Page 61 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

He asks questions—harmless on the surface. Where I’m from. Whether I like Moscow, my original home. How long I’ve been with Andrei. His interest feels polite, not predatory. My answers are measured, vague. He doesn’t press, at first.

He flatters me. Tells me I have an elegance that doesn’t belong to the chaos of this world. It’s cliché, but it makes me smile despite myself. When I laugh—just once—it’s genuine. Brief. Almost human. For a moment, I forget what I’m standing in the middle of.

Then something shifts.

His tone drops. His posture doesn’t change, but the air around him tightens.

“I know about your father,” he murmurs. Soft. Dangerous. “Richard Carter. The billionaire.”

My stomach drops.

The name, it’s too specific. Too deliberate. My fingers clench around the stem of the glass. I feel it tremble. He’s not just some curious outsider. He came here with a purpose.

He’s not a guest.

He has an agenda.

“What did you say—”

I don’t get to finish.

Suddenly, Andrei is there. No sound. No warning. Just a weight at my back, solid and cold.

Jackson goes rigid. His mouth opens, closes. He forces a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, nods once like a man who knows the odds have turned.

“I should… find my cousin,” he mutters as he slinks off.

Andrei doesn’t touch me.

Doesn’t say a word.

He stands behind me, silent and immovable, but his presence roars. Not loud—never that—but absolute. It bleeds into my skin like heat. Like pressure. Like ownership. The air shifts around us, thick with a tension that wraps around my throat and squeezes.

My chest rises too fast, breath stuttering out in shallow bursts I can’t control. I stare straight ahead, into the golden glow of the celebration, but I feel him. Every inch. Every breath. The distance he keeps is more intimate than closeness. He doesn’t need to touch me. He doesn’t need to speak.

Everyone knows.

I can feel it in their eyes—curious, sharp, wary. No one approaches me now. The moment Andrei appeared, it was like a wall dropped between me and the rest of the world. No one dares cross it.

The message is clear.

I belong to him.

I hate him for it.

I hate the way he uses silence as a weapon, how he lets me flounder in the void of his attention until I’m dizzy with it. I hate how he shows up not to comfort, not to see me, but to mark his territory. I want to turn and scream at him—to ask why he ignores me until someone else dares to come close. Why he pretends I don’t exist until he senses a threat.

He leans in, just enough that I feel the whisper of his breath at my neck, a warm shiver racing down my spine before I can stop it.

“You don’t talk to anyone,” he murmurs, his voice a ghost beneath the noise, “unless I say so.”

The words are soft, almost kind in tone—but they hit like a slap. I tense, every nerve suddenly raw. His meaning cuts clean. No negotiation. No room for interpretation.

A rule. A command.

The edge of humiliation sharpens in my gut. He’s not just making a statement to me. He’s making it to the entire room. I’m no guest. I’m no equal.

I’m something kept.

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