Page 89 of Captive Virgin of the Bratva

“You don’t know him,” I whisper.

He straightens. “No, but I know men like him. And they all crack eventually.”

I let out a breath, then I smile. “You’re going to regret this.”

Something flashes in his eyes, just for a second. A crack in the calm.

I cling to that, because he doesn’t know Kolya. Not the way I do.

He doesn’t know the way Kolya looks when his control slips. When something heownsis threatened. When something hewantsis touched.

He doesn’t know how sharp that man’s rage can get, but he will.

He’ll know the second those doors are kicked in.

If I survive this—if Kolya comes before they rip me apart—I’m going to be the one smiling when they fall.

The moment the door slams shut, the silence becomes unbearable.

There’s no noise now. No voices. No footsteps.

Just the drip of a pipe overhead and the wild, uneven rhythm of my own heart pounding in my ears.

I sit bound to the chair, my arms screaming from the awkward angle, the straps cutting into already-bruised skin. My throat is dry, and my mouth tastes like blood and fear.

I tell myself to be strong, but my body is trembling.

The man—whoever he is—left with the confidence of someone who thinks he’s already won. I watched it in the way he moved. Heard it in the way he said Kolya’s name like it was nothing. Like Kolya wasjust a man.

He isn’t, and that’s the only thing keeping me sane right now.

Kolya will come.

I say it in my head like a prayer. Like a spell to keep the fear from swallowing me whole.

Kolya will come. He has to.

He saw the cameras. Hemust’veseen the footage. He knows the way I left. What I walked into. He knows my blood isn’t cold enough to plot this, not really. I was desperate, confused, chasing something I thought I needed.

I didn’t know I was being played. Now I’m here. In the dark. Trapped again. Tied to another fucking chair, like I’m some object to be traded and threatened.

I don’t know what they’ll do to me before Kolya finds this place. What they’ll take. What they’ll leave behind.

My stomach twists. I don’t want to die here; but if I do, I hope it costs them everything. I hope Kolya turns this place into ash.

***

It begins with a sound like the end of the world.

The explosion hits so hard it knocks dust from the ceiling, the force rattling through the walls and slamming into my chest. The light above me flickers violently, then dies. For one breathless second, there’s nothing but silence.

Then chaos.

Shouts erupt outside the door—scrambled, panicked Russian barked between men. Footsteps pound across the floor above. Then gunfire. Short, brutal bursts, not the warning kind but the kind that ends things.

I twist in the chair, heart lodged in my throat. My hands ache from the binds, my breath stuttering as boots stomp down the hallway toward me.

Then a scream—gurgled, wet—and a body hits the floor outside the room. A second later, the door explodes inward, shattered wood flying.

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