Page 5 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

My stomach tightens. I stare at the screen for a beat too long, willing it to make more sense. Richard Carter never calls once, let alone six times in a row. Not when I’m at a gala. Not when he’s supposed to be off in some executive meeting or retreat or wherever he disappears to when his daughter becomes inconvenient.

My fingers move before my thoughts catch up. I call him back. It rings, but nobody picks up.

I lower the phone slowly, the weight of it suddenly unbearable in my hand. The champagne in my veins turns bitter. Something’s wrong. Not the kind of wrong I can explain yet—but the kind that drapes itself over your shoulders and whispers in your ear, cold and undeniable.

I try one more time, pressing the phone to my ear with too much force, hoping the pressure will ground me. That I’ll hear his voice. That he’ll tell me it’s nothing, just a mistake, just a glitch, just a meaningless flurry of calls.

The fourth voicemail kicks in, his voice distant and automated. He never even recorded a personal message.

I don’t leave one.

My heels click too loudly as I walk back into the ballroom. The music is still playing. People are still laughing. Nothing has changed, and yet everything feels different.

Kiera’s gone. Eleanor too.

For a moment, I just stand there, clutching my phone like it might tell me something more if I hold on tight enough. Then I turn, moving fast through the crowd, dodging conversation and eye contact, straight toward the front of the hotel.

The valet recognizes me immediately. He doesn’t ask if I’m leaving early or if I’m all right. He just nods and steps off the curb, calling for the car with one sharp whistle.

The doors close around me in silence. The driver looks up through the rearview mirror.

“Back home, Miss Carter?”

“Yes.”

I don’t say anything else. The words feel fragile in my throat, like they’ll shatter if I try to shape them into something coherent. My fingers tremble as I open the messages app again. No texts. No missed alerts. Just those six calls, lined up like warnings.

I press the side of the phone to my temple and close my eyes.

The city outside is a blur—streetlights streaking past, windows glowing in distant towers, everything alive and moving. Inside the car, time feels frozen. My heart beats loud in the quiet. I feel it in my throat, in my ribs, in my spine.

I don’t scare easily. I’ve spent most of my life pretending nothing can touch me. This isn’t fear. It’s something worse. Something older. A slow unraveling under the surface, where everything I’ve trusted starts to come undone thread by thread.

Chapter Two - Andrei

The rain hasn’t stopped in hours. It cuts sideways across the windshield, thin and sharp, washing the world in silver and shadow. The road below is slick with oil and mud, the curves carved into the mountain like they were designed to punish cowards.

Richard Carter is not a coward, but he is desperate.

The taillights of his car vanished minutes ago, swallowed by the fog, but I don’t need to see them to know where he’s going. I know every turn. Every bluff. He’s trying to get to the helipad near the cliffs, the one his people keep off the books. As if escape is still an option. As if there’s any world left where he gets to walk away.

I’ve waited ten years for this. Ten years of digging, bleeding, killing, enduring, building myself into something hard enough, cold enough, patient enough to reach this moment.

Carter thought he could erase what he did.

The black muscle car hugs the road as I take the next bend, tires spitting up water, engine growling low. The headlights sweep across twisted trees and guardrails until—there. Just ahead. A burst of red. The gleam of wreckage.

His car is upside down, glass shattered across the pavement, smoke leaking from the hood in thick gray tendrils. Steam hisses as I pull up beside it, engine idling. The scene is quiet—no sirens, no movement, just the rain and the ticking metal of something freshly broken.

He didn’t make it.

Not to the chopper. Not out of the state. Not away from me.

I kill the engine, step out. The storm wraps around me like a second skin, soaking my coat in seconds. I walk slowly. No rush now.

Carter’s slumped behind the wheel—what’s left of it. His head is bleeding. A long gash runs from his temple to his jaw, and one leg is pinned beneath the mangled steel. His breathing is shallow, lips parted, eyes fluttering. Still alive, for now.

He doesn’t see me until I’m standing beside the wreck, gun already drawn.

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