3. Ivan

3

IVAN

S urveillance was Nik’s forte, but I’d handled searching for plenty of people too. We all did in our efforts to keep the Valkov Bratva strong and secure.

But finding Murphy proved to be harder than I thought it might be, and I hated that I’d underestimated my ability for rooting out the cop.

For over a week, I tried and failed to get a bead on where the officer was hiding. Officially, he’d taken a sabbatical from work. Informants verified that he’d put in paperwork with his superiors to have time off. Unofficially, he was taking cover and making my life difficult.

Yusef was a big help on the streets, tracking leads that took him nowhere. I tasked soldiers to remain alert near all the addresses we'd ever had for Murphy. He was slippery, changing residences often, but he didn’t show up at any of them.

Despite all the manpower I arranged to help me find Murphy, my only stroke of fortune was in the tracking software Dmitri handled most often. My younger brother showed me all the arrangements he and Yusef had set up to rifle through the calls Murphy had made. Most calls were to numbers associated with burners. Messages were encrypted, and the calls couldn’t always be traced. When they were accurately traced, the locations of the callers moved constantly.

My frustration scaled so high that the usual peace I found at the sex clubs didn’t make a dent on my mood. I was too pissed, thwarted, and impatient to have to struggle in hunting down Murphy.

The day a pattern showed up, though, I warned myself not to be too optimistic and get my hopes up high.

“Same number,” Yusef confirmed. He scrolled on the monitor at the mansion my uncle Pavel used to live in. Since Alek took over, he’d made it the Bratva headquarters. Upstairs, we lived and held meetings, parties too. Downstairs, the labyrinth of secret rooms housed all kinds of surveillance equipment. Maxim was trying to find more hackers, but they were fickle, almost like Murphy was—not willing to be loyal to any one provider. Opportunists at heart.

I narrowed my eyes, watching as he showed me the number Murphy often called. “Who is it?”

He shrugged, yawning from a long spell of sitting at the desk down here. “I think his daughter.”

“Daughter?” I glanced at the man. Hearing that Murphy had a kid came as a shock.

“Yeah. Becca Murphy. Here’s what I could find on her.” He handed over some print-outs. As far as a file went, hers was slim. The photo of her was grainy, taken from a security camera at an office, but her driver’s license image was clearer.

Red hair, green eyes. An Irish beauty, even with the unmissable fatigue in her gaze as she tried to smile for her identification photo.

“Thanks.” I skimmed the rest of the information we had on her, committing the slight collection of facts to memory. Yusef found a current address for her, as well as a location of her employment. Armed with those two destinations, I got ready to follow her until I knew how I could grab her.

After what happened with Amy—when the Cartel snatched her off the sidewalk to sell her to a creepy fucker named Diego—I faced a morsel of unease about planning to stalk Becca.

As a rule, we didn’t sell women. Human trafficking wasn’t a path Alek wanted to take the Bratva down. Guns and drugs were lucrative enough, not to mention the clubs and brothels.

And I wasn’t planning to keep this girl. Taking this woman was unavoidable. She was the only clear method I had to get Murphy’s attention. Holding her hostage should do the trick. If Murphy had cared enough to make a daughter and give her his name, then he had to hold her in some kind of high regard and to want her safe and happy.

Seeing Alek and Nik prepare for fatherhood, I knew that the idea of having a child changed a man. My brothers were ruthless killers, but they had good hearts. They would be great fathers, and I assume that might hold true for Murphy as well. People would be quick to consider all of us in the Bratva as bad men, and I was aware of just how corrupt and crooked Murphy was. He really was the villain.

I relied on Murphy to come running as soon as I had Becca, and with that step plotted out in my mind, I got busy figuring out how to make it happen.

For several days, I followed her from a distance. I stalked her until I could get a feel for her predictable routine, for how and when she’d be most vulnerable to be taken away.

It was all too easy. She was a workaholic, always reporting to work at a courier office. For the number of hours she put in, she had to be doing decently for money, yet she resided in a shithole of an apartment in a crappy part of town.

Doubts filtered into my mind.

If Murphy cares about her, wouldn’t he help her move into a better place?

If he’s worried about her working so much, wouldn’t he loan her some money?

I shook my head at that thought. Murphy was a greedy fucker, always trying to get his hands on riches, usually at the cost of the Bratva or another crime organization in the city.

Maybe he’s too selfish to care about Becca being held hostage.

If that was the case, I knew I could push a little harder. Incriminating evidence of her being taken against her will would do the trick. And I was a sick enough bastard to pull that off. Never minding what Alek and Nik teased, I wasn’t going soft for a pretty woman, not anytime soon.

Besides, the redheaded, freckled-skin, green-eyed beauty was not pretty. She was gorgeous in a timeless, effortless way that warned me against getting excited about taking her.

She looked innocent. Soft. Delicate.

Not hardened enough to handle the way I would like to fuck.

Assuming that she was that good and sweet, I planned to set her out of her comfort zone and make it easier for me to steal her away.

“You ready?” I asked Dmitri as he prepared to leave the mansion with me.

He nodded. “Always.”

We rode together for this first step to be put into action. It was all too easy to arrange for a delivery to take place at one of the Bratva’s sex clubs. While she performed her duties as a courier, dropping off a decoy of a small document package there, I’d guide her to a false exit and take her to my place.

The residential complex I owned near Brooklyn was secure enough for holding her hostage. The walls were soundproofed, and the doors and windows were alarmed. No one would get in or out, and I figured bringing her there would be adequate. I wouldn’t need to torture her. I didn’t have to plan on killing her and punishing her.

Keeping her captive would be enough. Murphy would reveal himself. He had to.

Murphy’s dedication to lying low alarmed me, and it seemed I wasn’t the only one thinking along that line of caution.

“What do you think he’s planning?” Dmitri asked as he drove us to the club. He’d be there as backup, not that I needed it. This club was part of my responsibility to supervise. More than anything, it seemed my brother was bored and wanted in on the case.

“Something bad if he’s hiding this well that we can’t find him,” I replied.

“Exactly.”

“And if it’s something bad…” I furrowed my brow. “It’s probably going to impact us.”

Dmitri scoffed. “He’s had a hard-on to end us forever.”

He won’t. “Which means it’s time to take him out, once and for all.”

After we entered, he left my side and blended into the background. He didn’t visit the clubs often, and I wasn’t surprised when he kept to the bar area rather than circulating through the open floor area where scenes were played for anyone wanting to watch.

I checked my watch, knowing the moment was here. Stalking Becca showed me that she visited a variety of locations while she was on the clock, but I bet if she had a hunch she would be delivering something to a top-secret sex club like this, she might not have agreed to see the duty done.

Fortunately, the address was hard to find, and because of that, I didn’t worry when she showed up late. I’d informed all the guards to look out for her and to let her in.

Eyes opened wide with alarm and confusion, she entered the main lobby space of the sex club and stared at it all. The toys. The nudity. The collars. I tracked her coming through the room as she roved her head from side to side as she took it all in.

Imagining it from her sheltered perspective, I tried to experience it through her senses.

Seeing the woman whipped while strapped to a cross.

Hearing another pair of women moaning filthy sounds of pleasure as men shared them in an orgy.

Smelling the potent tang of sex hanging in the air.

A floor monitor approached her, and Becca flinched at someone speaking to her. She held up the manilla package, and I watched as she explained to the staff member that she was here to deliver something to me. I’d listed myself as the fake client she was supposed to find, and I waited expectantly as she was directed to me, the staff member pointing me out.

“Excuse me? Are you Mr.…?”

I turned toward her, hit with the full effect of her innocent beauty this close. Instead of following her from a distance and staking out near her residence, I was right here with her. Feet apart.

No makeup hid her beauty from me. No pretenses of a shy subbie looking for a good time at a club. She was on the clock, assuming this was work as usual for her, and it allowed me a chance to let her sexy innocence hit me hard.

“Ah. Yes. I was expecting this to come.” Breathing through the instant desire she invoked in me, I nodded in acknowledgment of her package. “Thank you.”

“Oh. Okay. Um. If you don’t mind…” Her fingers brushed against mine as she handed it over, and the simple contact seared me. So soft. So faint. Like the most decadent tickle. I resisted the thought of her hands on me as she immediately presented the electronic signature device with my receipt for the document.

As I scrawled my name on the screen, a whip cut through the air. The resounding smack on flesh was heightened with a woman’s loud cry piercing through the music.

Becca flinched, jumping toward me. She was so startled by the sound that she bumped into a server, tipping drinks over. “Oh! I’m so sorry!”

I gestured for her to step aside, pleasantly surprised by how much easier she made this for me. “Here, let me help.”

“No. That’s okay.” She brushed off her arm, as though her hand would remove all traces of dampness on her uniform sleeve. “I’ll just go and—” Looking up and scanning her surroundings, she tried to find the exit.

People crowded around the scene being acted out, and she was quickly enraptured too. Absently brushing off her sleeve, she blinked and tried to avoid watching the man and woman fucking hard.

I stood there, triumphant in having this woman next to me. With her under my guard, she’d bring Murphy out of hiding. She had to.

But I couldn’t whisk her away yet. I refused to jar her out of this secret fascination she couldn’t break with the dirty, carnal sex scene yards away, live and rotten in technicolor.

“Oh…” Her lips parted open as she gaped at the man pushing his dick into the woman’s pussy, sliding against the dildo already inside her. “Whoa…”

I refrained from smiling. Holy fuck.

Becca couldn’t look away. She was in a lusty trance, staring at the couple, and I knew I had my answer about how innocent this woman was.

How enticingly sweet and clean—vanilla—she was to be so wowed by simple sex like this.

And it turned me on. It made her a target. I saw her as a dare. A challenge. The details blurred, rendering Becca not only a woman to hold hostage for a bigger purpose, but also as a new plaything to break and treasure.

If she could handle having her eyes opened wide to a hard fuck like that, I wanted to be the man to show her that world.

Stop.

She wasn’t a member at this secret club. Becca wasn’t here as a guest or looking for a good time.

She’s a hostage.

Or she would be soon.

“This way,” I encouraged her, gesturing for her to follow me.

“Oh!” She startled easily, blushing a wickedly sexy pink at being caught watching and admiring that scene. Off balance, likely turned on to the point that she was dripping, she staggered after me through the crowd. “Wait. I think I came in through a door over there.”

I took her hand when a pair of men came close, eating her up with their predatory stares.

Fuck off. She’s not yours.

She wasn’t mine either, not like I instantly wanted her to be.

“This way,” I repeated, thrilled when she held on tighter to my hand, nervous with those men eyeing her.

“Wait. I think?—”

Too late.

Bringing her through another door that led to a private hallway, I held her slim body against mine and grabbed the bindings out of my pocket.

“Wait. What—I—” Her scream was cut off with the rope around her head, and I grinned in the darkness as I tied her up to be transported.