Page 31 of Captive Virgin of the Bratva

I turn to face her, slowly. Her face doesn’t change. She’s not baiting me. She’s not playing. She’s just asking the thing that’s been gnawing at her since the night we dragged her here.

I should lie.

Tell her she’s still useful. That Yuri might still crash, and we might need her hands again. That she’s leverage, a hostage, just another piece on the board.

She shifts under the weight of it, but not in the way most people do. She doesn’t look away. Her spine straightens. Her chin lifts a fraction.

“You don’t scare me,” she says, but it’s not a challenge. Not exactly. It sounds like the truth.

That heat—low and slow and constant—flares in my chest again.

I step closer, just once.

Her breath catches, barely audible.

“Maybe you should be,” I murmur.

Her eyes flick to my mouth, then back to my eyes. “Maybeyoushould be,” she fires back.

Fuck me if I don’t feel that everywhere.

Chapter Eight - Elise

Time is strange here. It slips through my fingers without ever really moving. Days pass in slow, muted fragments—hours marked only by meals dropped at the door, by the brief moments I’m summoned to check Yuri’s condition, by the cold that never seems to leave the walls.

Always, always, his eyes.

Kolya Sharov watches me like he’s trying to memorize the angles of my face. He doesn’t speak often, but when he does, his voice is low and deliberate, every syllable weighted. Controlled. Calculated. It’s the silence that says the most. When I move across the room, when I clean an IV line, when I change the dressing on Yuri’s leg—he watches. Always.

At first, I told myself it was vigilance. That he was studying me for weakness, ready to pull the trigger if I stepped out of line. But it’s not that anymore. I feel it every time our eyes meet. Every time I snap at him and he doesn’t snap back. Every time I catch him staring and he doesn’t look away.

The shift is there, in the air between us. Tense. Unspoken. Heavy. I tell myself it’s fear, but fear doesn’t make your stomach flip. Fear doesn’t make you lean in instead of pull away.

Today starts like any other. I check Yuri’s vitals, change his bandages, monitor his breathing. He’s recovering, slowly. His fever’s down. His responses are clearer when he drifts into consciousness. Whatever Kolya wanted from him, he’ll have it soon.

I’m alone in the room with him, humming softly under my breath—something mindless to break the silence. The door creaks open behind me and I glance up, expecting Boris.

It isn’t him. It’s a stranger.

Tall, wiry. Face shadowed under a hood. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t announce himself. Just moves. Fast.

He crosses the room before I can make a sound, and I don’t think—I just act.

I throw myself between him and Yuri.

His hand flashes. A knife. The blade grazes my side, hot and bright and sharp enough to draw blood. I gasp, staggering, but stay upright. I reach behind me, trying to shield Yuri’s body with mine as the man grabs for him.

Footsteps thunder down the hall. The door slams open.

The blood won’t stop.

I press my palm against my side, fingers slick and trembling as I try to keep pressure on the wound, but it’s already soaked through. The warmth of it, the stickiness—it makes my stomach twist. The adrenaline that carried me through the moment is bleeding out of me just as fast, and in its place, a wave of dizziness crashes hard. My legs buckle. I catch myself on the wall, panting, forehead damp with sweat.

Everything swims.

The edges of the room curl in on themselves—wooden walls, peeling plaster, Yuri’s unconscious form blurred in the corner of my vision. My knees hit the floor with a dull thud I barely feel. The pain’s there, sharp and pulsing, but distant now. Far away.

Then there’s shouting. Footsteps. Heavy. Fast.

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