Page 16 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

Alina shifts slightly in her seat, angling away from me as much as the space allows. Her breathing is shallow. Controlled. But the tremor in her fingers betrays her.

“I’ll never be yours,” she says quietly.

I lean my head against the leather rest, watching her without blinking. “You already are.”

“I didn’t agree to anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

She laughs—harsh, bitter, broken. “You think tying me up and dragging me out of my home makes you a man?”

“No,” I say calmly. “It makes me honest.”

She stares at me, furious and silent.

I let the quiet stretch.

“You were raised in a cage, Alina,” I murmur. “Polished, protected, taught to smile and obey and pretend the world was safe. That’s not the truth. Your father knew that. He just didn’t want you to.”

Her jaw tightens. She looks back at the window.

“I’m going to destroy him,” I say. “Not with bullets. Not with fire. With time. With rot. With silence. You’re going to watch every piece fall apart.”

“You’re sick.”

“No,” I correct her. “I’m focused.”

The car curves through the wet roads, deeper into the woods now, where the trees swallow light and the silence isheavier. We’re heading toward the safe house—one of several—but this one is mine. Isolated. Imposing. Hidden from the world that still thinks Alina Carter is missing, not taken.

She doesn’t speak again for the rest of the ride, but I can feel her thinking.

She’s planning something. A lie. An escape. A resistance. It won’t work—not now. But I like that she’s trying. It means the fire’s still there.

The gravel crunches beneath the tires as we pull up to the house. Not a mansion like hers—no chandeliers, no imported marble, no pointless elegance. This place is stone and steel and silence. Tucked deep into the woods, cut off from everything. Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out.

The guards open the door. Alina doesn’t move.

“Out,” I say.

She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t blink, just sits rigid and still, like she’s willing herself to disappear. The second one of the guards reaches for her, she bolts. Slams her shoulder into him, claws at the doorframe.

I’m out in a second.

She breaks free, stumbles barefoot onto the gravel, running for the tree line like she actually thinks she’ll make it.

She doesn’t.

I catch her halfway across the drive, one arm around her waist, the other gripping her wrist as she kicks and thrashes.

“Let me go!” she screams, voice raw again, nails digging into my forearm. “I’ll kill you, I swear to God—”

“You’re not going anywhere,” I growl, dragging her back toward the house.

She bites my shoulder, hard. I don’t flinch. I just shift my grip and slam her back against the side of the car. Her head snaps back once, breath knocked from her lungs.

Then I press two fingers to her neck.

One nerve. That’s all it takes.

---