Page 67 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

I don’t think. My body moves before my brain catches up, feet carrying me forward, bare and silent on the stone. The door creaks open under my hand, just enough for me to slip through.

The air turns razor-sharp.

Every head snaps toward me.

The kneeling man flinches like he’s already dead, like my presence is the final trigger. He doesn’t plead. He doesn’t speak. He just braces, certain this will cost him his life.

Andrei turns.

The weight of his stare hits me like a blow to the chest. Cold. Hard. Fury etched into every line of his face, into the sharp twist of his mouth and the fire barely concealed in his eyes.

I should. My hands are sweating, my legs feel brittle, every instinct screaming at me to retreat, to run. I hold my ground.

“Killing him won’t fix whatever happened,” I say.

My voice is clear. Too clear. It sounds braver than I feel.

Inside, I’m shaking.

No one breathes. Not a sound. Even the air seems to freeze in place, trapped in the tension that coils through every man in the room.

Andrei’s finger hovers on the trigger.

The gun remains fixed on the man’s head. Just one word from him, and there will be blood on the rug. A life erased in a blink.

I force myself to hold his gaze.

One second.

Two.

His jaw clenches tighter. A muscle ticks near his eye. Then—slowly—he lowers the gun.

Deliberate. Controlled.

The kneeling man exhales in a sharp, shaking breath, eyes wide with disbelief. He looks like he might collapse, every ounce of tension in his body collapsing into relief.

He just avoided execution because of me.

The gun still hangs at Andrei’s side, his expression unreadable. His eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them—like something ancient and volatile stirs just beneath the surface, something too dangerous to name.

His men glance between each other, uneasy. They don’t know what this is. Mercy? Weakness? Or something worse?

They wait for a cue. So do I.

Chapter Twenty - Andrei

The office is steeped in near darkness.

The only light comes from the desk lamp, its glow dying slowly, casting long, tired shadows across the room. Smoke curls from the ashtray on the corner of the desk, tendrils reaching upward before dissolving into the stagnant air. The smell of burnt tobacco and something heavier—gunpowder, anger—lingers.

The vodka in my glass sits untouched.

I lean back in the chair, the leather creaking under my weight, glass held loosely in my fingers. The cold bite of the drink tempts me, promises numbness, but I don’t lift it to my lips. I just stare into the glass, watching the liquid tremble, my reflection fractured into jagged pieces across its surface.

My anger has cooled.

It hasn’t disappeared. It never does. It simply sharpens—refined into something quieter, more dangerous. Reflection. Awareness.

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