Page 18 of Brutal Reign (Bratva Kings #3)

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

PAVEL

Roman’s fist crashes into the prisoner’s jaw with a wet crack, sending blood spraying across the concrete. The soldier takes the hit and spits out a tooth, glaring at us with the kind of stubborn defiance that gets people killed.

“Let’s try this again,” I say, circling behind his chair. “Who’s running the Black Company now?”

“Go fuck yourself,” he manages through a split lip.

Roman cracks his neck. “Wrong answer,” he says, before driving his knuckles into the man’s stomach.

This piece of shit we’re interrogating helped abduct Sofiya Zhukova, Roman’s sister-in-law. We’ve spent the last eighteen hours working alongside her husband, Nikolai Zhukov—head of the Zhukov Bratva and our ally in St. Petersburg—to get her back.

She’s safe at home now, and we managed to capture one of the bastards involved in her abduction. He’s a Zhukov Bratva soldier who not only betrayed Nikolai, but also helped kidnap his wife.

This asshole is a dead man, but we won’t finish him until we learn what we need to.

So far, what we’ve discovered is chilling. The Black Company—a triad we buried five years ago—has somehow risen from the dead and is now working with a powerful Russian politician to destroy the Syndicate.

Taking Sofiya was part of their plan, but they failed.

And we’re not leaving this room until we find out who’s the new leader of the Black Company.

Given that we eliminated Lai King and his entire leadership structure, the candidate pool is fucking small. Except for one possibility that makes my blood turn to ice.

Hope King.

The woman I spared for a second time. Whom I let walk away without a tracker under her skin.

I’ve maintained iron discipline where she’s concerned. I haven’t searched for her, haven’t tracked her movements, haven’t even allowed myself the weakness of staring at her picture late at night, when the loneliness gets too heavy.

It doesn’t mean I’ve stopped thinking of her. I’ve spent years trying to outrun the ghost of her. The way she melted under my touch. The way she shared parts of her real self, and allowed me to get close. The way she came all over my dick.

But when I walked away from her, I gave her a clean break from this world and the violence that follows in my wake. I thought I’d freed her from organized crime forever, but maybe she chose to walk back into it, or maybe circumstances gave her no other option.

The idea that she has anything to do with Sofiya’s abduction feels like swallowing broken glass. It means that everything I believed about her wanting a normal life was a lie.

Guilt burns through me, sharper than any wound. I have to find out the truth, no matter where it leads.

“Here’s what’s going to happen.” I select a pair of bolt cutters from our arsenal and hold them up where he can see. “You’re going to tell us everything you know about the Black Company. And if you don’t, you’ll leave here with fewer body parts than you came in with.”

The soldier’s eyes lock onto the cutters, and for the first time since we started this dance, real fear cracks through his defiance. The man gasps, sweat beading on his forehead despite the chill in the air.

“Start talking,” Roman says, pointing at the bolt cutters in my hand. “If you like your dick intact.”

Our prisoner goes pale. Good. Fear is the best truth serum, but he’s still taking too long.

I nod to Roman, and he pins the man’s arms. Truth be told, people pass out if you go for the dick first, and it’s a bloody mess. A finger is a much better starting point. Painful, but it keeps them conscious.

“Wait, wait, please—” the man begs.

Before he can finish, Roman slams his hand flat on the table. I place the bolt cutters over his index finger and squeeze. The tip drops to the floor in a spray of blood.

“Too late,” I say, grabbing a fistful of his hair and wrenching his head back. “Start talking.”

His chest heaves, his wide eyes locked on the bloody stump where his finger used to be.

“I only have a first name, that’s all. Simon,” he rasps. “Never met the guy, never seen him. I overheard a few conversations.”

Roman and I exchange a look. There’s only one Simon he could mean—Simon fucking Lau, Lai King’s former right hand. A man we thought died with everyone else in that Swiss villa.

Roman balls his hand into a fist, eyes blazing. “Where is he?”

“I really don’t fucking know. I told you I’m not in the inner circle. I was brought in to?—”

Roman brings his boot down on the man’s knee with a sick crack. The scream that follows echoes off the walls like music.

“Yeah, we know. You were brought in to help abduct my sister-in-law, Sofiya. I should string you up by the balls for how upset you made my wife.”

“Or do one better,” I suggest. “Cut off his balls.” I hold up the bolt cutters in emphasis.

Roman shrugs and reaches for them, making a big show of it in front of our prisoner.

When he starts begging and pleading for mercy before we even lower his pants, I’ve had enough. I take off the tip of his ring finger. A raw howl tears from his throat, echoing against the walls.

“Tell us what you know so we can end this already,” I hiss. “I have better things to do.”

Like figuring out if Hope is involved in any of this shit.

He struggles for breath, words coming out in gasps as he stares at his gushing hand. “Simon... Simon’s getting married to some triad princess in a few days.”

The hair on the back of my neck stands on end.

I grab him roughly by the collar. “What do you mean, triad princess? I need a fucking name.”

He coughs, voice barely a whisper. “I don’t know her name... She’s the daughter of some dead boss. King, I think. They’re planning a big ceremony in Hong Kong, with every triad boss from Asia to Europe attending. That’s everything I know. I swear on my mother’s grave.”

The world tilts off its axis.

Hope King is getting married, and I don’t like that thought one bit.

Nikolai’s office feels smaller with this much testosterone and tension crammed into it.

Roman’s brother-in-law sits behind his desk, his short hair still damp from washing up after he took over questioning his former soldier.

Beside him are his two right hands, Vadim Lazarev and Eva Sidorov, his head of security and his intelligence chief, respectively.

Vadim stands near the window, one shoulder pressed to the frame, a half-empty whiskey glass in hand, while Eva is perched on the edge of the desk, her blonde ponytail tucked neatly over one shoulder as she studies satellite photos of Hong Kong’s harbor.

I pace the room, trying to release all the tense energy in my system.

Roman sits in a wingback chair on the opposite side of the room, his phone on the coffee table in front of him. Maxim is on speakerphone.

We’ve brought Maxim up to speed on all the shit that went down in the last twenty-four hours, including the biggest revelation of all: The Black Company is operational again with Simon Lau, a man we all believed to be dead, at the helm.

“How do we know Simon is really alive?” Maxim growls from the other end. “This could be false information meant to lead us in the wrong direction.”

“Dinara’s confirming now,” I say, referring to our best hacker. “Her initial deep dive pulled financial records showing Simon’s been active for a few years. Bank transfers, real estate acquisitions, corporate shell structures. It’s all the hallmarks of someone rebuilding a criminal empire.”

And rebuilding is exactly what he has to do. After Switzerland, Maxim called a government contact in Hong Kong and tipped him off about Lai King’s tax evasion. The government froze all of King’s assets, so if anyone tried to rebuild in his name, they’d have no money.

Roman sweeps a hand over his face, exhaustion evident in every line of his body. “The villa had an extensive tunnel system that connected to the forest behind. We thought we’d accounted for all the exits when we set the charges, but Simon found a way out.”

“ Mudak ,” Maxim spits. “That means he didn’t stay and fight until the end. He abandoned his men and his boss.”

“Coward’s move,” Nikolai agrees grimly. “But I have to ask—how did you miss an entire triad rebuilding? I thought your network spanned most of Asia.”

The room goes quiet. It’s a fair question.

“From what Dinara uncovered, Simon kept operations small, worked through intermediaries. When he was recruiting, he was doing it in person, away from our network’s reach. And triads are notoriously closed; they don’t trust outsiders with operational details,” I explain.

Roman shifts in his seat, clearly frustrated. “We’ve also been focused on more immediate threats, like the Italians pushing into our European markets and establishing footholds in North America.”

Maxim sighs heavily. “This is about more than revenge. If Simon marries Hope, he gets the legitimacy to unite every scattered triad faction. The Black Company won’t just return; it’ll be unstoppable.”

Eva taps her pen against the satellite photos in front of her. “According to my Hong Kong sources, Lai King was practically an emperor before you took him down. Marrying his daughter positions Simon as the rightful heir to that legacy.”

“We need to stop this wedding,” I state flatly. “Nothing else matters.”

Strategically, it makes sense, but it goes deeper for me. The thought of Hope pledging herself to Simon triggers something primal. I want to burn down everything he’s built and take back what should have never been his.

Maxim’s voice comes through the speaker. “Pavel implanted a tracker in Hope King. That should show us exactly where she and Simon are and where the wedding’s taking place.”

Roman, Niko, Vadim, and Eva all turn to look at me expectantly, waiting for me to provide information that doesn’t fucking exist.

I let them assume I could find her all this time. I never lied, but never corrected their assumptions either.

No point in dancing around it now. “There is no tracker.”