Chapter 20 – Ilya
Iris had outdone herself in a way I hadn’t really expected. She’d found something that I had missed this whole time; a potential traitor within the Bratva ranks.
She wasn’t just easy on the eyes; she was also brilliant. And that brilliance was the reason she was able to breach our network and bypass our security.
I just realized I hadn’t actually given the level of genius enough thought this whole time. After spending all that money on our tech team, a twenty-three-year-old girl managed to hack the system without even trying.
A part of me hadn’t completely believed her claims until I saw for myself how these numbers weren’t adding up. These inconsistencies in the ledger were too glaring to be ignored.
If I’m being honest, though, if she hadn’t opened my eyes to what was right in front of me, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the money being rerouted.
We didn’t have a name yet. But one thing was certain: There were traitors in our midst. And whoever they were, they weren’t floor members or foot soldiers. These were high-ranking officials who had the power to make things disappear.
The council had been so focused on me being “emotionally compromised” that they all missed those who were actually compromised.
I had my suspicions—people I was almost certain had a hand in this. But I might be wrong. At this point, everyone could be the traitor, and that meant that I couldn’t trust anyone on the council.
Except my brother.
Without wasting time, I gathered my evidence and set up a meeting with him.
The location was the warehouse near the river, where we often met to discuss sensitive matters that were meant for our ears only.
Officially, we were discussing shipment routes. Ivan brought a folder of manifests as cover and laid them out on the metal table between us like they mattered. Neither of us touched them.
“Show me what you found,” he said.
I laid it out the way Iris had shown me. Payment cycles that repeated too cleanly to be chance. Shell companies that still moved money months after they’d been dissolved on paper. Transport logs with dates that didn’t match any job either of us remembered signing off on.
Ivan listened without interrupting, arms crossed, face blank the whole time. That was normal for him. What wasn’t normal was the stillness that settled once I got to the disappearances.
“No rival group shows up in the records,” I said. “Nothing outside. Whoever did this worked from the inside.”
His brows knitted together. “Are you saying there might be a traitor in our midst?”
I gave a curt nod.
“That’s a serious allegation, brother.”
“It’s an allegation if there’s proof.” I tapped on the file in front of me. “It’s right here. Written in black and white. It’s a good thing she saw it and connected the dots. I probably never would’ve…”
“Hold on,” he cut me off. “She?”
The hint of disappointment on his face told me this conversation was about to take a whole new turn.
“You mean your wife?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“Jesus Christ, Ilya…” He rubbed his eyeballs.
“Don’t try to change the subject,” I said, my voice firm. “I called you to talk about the problem. Not who found it.”
His jaw tightened. “How deep did she go?”
“Ivan…”
“How deep?”
I exhaled sharply. “Deep enough to see the pattern clearly.”
“How.”
“She used to do this for a living. Cleanup work. Tracing fraud through corporate books. It’s what she’s good at.”
Ivan’s eyes narrowed a fraction, and I watched him recalculate in real time. “She’s not supposed to have access to internal ledgers, and you know that.”
“She found them by accident.”
“By accident?” His eyebrows shot up, an abrupt huff falling off his lips. “And you actually believed that? Come on, brother.”
“You’re digressing,” I said, feeling a surge of anger sprinting through me.
“Maybe I am,” he said, eyes still locked on mine. “Let’s say I believe you. Let’s assume for a second that she stumbled on the files by accident. You mean to tell me that instead of putting them back, she read through all of it?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“And instead of stopping her, you sat down and went through it with her?”
I didn’t answer right away. There wasn’t a version of the truth that made it sound better than it was.
“Ilya.” His voice dropped. Harder. “Do you understand what you just told me?”
“I understand the organization has a serious problem.”
“I’m not talking about the organization’s problem.” He leaned forward, hands flat on the table. “I’m talking about yours.”
“Oh, here we go again.” I rubbed my forehead.
“Don’t do that,” he said, his voice laced with anger. “Don’t act like I’m always sticking my nose in your business.”
“But you are, Ivan,” I shot back, glaring at him. “You’re always in my business. You’ve always been ever since Father died.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“I’m not a child!” I snapped.
My mind immediately flashed back to the argument I had with Iris the other night. Now, I sounded just like her.
“Ilya, I need you to understand something.” He studied me for a long moment. “From where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve given a woman with no loyalty to this family, no history here, full access to information that could burn us if it ever left this room. Why?”
“Because I trust her.”
“That’s the problem.” His voice stayed level, but there was real frustration under it now.
I didn’t respond.
“You’ve changed operational decisions because of her. You married her to protect her from the very organization you swore your allegiance to after she breached our system. And now you’re handing her internal records no outsider should ever see.”
My face twisted into a faint frown. “You forget, brother.” I held his gaze. “She’s my wife. Not an outsider.”
“She’s still an unknown entity,” Ivan said. “Marriage doesn’t erase that. It just gives her a title while the risk stays the same.”
Something tightened in my chest. Defensive in a way I didn’t like. “She’s the only reason we know this problem exists at all. Or are you so blinded by your dislike for her that you can’t see it?”
“I don’t dislike your wife, Ilya,” he said. “I’m only trying to be thorough here.”
“By shifting the focus from the problem to the one who actually found it?”
A pause.
“Ilya, have you stopped to think that maybe all of this is just a way of making herself useful enough that you never question keeping her this close?” He said it flatly.
The man was being logical as he always was, but it was already starting to piss me off.
“Oh, you’re so full of shit,” I growled.
“Look, I’m not saying she’s working against us. I’m saying you can’t say for certain that she isn’t, and you’ve stopped asking the question.”
“I know her.”
“Bullshit.”
I leaned back in my chair.
“You’ve barely known her for what, a few weeks?” Ivan straightened, arms crossing again. “I’ve watched you for thirty-eight years, brother. I know exactly what attachment does to judgment.
I locked my jaw.
“I’ve seen it take down men stronger than you. It starts exactly like this. Trust before it’s earned. Access before it’s verified. By the time anyone notices the damage, it’s already done.”
“She’s not like that.”
“You don’t know for sure!” His voice rose slightly higher.
The warehouse felt smaller than it should have. The metal walls held the silence between us longer than either of us wanted to break it.
“This woman will ruin you, Ilya,” Ivan said quietly, his words stinging more than they should. “Not because she means to, but because attachment like this doesn’t need intention to be dangerous. It just needs time.”
I looked at him and didn’t argue.
Some part of me had already been turning the same thought over for days. Hearing him say it out loud didn’t scare me the way it should have. It only confirmed something I’d already accepted somewhere along the way, quietly, without deciding to.
“She already has,” I said.
Ivan went still.
“What?”
“You said she’ll ruin me.” I met his eyes, my gaze unwavering. “She already has. Whatever this is, it’s not temporary. It’s not something that burns out in a few months. It’s already done.”
He stared at me for a long time. Longer than he usually lets silence stretch between us. Ivan studied me for a moment, like he was looking for the angle that made sense of what he was seeing.
“You understand what that means,” he said eventually. “For you. For this family.”
Silence.
“Do you understand that you’ve just become the biggest vulnerability in this organization?” His voice was quieter now. Almost tired. “I wish you good luck, brother.”
I didn’t say anything else.
He gathered the shipment manifests off the table and folded them back into the folder like the meeting had gone exactly as planned. Like we’d actually talked about what the cover story claimed we would.
“Find out who’s behind the ledgers,” he said, heading for the door. “Quickly. Before whoever it is realizes she’s found them too.”
I gave a curt nod.
He paused at the door and looked back once more.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I hope you’re right about her. Because if you’re not, there won’t be a version of this that ends well for either of you.”
He left without waiting for an answer.
I sat alone in the warehouse a long time after that, turning his words over and over again in my head. I still didn’t have an answer that made any of it feel less true.
She had ruined me.