Page 12 of The Bratva's Plus-Size Bride

After receiving a pointed look from the officiant, who eventually showed himself out, I was left to stand in the kitchen with Ari, who snickered to himself. His hand landed on my shoulder as I silently stared at the threshold Gemma had just run across.

He let go of a breath. “Congratulations, Ben. You officially have your work cut out for you.”

I wanted to gloat about my successful win at a hypothetical chess match, managing to secure myself not only a bride but also a scapegoat from the bad press, but I had the feeling Ari was right.

I may have forced her hand and changed her life completely, but I still had to live with those consequences, too.

Chapter 7 - Gemma

I couldn’t stop my entire body from trembling, even as I reached the bedroom and closed the door behind me. I leaned against it as I sucked in deep, shaking breaths while my mind tried to make sense of what had just happened.

It was all too much.

My skin felt cold and somewhat damp from my strung-out nerves, and a chill moved through me as my mind lingered back in the kitchen.

Nothing about it felt real, given how ridiculous it was, and I wanted to make myself believe it never happened—that I wasn’t married to Ben and still had complete autonomy. That it had all just been some cruel trick, but everything would be normal by Monday.

Yet that notion proved the opposite to be true.

Even if I didn’t want it and I was coerced, I had signed those papers. I was legally married to a Levov and had been dragged into a world I didn’t want anything to do with.

Sure, I had welcomed the idea of Levovs, New York’s crime underbelly, and all the secrets surrounding it into my life by taking on that article, but I was just doing my job. I was trying to stand up and stand out to make a name for myself and to fulfill the dreams I had since I was a young girl.

And yet, chasing those dreams landed me potentially one of the worst outcomes imaginable.

I didn’t desire to be anywhere near the real thing. I preferred to study the organized crime world from afar, and to keep that distance so that it could continue to feel like fiction, in a sense. Like a story.

But I couldn’t disconnect myself from it like that anymore.

I was officially the wife of a notorious figure in that very world, even if I had a weak knowledge of the mafia.

While I always trusted my journalistic intuition to guide me, and I wanted to have faith in that instinct, it seemed to have failed me, and there was no walking it back, regardless of how badly I wanted to.

Pushing away from the door as the overwhelming emotions mounted within me, I went to the bed and dropped myself onto it. I curled my legs up and hugged them while I tried to keep my mind from cracking entirely.

I hated the idea of being married to someone I didn’t know anything about, especially not while aware of his connections and the heinous acts he and his family committed.

While I'd pictured myself getting married one day, I never imagined it would happen this way. I certainly thought I would have a basic understanding and connection with the man I decided to marry.

Even if he had been a massive ass and a nightmare for even forcing me into the arrangement, there was no missing how Ben at least seemed to want to be a decent person. It didn’t make matters all that much better, but he had changed his tune slightly. At the very least, he didn’t feel the need to threaten my life. That standard seemed very low in the grand scheme of things, but for me, in this uncertain time, it made a big difference.

Thanks to his unlikely change of heart, I at least could return to work, even if it depended on the condition of me altering that article to save his skin. It wasn’t much, and it still made me feel like a prisoner, but that semblance of freedom was all I had.

It was the faintest light peeking through a cloud-filled sky, but it was enough to keep me from breaking down altogether.

At the very least, I wouldn’t have to drop my internship. I could still have something for myself. I already knew I would need it to keep myself sane through whatever the future may hold. The job would keep me busy, and so long as my mind was preoccupied, I wouldn’t have to dwell on my incredibly unfortunate situation during every waking moment.

***

I had no way of knowing how much time had passed while I stayed in bed, eventually conceding to slipping beneath the covers.

Even if my mind felt exhausted from enduring the legal process that morning, along with trying to understand the situation as a whole, I was too shaken to sleep. Every part of me just wanted to close my eyes and wake up to my old reality, but I wasn’t so lucky.

A tap at the door forced my entire body to tense up automatically as I froze in place.

Instinctively, my heartrate picked up, and I pulled in a shaky breath.

When I didn’t say anything, he knocked again.

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