Page 32 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

“For sparing your life,” she interrupts, her tone still maddeningly level. “He could’ve killed you. He had every right to, not that I agree with it.”

“Right?” I breathe. “What right does he have to anything?”

Silence follows. Thick. Oppressive.

Then she speaks again, her voice heavier this time—measured. Careful. “Your father killed his younger brother.”

The room tilts.

I stare at her. The words land like a blow I never saw coming.

“What?” I ask, even though I heard her. Every syllable. Each one hammering into me like a nail through bone.

She meets my gaze evenly, unflinching. “Maxim Sharov. His brother. Barely twenty-seven when it happened. Quiet. Loyal. More heart than sense. Your father ordered his execution like it was just another transaction.”

“No,” I say. My voice sounds far away, like it’s coming from the wrong body. “No, that’s not—he wouldn’t….”

“He did,” she says. “Maxim knew something. Something Carter didn’t want anyone else to know.”

I shake my head, but the motion doesn’t help. It only makes the nausea worse.

“You’re lying.”

Her expression doesn’t change. “I wish I were.”

I want to scream at her, throw the words back in her face, but something about her stillness, the way she says it like it’s fact—like it’s old fact, one she’s carried for too long—slams the fight right out of me.

My legs give out before I know I’m falling. I sink to the edge of the bed, my hands gripping the blankets like they might anchor me to something real.

“He was just a boy,” she says, voice gentler now, but it doesn’t soothe. It makes it worse. “Andrei never found him. He simply vanished.”

I press my hands to my ears. “Stop.”

“You don’t have to believe me now,” she says. “You will. He’ll show you. Piece by piece. It’s why you’re here.”

The room swims around me. My lungs tighten. My skin feels too thin, stretched over something that’s trying to break free.

My father—

No. No. Not him. He’s harsh. Cold. Distant. But not a killer. Not that.

The woman moves around the room, righting what I’d thrown earlier, her movements calm, methodical.

“This wedding,” she says, “is not just revenge. It’s reparation. For everything Carter took. For what he destroyed. You’re not being punished, Alina. You’re the debt being collected.”

I can’t breathe. My pulse pounds behind my eyes, behind my ribs, in my throat. I want to scream. I want to wake up.

“You should rest,” she says, as if this conversation didn’t just rip my world in half. “There’s still time to decide what kind of bride you want to be.”

She leaves me alone in the silence, the door closing with a soft click that feels louder than a gunshot.

I sit there, staring at the dress, heart breaking open and bleeding onto the floor.

I don’t move in what feels like hours. I sit near the window, the hem of the gown pooling around my bare feet like ivory fog, the bodice too tight across my ribs, my skin itching beneath the lace. I haven’t eaten. I haven’t spoken. The house is quiet, still, like it’s waiting to see if I’ll shatter before the vows or after.

I told myself I wouldn’t put it on. That I’d burn it first. That I’d fight until they dragged me down the aisle in chains if they had to.

In the end, I did put it on—because I needed to see what he expected of me. What kind of fantasy he was building in his head. The version of me that would stand beside him with a smile carved into her face.

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