Chapter 2 – Ilya
His breathing was ragged, his eyes swollen, his toes barely touching the floor as he hung there, both hands chained above his head. He was stripped from the waist up, his skin marred with fresh scars—whip lashes and knife cuts.
“Please…” he begged, voice too weak to rise above a whisper.
My lieutenant, Boris, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, struck the man again. The blow landed just below the ribcage, forcing him to cough and wheeze, straining to breathe.
The dimly lit room was filled with the iron stench of blood and sweat as Boris tortured the traitor, his special tools laid out on a table beside him.
The man was beaten beyond recognition until he was hanging on to life by just a thread.
His face was battered, lips torn and bleeding as he hung in the middle of the room. Helpless.
I sat a few feet away, legs crossed, watching him beg for mercy. He should’ve thought about that before selling sensitive Bratva information to our enemies.
He knew the rules. Yet he chose to break them. Why should I show mercy to a man who deliberately betrayed the brotherhood he swore allegiance to?
There’s nothing I hate more than a spineless traitor. And this fool was the perfect example. A man stupid enough to try to double-cross the Bratva should be brave enough to face the consequences. He should at least go down with his dignity and pride intact.
Not this bastard.
This one broke the moment he was caught. How pathetic.
“Boss…” he called, weakly. “Show mercy…”
Boris grabbed a knife from the table and slowly began carving something into the traitor’s chest. He raised his head and let out a loud, horrific scream as the blade cut deep into his flesh.
Above, his fingers clenched tightly, and below, his toes curled in response to the pain coursing through his body.
I uncrossed my legs and rose to my feet, my polished black shoes scuffing against the floor as I headed over to him. Boris stepped aside, and the second his blade left the man’s skin, his head fell forward, chin on his chest.
“How many more traitors are there?” I asked, halting before him.
He hesitated, not because he didn’t want to answer the question, but because he was too weak to speak.
“Three.” His chin was still on his chest, his voice barely audible. “I’ll tell you their names. Just please…show mercy.”
I withdrew a pack of Cuban cigars from my pocket, lit the tip, and took a drag. The taste of tobacco teased my tongue for a moment before I exhaled a puff of smoke. “Talk.”
He wasted no time. “Dimitri. Mikhail. And Nik.”
I glanced at Boris, and he signaled one of the guards in the room to take care of them. He gave a curt nod, then headed out, the metal door creaking behind him.
“Anything else?” I asked the hanging man. “Is there a name you haven’t mentioned yet?”
He gave it a thought. “No.”
“Good.” I withdrew my gun and fired once, putting him out of his misery.
Bang!
The bullet forced his head to snap backward with a hole in it, the sound echoing off the walls.
I dipped the gun back in my pants, facing Boris. “Clean up this mess.”
He nodded.
The door opened behind me, and one of my men walked inside. “Boss,” he called, his tone tinged with reverence and something else. “We, uh…we have a problem.”
Now what? I thought, dragging on my cigar.
By the time I spun around to face him, he was standing with his spine straight and his head held high. Although I didn’t speak, my silence was his cue.
“There’s been a breach tied to one of our shell corporations,” he said.
Yuri seemed uneasy, hinting that this breach wasn’t something to take lightly. Since he mentioned one of our shell corporations, my mind immediately went to the organization’s money-laundering fronts.
“Are you going to tell me what the problem is, or keep standing there like a brick wall?”
He cleared his throat, his eyes avoiding mine. “I’m afraid some encrypted operational ledgers have been accessed in the breach.”
My expression remained neutral, my gaze unwavering even though I was already running the risk assessments in my head. Those ledgers contained information about our organization that could do a lot of damage in the wrong hands.
Payment routes connected to unexplained disappearances, bribed officials, and off-book enforcement jobs were all in there.
“Have you tracked the hacker?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “The tech team traced the breach to an employee account during the cleanup.”
“Who is he?”
A pause.
“It’s not a ‘he,’ Boss,” he said.
My brows knit by a fraction.
“The digital trail led us to a woman named Iris Hart,” he began. “A freelance marketing and systems consultant.”
Interesting.
He handed her file to me. “No criminal record. No suspicious affiliations. She’s clean.”
I accepted the file and flipped open the front page. “How much information does she have?”
He hesitated. “Enough, Boss. She downloaded all the encrypted files before disconnecting from the network.”
The moment my eyes fell on the photograph of her, something shifted inside me. I was expecting to see a picture of someone calculating or opportunistic.
But what I saw was a beautiful woman with chestnut hair tied back in a low bun. She was sitting in a café booth, staring out the window, completely unaware of the shot.
The oversized brown sweater draped loosely over her body, the long sleeves swallowing her arms. There was nothing provocative about that photo. Yet it stirred something strange inside me.
I stared at the picture for a moment, drinking in the details of her face: the faint freckles on her nose and the curve of her lips. Her warm hazel eyes revealed a kind of innocence I hadn’t seen in a long time.
“What should we do with her?” Yuri’s voice cut through my thoughts.
“Nothing,” I said, calm and composed. “I’ll handle this myself.”
The room fell silent for a moment as my men exchanged covert glances.
“Recover the files before they spread further.” I met Yuri’s gaze. “And keep an eye on our nosy friend. But do not engage. Understood?”
He nodded and walked away without another word.
Boris stepped closer, wiping his bloodied palms on a clean cloth. “Don’t you think handling this yourself is beneath you?” he asked. “Anyone else can do that.”
I didn’t respond, even though I knew that getting involved myself made no sense.
Usually, in situations like this, the witnesses are removed quickly and efficiently.
However, something about this woman felt different, in a way I couldn’t explain.
Perhaps that mystery was exactly what was pulling me to her.