Page 86 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

The room is small. Cramped. The air stale with dust and the acrid sting of old smoke. One barred window lets in a sliver of moonlight, enough to make the shadows stretch long and crooked across the floor. The mattress in the corner bears a thin, stained sheet. No furniture. No weapons. No hope.

I stand there, frozen, for one long breath.

Then another. Then I let myself tremble.

Just for a moment. Just enough to feel it. The fear. The rage. The heartbreak clawing at my ribs like it wants to tear me apart from the inside.

I sink to the floor, pressing my forehead against the cold, crumbling wall. The chill bites into my skin, but I welcome it. It reminds me that I’m still here. That I haven’t vanished into the panic.

I can’t break now. Andrei will come. I know he will. He’s too stubborn. Too proud. Too reckless not to.

He’ll burn this place to the ground if he has to. He’ll come in guns blazing, throat tight with fury, teeth bared.

I squeeze my eyes shut, pressing harder into the wall.

If I stay here, helpless, waiting—he’ll walk into Matías’s trap and never walk back out. That’s the part that cuts deepest. Not what they’ll do to me. Not the cage or the fear or the filth of this place.

Him.

The thought of him falling because of me.

I remember the way he looked at me, right before I left the mansion. Cold, unreadable, but watching. Always watching. The way his hand brushed my lower back without thinking. The steel in his voice when he gave quiet orders meant to keep me safe, even when I wanted to hate him for it.

I remember how he lowered the gun in his office—when I asked him to. When I told him to.

He listened. He always listened. even when he pretended not to.

That man—icy, brutal, terrifying—is also the one who carried me in his arms like something precious, laid me down like I mattered. Kissed me like he needed me.

I won’t let him die for me. I can’t.

I wipe my tears away with the back of my hand, the salt and dirt smearing across my skin. Then I square my shoulders against the dark.

No more crying. No more waiting.

I don’t have a weapon, or a plan, but I have my resolve.

I have the one thing Matías doesn’t understand—what it means to be underestimated. What it means to be small and dismissed and locked away, only to rise from it stronger, sharper.

He thinks I’m just bait, a prize to be paraded.

I am not his pawn.

Chapter Twenty-Four - Andrei

Rain streaks the windshield in thin, steady lines, the kind that doesn’t wash the world clean—just makes it quieter. Heavier.

Our convoy cuts through the back roads like a knife, tires kicking up mist that clings to the darkness. Three SUVs, staggered formation, engines growling low beneath the sound of the rain. The headlights slice through shadowed trees and winding turns, casting fleeting glimpses of wet asphalt and glistening branches.

I sit in the lead vehicle, unmoving, jaw clenched, eyes locked on the screen mounted just above the dash.

A single blinking dot pulses on the map in front of me.

Alina’s last known signal. Her location, still unconfirmed, but close.

The silence inside the vehicle is absolute. My men speak with their weapons now, not words. Their eyes flick toward me and then away again, the pressure of my mood thick in the air like static before lightning. They feel it. They always do. The tension, the coiled rage, the focus that leaves no room for error.

I haven’t spoken since we left the city. There’s nothing left to say.

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