Page 71 of Obsessed Bratva's Pregnant Claim
Then I closed the laptop and went to speak to Mikhail.
Everything that needed to be in place would be in place.
What remained was the one thing I could not build in advance, could not structure or organize around a desired outcome.
I’d do it anyway. I had to.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sofia
I was in a motel room six blocks from the Strip—paid cash, registered under a name that wasn’t mine, the kind of place that had long since stopped asking questions because the questions were bad for business. I had chosen it for its east-facing exit, its distance from the Monarch Club’s address, and the fact that it had no relationship to anyone who knew my name.
I had built the plan to be carried out alone.
A plan that accounted for no resources except mine, no information except what I had, no backup except my own ability to misdirect and disappear. I was going to walk into the Monarch Club and deliver surface information and then not be there when the verification arrived, creating enough space between Cruz’s network and my location to make the next contact difficult.
It was a plan that ended with me gone and Viktor alive.
I had accepted that shape.
I looked at the ceiling.
*****
I arrived at the Monarch Club fifteen minutes early, which I had done deliberately. The interval between early and on-time was useful intelligence about the state of the space I was entering. If Cruz’s people were already there and settled, early arrival told them I was prepared. If they were still setting up, it told me the meeting was more operational than casual.
They were settled. Four of them, which was two more than the last meeting—the original two plus a third man I hadn’t seen before, who was positioned near the interior door, and a fourth at the far end of the room, who was doing something with a phone.
The first man—Marco, the name I didn’t believe—looked up when I came in.
“Sofia,” he said. Viktor’s name was not attached this time.
“You said you had what we asked for,” Marco said.
“I said I had what I managed to get,” I said. “Which I told you is less than before. The access configuration changed.”
“We’re aware of the configuration change.” His voice was level. “We’re asking what you have within the changed configuration.”
I reached into my bag and produced a folded page—printed, the kind of printout that looked like something copied or photographed rather than generated, the kind that carried the visual authenticity of something real. The information on it was Viktor’s publicly visible schedule for the following week, assembled from the casino’s event calendar and the promotional materials available to anyone with a browser, reformatted to look like insider intelligence.
It was not nothing. It was also not what they had asked for.
Marco took it. Looked at it. Something shifted in his expression—minimal, the shift of a man whose calibrated patience is reaching a recalibration point.
“This is public record,” he said.
“It’s what I have access to.” I held his gaze. “I told you the access changed. I’m not in the operation anymore. I’m in the penthouse. I hear what moves through the penthouse, and nothing that moves through the penthouse is at the level you’re asking for.”
He looked at the page again. Put it down. The third man near the door was still positioned at the door. The fourth man had stopped looking at his phone.
I felt, rather than saw, the shift in the room’s atmosphere.
This was the atmosphere of a reassessment. Of people who had expected one thing and had received another, and were deciding what to do with the gap.
Then the fourth man’s phone made a sound.
Not a message sound. It was a loss-of-signal sound, the notification of a device losing connection. He looked at it. Looked at it again. Said something to the third man in a low voice that I did not catch, and the third man checked his own phone, and the check produced the same result.
