Page 88 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

A creak echoes from downstairs—wood bending under a heavy boot. Then raised voices, muffled and sharp. I can’t make out the words, only the tone. Then silence again. Too sudden.

Something is off.

The quiet isn’t peace.

It’s expectation.

I freeze in place, staring at the cracks in the floorboards like they might offer me answers. The house feels alive now, holding its breath. Something is coming. I can feel it in my bones.

He’s coming. Andrei.

I don’t know how I know. Maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe I want it so badly that my mind is inventing signs. I feel him out there. Like gravity. Like something inevitable drawing closer.

If I know it—so does Matías.

He isn’t hiding this. He wants Andrei to come. He wants him walking straight into a trap, chest bared, teeth bared. He wants a spectacle.

He wants blood.

I rush to the window again, fingers clawing at the frame, nails scraping against rotted wood. The bars are solid, rusted deep into the stone. I kick the wall beneath them, again and again, the thud of my foot the only answer I get. Nothing budges. Nothing moves.

No escape.

My breath comes fast, then faster. The first touch of panic claws at my ribs.

If he walks into this, he’s going to die.

I slam my palm against the wall. Then again.

Again.

The panic shifts, changes—calcifying into something colder. Sharper.

If I can’t stop what’s coming, I have to do something when it arrives.

I wipe the sweat from my palms onto the front of my pants. I look around the room—bare mattress, brokenfloorboards, cracked walls. Nothing useful. Nothing sharp. Nothing I can turn into a weapon.

Maybe I don’t need a weapon, maybe I just need to be ready.

I pull the thin sheet from the mattress, twisting it into a rope. It’s pitiful. Probably useless. But it gives my hands something to do, something to grip when the world starts to spin.

I hear footsteps, closer now. Heavier. Multiple sets—too many.

The floor creaks beneath them.

My heart hammers once, hard, against my sternum.

I back into the corner of the room, clutching the twisted sheet like it might matter, eyes locked on the door.

They’re coming.

***

Andrei

The convoy halts in silence.

Engines hum low under the steady hiss of rain. Mist curls off the blacktop, wrapping around the tires as the doors open in unison. I step out first, boots hitting wet gravel, gun already drawn. The cold doesn’t touch me. The rain might as well be dust.

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