The Bratva Stalker’s Ruthless Claim (Rusnak Bratva #10)

Chapter 1 – Ellie

“You realize this isn’t organization anymore,” Samantha says, leaning over the back of my chair. “This is a cry for help.”

I don’t look up from the monitor.

Adrian snorts from the other desk. “No, no. Let’s call it what it is. Pathological orderliness.”

I drag the cursor across the spectrogram timeline, isolating a narrow slice of the waveform. The screen glows in bands of blue and amber where vowel stress spikes against the background noise.

“Ellie,” Samantha continues, tapping the edge of one of my notebooks, “why do you have three separate tabs labeled ‘potential idiomatic markers’?”

“Because there are three categories,” I say absently.

“Of course there are.”

Adrian swivels his chair toward us. “Please tell me the categories.”

I keep my eyes on the screen. “Regional idioms. Occupational idioms. And culturally adaptive idioms.”

There’s a pause.

Then Adrian lets out a slow whistle. “God help the man who ever tries to lie to you.”

I underline a phrase in the transcript displayed beside the waveform: You’ll regret this mistake soon enough.

My stylus moves automatically across my tablet, marking the sentence in orange.

Threat marker.

Samantha crosses her arms. “You know what the real problem is?”

“Hmm.”

“You enjoy this.”

I drag another segment of the audio file into the analysis window. The spectrogram redraws itself—dense bands where the vowels stretch, jagged spikes where consonants break.

“Enjoy what?”

“This.” She gestures around the lab. “The color coding. The graphs. The terrifying notebooks.”

Adrian leans forward, squinting at my screen. “Wait. Is that a vowel stress anomaly?”

“Yes.”

“How can you even see that?”

“It’s obvious.”

“It’s not obvious,” he says. “It looks like modern art.”

I adjust the frequency filter, and the waveform sharpens.

There.

A faint compression pattern right before the stressed syllable.

My pulse lifts slightly.

Interesting.

“Ellie,” Samantha says, nudging my chair with her knee, “normal people use one notebook.”

“I do use one notebook.”

She picks up the stack beside me.

“There are eight here.”

“They’re categorized.”

“Of course they are.”

Adrian laughs. “What are the colors for?”

I finally glance over my shoulder. “Evidence classification.”

He blinks. “Right.”

I return my attention to the email transcript.

The anonymous message was sent to a corporate security office two days ago. A simple threat. Nothing elaborate.

But the wording is…strange.

I highlight another phrase.

You have been warned before.

My stylus taps the margin.

The sentence structure is compressed, missing an article that should naturally appear in standard written English.

Not a mistake.

A habit.

Behind me, Samantha sighs dramatically.

“I’m telling you,” she says to Adrian, “if Ellie ever snaps, we’re the first ones going down.”

“I wouldn’t snap,” I say.

Adrian grins. “You say that now.”

I scroll down the transcript, comparing phrasing patterns.

Three sentences.

Three compression points.

Same syntactic structure.

Same missing article.

My mind quietly begins fitting pieces together.

“Ellie,” Samantha says again.

“Yes.”

“You’ve been staring at that screen for forty minutes without blinking.”

“That’s not true.”

“You blinked once.”

“Twice.”

Adrian chuckles.

I lean back slightly, letting the data settle in my head.

The sender claims to be anonymous.

But language is never anonymous.

Every person leaves fingerprints in their phrasing.

Sentence rhythm.

Stress placement.

Idiom selection.

You can disguise a name.

You can mask an IP address.

But your brain still builds sentences the way it always has.

And this brain—I zoom in on the final line—likes to compress syntax under emotional pressure.

I circle the pattern in red.

Behind me, Samantha sighs again. “Ellie.”

“What?”

“Please blink.”

I rub my eyes once. “There.”

Adrian laughs. “You know what I think?” he says.

“What?”

“I think Ellie secretly enjoys threatening emails.”

I roll my eyes. “I enjoy solving puzzles.”

“Same thing.”

I turn back to the screen, ignoring them as the pieces settle more clearly into place.

The sender is trying to sound controlled. Professional. But the stress markers in the phrasing say otherwise.

There’s anger behind the structure. Personal anger. Not random. Targeted.

My stylus taps the desk lightly as the pattern becomes clearer.

Samantha notices. “That tapping thing you do,” she says.

“What about it?”

“That means you figured something out.”

I glance at the transcript again.

Maybe.

Not enough yet.

But enough to know one thing.

The person who wrote this email has done this before.

And they’re getting careless.

Adrian stares at the screen like it might start speaking to him.

“I swear,” he mutters, “working with you is unsettling.”

I finally turn around in my chair. “You two finished?”

Samantha smiles sweetly. “Never.”

I point at the door. “Please let me work.”

Adrian just shakes his head lazily, clearly enjoying himself, while Samantha drapes her arms around my stiff shoulders from behind.

“Ellie,” she says gently, “take a break.”

“I’m working.”

“You’ve been working for eight hours.”

“I’m close.”

She squeezes my shoulders once. “Which is exactly why you need a break. Your brain is overheating.”

I sigh, leaning back in my chair.

Maybe she’s right.

I feel like I’m standing on the edge of something, like the answer is just behind a thin sheet of glass I can’t quite break through. But at the same time, my head feels like it’s seconds away from catching fire.

As a forensic linguist in the research laboratory of one of the university’s largest cognitive science departments, I’m almost always swamped. Corporate clients, law enforcement agencies, and occasionally government offices send us anonymous communications—emails, letters, and recordings.

My job is to break them apart.

Syntax patterns. Stress markers. Regional idioms.

Language always leaves fingerprints.

Last week, a corporate security firm received an anonymous threatening email directed at one of its executives. They want to know who wrote it.

Which means it’s my problem now.

And I’m so close to solving it, I can practically feel the answer breathing down my neck.

I just need thirty minutes to reset my brain.

And preferably some silence.

I turn around in my chair and glance between the two of them.

Samantha is the lab’s senior research assistant and has been working alongside me for the past two years. At this point, she practically lives in this office with me. If I’m here, she’s here.

Adrian, on the other hand, is a doctoral candidate in the department.

Technically, he’s supposed to be working on his dissertation down the hall.

Instead, he wanders in here every day under the flimsy excuse that he’s “interested in applied linguistic analysis.”

In reality, he just likes to gossip.

And if I can get Adrian out of the room, Samantha will actually focus and help me solve this thing.

I look directly at him. “You don’t even have a case here.”

He shrugs. “I’m the moral support.”

“Unnecessary.”

Samantha finally releases my shoulders and walks over to the small snack cabinet near the coffee machine. “Here.”

She presses a bag of chips into my hands.

“Ugh,” she says, wrinkling her nose slightly. “You work too hard.”

I stare at the bag.

Salt and vinegar.

My favorite.

Of course she knows that.

I sigh again, tearing the top open.

“Fine,” I mutter. “Thirty minutes.”

Adrian claps once dramatically. “Look at that. Progress.”

I toss a chip at him. “Shut up.”

He catches it midair and grins, throwing it in his mouth. “See? Even your snacks are organized.”

I roll my eyes and lean back in my chair.

“Maybe I should learn from you,” he says, folding his arms. “Work twelve hours straight and terrify the entire linguistics department.”

“Eight hours,” I correct automatically.

“Still disturbing.”

He tilts his head slightly, studying me.

“No wonder Professor Blythe praised your…what did he call it again?” Adrian taps his chin theatrically. “Your uncanny ability to identify deception.”

I laugh quietly, shaking my head.

Professor Blythe is the director of the university’s forensic linguistics research lab, which technically makes him my supervisor. Compliments from him are rare enough to qualify as minor historical events.

“Uncanny is a bit dramatic,” I say.

Adrian leans forward, genuinely curious now. “No, seriously. How do you do it?”

I open my mouth, but Samantha smacks his arm before I can answer. “Hey,” she warns.

“What?”

“She’s taking a break.”

Adrian gestures helplessly. “I asked one question.”

Samantha points at me. “No work talk.” Then she turns toward me conspiratorially. “Did you see the sweater Professor Ben wore today?”

Adrian groans. “Oh, my god.”

“Did anyone see that?” Samantha continues, clearly delighted. “It was like…beige and green and—”

I groan loudly. “I want to talk about work.”

Samantha gasps in mock horror. “Ellie.”

“What?”

“You are physically incapable of relaxing.”

“Incorrect. I’m relaxing right now.”

“You’re staring at a spectrogram.”

I shrug. “It’s soothing.”

Adrian laughs under his breath.

I turn back to him.

“Anyway,” I say, gesturing slightly with the chip in my hand, “language always betrays emotion before actions do.”

He straightens a little. Now he’s interested. “What do you mean?”

I tap the edge of the desk thoughtfully. “When people feel strong emotion—anger, fear, stress—their brain starts prioritizing speed over structure.”

“So?”

“So sentence patterns compress.”

He frowns slightly, thinking.

“Like shorter sentences?”

“Not just shorter,” I say. “Articles disappear. Conjunctions drop out. The brain cuts grammatical corners.”

Adrian’s eyes flick toward my monitor. “So if someone’s lying—”

“Not lying,” I correct. “Emotionally pressured.”

He nods slowly. “Right.”

“Under pressure,” I continue, “people start reverting to their linguistic baseline. The way they learned to speak when they were younger.”