Page 4 of Forced By the Obsessed Bratva
Her gaze didn’t waver, didn’t falter or flinch. She looked right at me, not like the others did. There was no fear in her eyes, but there was something else. A question, maybe. Or a challenge.
It was brief. Seconds.
But it felt like a match struck in a room soaked in gasoline.
She looked away first. Went right back to whatever harmless small talk her end of the table was drowning in. But I couldn’t. I stayed frozen, staring at the empty space she’d left behind.
There was something in her—something I hadn’t expected. A quiet kind of defiance that didn’t need to raise its voice. A sweetness, yes, but sharpened to a point.
I drained the last of my wine and forced myself to look away, pretending I didn’t feel that first quiet pull between us.
And then there was a burning inside me that I knew would torment me for a long time.
Chapter 1 – Zoella
The sky was too blue for a funeral.
That was my initial reaction when I stepped out of the black car and into the hot afternoon sun.
Not a single cloud was brave enough to make an appearance. The wind was gentle, the breeze too weak. The birds chirped as if they weren’t about to witness another soul going home today. As if the world didn’t know or care that Yulia died.
The graveyard was big and over-manicured. The grass was too green, cut to within an inch of its life. White chairs were carefully arranged as if for a wedding, not a funeral. The entire arrangement was flawless, groomed in a way that seemed to go against nature.
Just like the people gathering around it.
Men in glossy, black suits walked back and forth, muttering in Russian and hushed English, sunglasses hiding emotions, not that they had any to begin with. Their voices were tinged with respect they never gave her while she lived.
And there they were—the Yezhovs.
A wall of impassive, looming darkness in custom black. Bratva royalty. They hung back a bit from the rest, watching everyone with unreadable eyes. They looked as if they owned the ground that they walked on, as if they could flick a finger and cause the entire city to kneel.
My stomach churned.
I walked slower than I had to, allowing my heels to grind into the gravel as I trailed my parents in the direction of the crowd. My father’s hand was a rigid presence on my back. Support, or warning. Honestly, I couldn’t say which, and I really didn’t care.
I spotted Rurik Yezhov near the front. My sister’s husband. Her abuser. His head was bowed like he cared, a hand on the casket like it wasn’t his fault she was in there.
He was gaunt, with dark circles under his eyes, his hair disheveled. As though sorrow had clawed into him. But I would not have it. I knew what he was doing behind those doors. I knew how he used to talk to her when no one else could hear. I knew how she fell silent after she became a Yezhov wife.
My sister, Yulia, who was so full of life, had become a shadow of herself the moment she became that monster’s wife.
Hatred clawed at my chest, and my heart weighed heavily with rage.
I despised him, and now he had the audacity to act as though he had lost something precious. As if he wouldn’t have gotten rid of her since the night of their wedding if he could.
My clenched fists dug into my hands as I glared at him with way more disgust than I ever thought I could feel.
“From dust we came, to dust we shall return…” the priest started, his gaze bouncing between the Bible in his hands and the crowd in front of him.
I could hardly hear him above the pounding in my head.
I couldn’t cry.
I wouldn’t give the Yezhovs the pleasure of seeing my tears. No one would admit it, but I was certain they’d done something to Yulia. Her death was…just too mysterious to not have been planned.
So, I looked at the casket instead. It was dark brown, shiny, with a gold cross carved across the top.
Yulia would have loathed it. She never liked gold. Said it reminded her of being trapped.
