Page 90 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

The sound is deafening—screams, the pop of automatic weapons, the crash of splintering wood. My pulse surges. No time. No breath. Just instinct.

He spins, placing me behind him as bullets punch through the walls. His back is broad and unyielding, his hand tight on mine, dragging me through the doorway.

Ortega’s men pour into the hallway. Dark shapes with rifles raised and murder in their eyes.

Andrei opens fire. Two go down instantly, headshots precise and brutal.

I stumble over a body—one of the guards—and my foot hits a pistol, slick with blood. I don’t think. I grab it, fingers slippery, heart screaming inside my chest.

Another man charges around the corner.

I raise the weapon. My hands shake as I pull the trigger.

He goes down hard—shot low, screaming, blood gurgling from his mouth.

My stomach turns. I want to vomit. I want to cry.

I keep moving.

The hallway becomes a warzone.

Gunfire. Shattered glass. The stink of blood and metal. Shouts echo from every direction. A body crashes through a banister. Another slams into the wall beside us.

We move like one thing, Andrei ahead of me, every step shielding, defending, destroying. He never looks back—but he never lets go of me.

Every bullet he fires is deliberate. Every breath I take is because he’s keeping me alive.

We fight our way down the stairs, over corpses, through smoke, through screams. I don’t know where we’re going—I only know I won’t let go.

Not now, not when he came for me.

***

Andrei

The lower level reeks of blood and gunpowder.

Shell casings litter the floor, bodies sprawled across broken furniture, drywall shredded by stray rounds. Smoke coils through the corridor, thick and biting, clinging to the walls and seeping into the air like it belongs there.

I hear theclickof a hammer before I see him.

Matías.

He steps out from the main room like he owns the place, suit torn at the shoulder, face smeared with someone else’s blood, but grinning like the devil.

A pistol dangles from his hand. His eyes flick past me—to Alina, then back again.

He smirks. “All this,” he drawls, voice too smooth, too casual, “for a girl?”

I step forward once, slow, controlled. The rage is there—it’s always there—but I’ve learned how to use it. Let it sharpen, not explode.

“You touched what’s mine.”

The words leave my mouth like steel. Final. Absolute.

Matías’s smile twitches at the corner. His finger curls tighter on the trigger.

Then everything detonates.

---