Page 17 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

She goes limp, and I catch her before she hits the ground.

“Bring her inside,” I say. My voice is calm. Quiet.

The guards move. The doors open, and I carry her in.

Chapter Five - Alina

I wake with a sharp inhale, lungs dragging in air like I’ve been underwater. My body jolts upright before I even understand why. My hands clutch at fabric, sinking into it, too soft and warm. Not cold marble. Not blood-slick floors or twisted limbs.

A bed.

Pillows everywhere. Sheets like silk. I blink hard against the low amber light glowing from a lamp across the room. No chandeliers. No city skyline through the windows. No familiar hum of distant cars or life outside the walls.

Nothing about this place belongs to me.

The room is elegant—understated in a way that costs money. The kind of money that doesn’t need to prove itself anymore. The walls are deep gray, the furniture antique but perfect, the floors clean enough to make my bare feet shiver. A vanity stands in one corner, a carved dresser in another. There’s a fire unlit in the stone hearth, the scent of wood polish and something darker bleeding into the air.

Leather. Smoke. Something unfamiliar. Something male.

I glance down. My gown is gone.

In its place: an oversized black shirt, soft against my skin and wrong in every other way. I tug at the hem, suddenly aware of everything beneath it—of how exposed I am, of the heavy implication that someone changed me while I was unconscious.

Revulsion surges through me. I shove the covers off with shaking hands and stand too fast, legs trembling, knees buckling under the weight of it all. I catch myself on the edge of the bed and force my balance into place.

The curtains are thick, drawn shut. I cross the room in quick, uneven steps and pull them open. What greets me isn’t the glittering sprawl of the city or even the dark edges of the estate.

It’s nothing. Trees. Endless, towering silhouettes swallowed by black. Not a single light in the distance. Not a whisper of life. Just woods—and silence.

This place isn’t just isolated. It’s buried.

My chest tightens. I spin around, scanning the room again. There’s no TV. No phone. No charging port, no tablet, not even a clock. Nothing sharp. Nothing loose. The drawers are empty. The closet won’t open.

Every inch of the room is curated. Meant to be admired.

I move to the door, jaw clenched, and wrap my hand around the knob. Cold metal. I twist hard.

It doesn’t budge.

I keep my hand there for a moment, forehead pressed against the door as if that might steady the storm inside me. Panic rises, hot and coiled, demanding to be felt—but I grit my teeth and shove it back. I won’t fall apart. Not again.

I turn slowly and let my back slide down the wall. My bare thighs touch the cool floor, my arms folded tight across my chest. I force myself to breathe through my nose, steady and shallow, each exhale quieter than the last.

It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. All of it.

The gala. The lights. The music. Then silence. My father on his knees. Blood on his mouth.

Him. Andrei Sharov.

A name that drips through the halls of power like poison. I’d heard it whispered growing up, never spoken in full. Never in daylight. A name people respected, feared, avoided. A manwith no allegiance but his own. A man you never invited—you survived.

Now he has me.

I think about how he looked at me—calm, clinical, like I was an equation he’d already solved. I remember how he gave the order, not with rage, not with cruelty, but with certainty. Like he was entitled to me. Like it was done.

My stomach turns.

I curl my knees to my chest and press my forehead against them. The oversized shirt shifts around me, the unfamiliar fabric brushing skin that no longer feels like mine.

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