Page 38 of Forced Bratva Prisoner

It’s weird to see her looking so vulnerable. We’ve spent weeks battling each other in the house, messing with each other and making it uncomfortable, but now she’s asking me to stay with her, and she looks so scared.

She’s completely let her guard down, and this is a weird experience for me.

I sit quietly with her, holding her against me as she continues to shake.

“What happened with Rico before I arrived? What did he do to you?” I demand to know, because with the way she is reacting, I want to tear that man apart. I don’t know what happened, but he did something to her, and I’m fucking furious about it. I want to go over to his place and torture him before I put a bullet through his skull.

No one touches my wife but me.

“Nothing, it doesn’t matter,” she whispers.

“Sasha. Don’t lie to me. How did he hurt you? Something obviously happened.”

“He really scared me, but I mean—it’s not that he hurt me, it’s what he said that upset me.” She shrugs slightly, trying to brush it off. It seems to me that she doesn’t want to talk about it. But I’m not accepting that.

“Then tell me what he said.”

“I don’t really want to—it’s not something I like talking about, Leon.”

“I’m not asking. I’m telling you to tell me what he said.”

She leans slightly away from me and turns her face so that I can’t read her expression.

Her voice is weak when she replies.

She takes a deep, slow breath, and I have to listen carefully to hear her properly.

“He threatened to lock me in a basement and torture me and it—it reminded me of a time when I spent four days chained up in a basement with no food or water, crying for help but being ignored. It was a punishment. Um—when he threatened me, I got reminded of that and I sort of—I guess the memory just really caught me off guard.”

“You were locked up?”

“Yes.” She nods.

I pull her closer to my body and hold her tighter. Someone has kidnapped her before, and she’s already experienced torture. I am not the first one who thought that this was a good way to get at her father. Guilt slams into me, seeing the emotional scars that the torturer left on her and knowing that I planned to do the same thing to her—that it was my goal all along.

She has stopped shaking, at least mostly. But her body is still tense.

“Are you feeling a little better now?” I ask, trying to keep my tone neutral despite the tight feeling in my chest.

It hurts me to see her like this.

“I’m okay.”

“I’m going to make coffee, then. Do you want some?”

“No, wait, please—don’t leave me alone. Please.”

Again her request catches me off guard. She wants me here. She is asking for me.

Of all the people in the world, I thought I would be the last person she turned to for comfort.

Looking into her eyes, I see no games or manipulation, just someone who desperately doesn’t want to be by themselves right now.

I lean back against the headboard of the bed.

She shifts closer, cuddling up against me, and rests her cheek on my chest.

Absentmindedly I stroke my fingers through her hair and stare at her beautiful face.

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