Page 26 of Captive Virgin of the Bratva

Why hasn’t he killed me?

Kolya doesn’t strike me as the merciful type. He’s cold. Controlled. When he speaks, he doesn’t waste syllables. When he moves, it’s never without purpose. There’s no chaos in him, but there’s danger. The kind of danger that doesn’t warn you before it strikes.

He could’ve had me shot in the woods. Could’ve left me to die beside Yuri if all he needed was a stopgap solution, but he didn’t. Hedraggedme here. Watched me work. Now I’m being fed. Kept like a pet.

The rational answer is that I’m still useful. That Yuri isn’t finished bleeding information, and Kolya won’t risk his only medic. That feels too simple. Too clean.

Something in the way he looked at me in that moment—that breath between rage and action—wasn’t simple. It was… curious. Alive.

He wanted to see what I’d do.

Worse, I think helikedwhat I did.

I shut my eyes.

It’s not attraction. I won’t call it that. He’s a criminal, a killer, a man who threatens women like me with a gun to the head for the crime of doing their job. There’s nothinghumanin the way he handles people. He doesn’tfeel.Not like normal men do.

Yet….

My skin still burns where his hands touched me. My breath still hitches when I remember the nearness, the tension coiled between us like a drawn bow.

It disgusts me. Not just because of what it is, but because I can’t make it stop.

This man owns the walls around me, the floor beneath me, the air I breathe. He’s made it clear that I’m expendable. That my life is a coin he’ll flip the second it stops being profitable.

Still, I lie awake on a bloodstained mattress wondering why the look in his eyes lingers in my chest like a bruise I can’t reach.

I turn my face into the thin pillow, biting back the sound of it all—the ache, the humiliation, the whisper of something sharp and forbidden under my skin.

This isn’t fear, it’s something far worse.

***

They come for me again when the sky outside is dark.

I hear the lock click before the door creaks open, and Boris steps inside, expression unreadable as ever. The hallway behind him is lit by a single lantern, casting long shadows that make everything seem older, colder.

“He’s crashing,” Boris says.

I’m already on my feet before I realize I moved.

They don’t tie my hands this time. I think they know I wouldn’t get far. And if I did, I’d freeze long before help ever found me. Kolya’s men escort me down the hallway in silence, boots thudding against the old floorboards. I know the path by now—the turns, the creaks in the floor, the smell of blood and smoke lingering near Yuri’s room like a ghost that won’t leave.

When I enter, Kolya is already there.

He’s standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, eyes locked on Yuri’s pale, sweat-slicked body. When I step inside, his gaze flicks to me. That same sharp, assessing look. The one that makes me feel like I’m being dissected, every breath catalogued and measured. It scrapes across my skin like a scalpel, and I force myself not to react.

Yuri is worse. I can see it instantly. His breathing is shallow, his lips cracked, skin nearly translucent under the poor lighting. The bandages are damp again, red and seeping. There’s heat rolling off him in waves.

I don’t wait for orders. I move to the table where they’ve laid out supplies and start pulling on gloves.

Kolya doesn’t speak, but I feel him watching.

I don’t look at him.

Not when I peel back the bandages. Not when I begin cleaning the wound again, cursing quietly under my breath as I examine the infection’s spread. I press down gently near the edges and get a burst of cloudy fluid for my trouble.

“He’s septic,” I mutter. “If you’d given him what I asked for—”

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