Page 77 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

My mind flashes with Yelena’s face, with Andrei’s cold fury when Jackson approached me at the party. He knew. He knew Jackson was dangerous. Maybe not why. Maybe not exactly how. He knew.

I dig my heels in harder this time, yanking my arm back with all the strength I can muster.

Jackson curses louder, trying to drag me forward, but my feet skid across the stones, resisting.

“Let me go,” I whisper.

He doesn’t. His grip tightens, and that tells me everything I need to know.

Chapter Twenty-Two - Andrei

The room is cloaked in half darkness.

Heavy curtains drown out the evening light, casting long, sluggish shadows across the walls. Only a single lamp burns, its weak glow barely touching the corners of the space. Dust motes float lazily in the air, stirred by the faintest movements, suspended like ghosts. The scent of old leather, aged paper, and cold vodka seeps into everything, thick and permanent, clinging to the wood, the drapes, the very breath of the place.

I sit behind the broad oak desk, head bowed over a photograph I haven’t allowed myself to look at in years.

My thumb brushes lightly over Maxim’s face—the smiling boy he once was, frozen forever in a moment the world can’t steal back. His grin is lopsided, full of life and arrogance, the kind of arrogance that says you think you’re invincible.

He looks so young in the picture.

The man he became—the fighter, the sharp-tongued bastard who never hesitated to laugh in the face of danger—that Maxim feels so far away now. A memory dulled by time, by loss, by rage.

I shut my eyes, the weight of it settling deep in my chest.

I remember the silence first. The gut-sick certainty that something had gone wrong.

We had contacts everywhere. Eyes on every port, every street. Maxim was supposed to be safe, even when he played too close to the fire. He was supposed to have backup. A plan. A way out.

Instead, he disappeared like smoke between my fingers.

No body. No funeral.

The whispers were everywhere—quiet at first, cautious, then louder as months passed. Stories of a deal gone bad. Of betrayal. Of a bullet fired in the dark and a body dumped into the sea.

So the rage never left me.

It burned in me, day after day, year after year, growing sharper, harder, more necessary. It shaped the man I became. It carved out the space in my chest where grief should have lived.

I stare at Maxim’s face, feeling that old fury ignite low in my ribs, a familiar, terrible fire tempered now by grief that never dulled.

Maxim should be standing here beside me.

He should be laughing, drinking my best vodka, mocking the stiff way I run the estate like an old man. He should be my right hand, my blood, my brother.

Not buried nameless at the bottom of some godforsaken ocean because of a coward’s bullet—because of Alina’s father.

My fingers tighten around the photo until it crinkles, the sound loud in the quiet room. I force myself to ease my grip before I tear it in half.

Killing Carter won’t bring Maxim back.

Neither will punishing Alina for sins she didn’t commit.

It doesn’t matter; the truth is simple. Someone has to bleed for this.

The knock shatters the stillness.

I look up sharply, irritation already surging through me. Whoever it is better have a damn good reason for interrupting.

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