Page 36 of Captive Virgin of the Bratva

I will bring her back.

No matter what it takes.

“She saw,” I mutter, mostly to myself, though Boris stands stiff at my side. My voice is barely more than a breath, but it turns sharp at the edges—cold, fraying.

He watches me carefully, like he’s waiting for the explosion.

“She saw me kill Yuri.”

“She shouldn’t have been near that room,” Boris says, choosing his words like landmines. “We thought she was still locked down. She wasn’t supposed to know—”

“I don’t care what she was supposed to know,” I cut in, my voice a low snarl. “I care that she’s gone.”

We stand in the dark hallway outside her room—what used to be her room. The broken glass still crunches beneath my boots. The blood she left behind has dried to a dull smear near the windowsill, stark against the wood.

“She saw,” I say again. My jaw clenches so hard it aches. “And she still ran.”

“She’s injured,” Boris offers. “She won’t get far in the cold.”

“She got far enough.”

I slam the door shut with enough force to make the walls shudder. The sound echoes through the house like a gunshot. I spin on Boris, barely keeping my fury in check.

“Find her.”

He nods. “We’ve got men sweeping the woods. She can’t have made it past the ridge. Not in that state.”

“I don’t want guesses,” I growl. “I want her found. I want her crawling on her knees if that’s what it takes. I want her back here before the blood on that fucking floor dries.”

Boris doesn’t flinch, but he doesn’t nod again either. He’s too smart for that. He knows I’m on a thread thinner than a breath, and the wrong word could snap it.

“She’s not just leverage anymore, is she?” he asks quietly.

I glare at him, but I don’t answer.

He waits, then adds, “You could’ve shot Yuri in front of anyone. Why care if she saw?”

“I don’t,” I lie. “I care that she’s gone.”

I see the flicker of doubt in Boris’s eyes, and I hate that he sees it at all.

The house feels suffocating. I can’t breathe in here with the ghost of her still clinging to the walls. Her scent—faint, like soap and antiseptic—still lingers in the room. Her voice still echoes in the back of my mind, cutting and sharp. Her eyes, that last time I looked at them—wide, knowing. Not afraid.

“You think she matters,” Boris says, more a statement than a question now.

“She ran,” I reply, pacing away from him, hands curled into fists at my sides. “She saw me kill a man. She watched me put a bullet in his head like it meant nothing. Then she ran like a frightened fucking animal.”

“You expected her to stay?” Boris asks, baffled.

I stop. Turn back. “I expected her to understand,” I hiss.

That’s the part that won’t stop twisting in my chest like broken glass.

She’s supposed to fear me. Everyone does. I’ve built a kingdom on it. But she looked at me with something worse than fear—like she saw through it. Like she saw the man beneath all the blood and didn’t respect him.

Still… I can’t stop thinking about her.

The way she breathed under my hands when I stitched her up. The shiver that moved through her when our skin touched. The flush at her neck she tried to pretend wasn’t there. I remember the way her eyes locked with mine when I told her not to be useless—and the part of her that wanted to challenge me anyway.

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