Page 37 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

It lasts only two seconds, but they’re long enough for the entire room to hold its breath. “I do,” she says, calm, clear.

The priest continues, his voice stronger now, emboldened by her answer. He calls for the rings.

Dima steps forward from the crowd, offering the small velvet box without expression. His eyes flick between the two of us, as if assessing a battlefield. I open the box and take her ring—simple platinum, elegant, deliberately absent of diamonds.

I slide it onto her finger.

Her hands don’t shake.

Then she takes mine. Hers is smaller, lighter, but still heavy with implication. She hesitates—just a flicker—and then pushes it down to my knuckle.

The priest’s final words echo through the hall like a judgment passed down. “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

The room doesn’t erupt into applause; it stays deathly still. The kind of still that follows a gunshot.

“You may kiss the bride,” the priest adds, almost as an afterthought.

I turn to her, studying her face. There’s no pleading in her eyes, no fear. But there’s no invitation either.

This isn’t about affection. This isn’t about tenderness.

I raise a hand to her cheek. Her skin is warm. Her breathing shallow but controlled. She doesn’t pull away. Not even as I lower my face toward hers.

I kiss her—softly, briefly, no more than necessary.

Her lips don’t yield. They don’t respond, but she allows it.

When I pull back, her eyes are locked on mine.

The priest steps back, announcing it once more: “Mr. and Mrs. Sharov.”

The crowd stirs now—low murmurs, the scrape of chairs, the slow exhale of men who have witnessed something they’ll never fully understand.

I offer her my arm, she takes it.

The doors close behind us with a heavy thud that echoes down the long corridor. The sound is final—like a vault sealing shut. The weight of it presses down on the silence between us, thick as smoke, unbroken even by the soft rustle of her gown trailing over the marble.

Alina walks beside me without stumbling, without hesitation, her arm tucked into mine like it belongs there. It’s not a gesture of closeness. It’s control. She lets me guide her, lets the facade hold—but her body is rigid, her jaw locked tight, and her fingers curled subtly inward, as if bracing for the next blow.

We turn the corner past the final row of guards, and I feel her shift slightly, the tension in her spine sharp enough to cut glass. I glance down at her.

Her expression doesn’t waver.

She’s holding everything in. Her breath. Her rage. Her grief. She’s locked it all down beneath that veil of composure, and part of me wonders what it would take to break it—what would finally make her feel instead of just survive.

“Now what?” she asks, voice flat.

I stop just before the doors to the private suite and look at her fully.

“Now,” I say quietly, “we begin.”

Chapter Eleven - Alina

The door clicks shut behind me, and for a moment, I can’t move.

The bedroom is quiet. Too quiet. A still, predatory silence that presses into my skin like ice. Every instinct I have screams that I shouldn’t be here—that this is a den, not a sanctuary. Andrei’s room. His space. His rules.

My steps falter as I move deeper into the chamber. The air is thick, suffocating. Heavy with leather and cologne and something darker—something that smells like power and heat and the ghosts of things I don’t want to name.

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