest, but the cold prickling never fully fades. I adjust the strap of my bag and take a turn toward the subway entrance, thinking the swarm of people below might finally give me some sense of safety.

The stairs hum with movement and the faint scent of metal and dust rises to meet me.

Before heading down, I pause at the top of the steps and let my gaze sweep the block one more time. Habit, I tell myself. Awareness. It’s what I’m here to study, after all.

The street looks ordinary. A man unloads boxes from a truck. A couple leans against a lamppost arguing softly. A woman wrangles a stroller over a curb. Life continues, unbothered.

I force a breath out and step onto the first stair.

Something tugs at me: intuition, fear, instinct, I can’t tell. I turn my head slightly, barely enough to look over my shoulder.

Nothing. Of course.

Yet the shiver that rips through me is sharper now, a cold rush that sinks from my throat to my ribs. It feels as if the city itself is holding its breath.

I take one last look across the street, reassuring myself that I’m imagining things, that shock is playing tricks on my senses, that the man in the shadows is long gone and already forgetting I ever existed.

Then I descend into the station, letting the crowd pull me under.