Page 15 of Forced By the Obsessed Bratva
He bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Boss. The men weren’t expecting her to slip out using the back door.” He raised his head. “We’re canvassing the area. So far, we’ve not found anything solid. We’ve tracked her phone, but she turned it off.”
My jaw tightened, and for the first time, I could feel my control cracking.
Of course, she ran, and she’d waited until the semblance of control lulled everyone into believing she was a caged mouse; then she made her move.
It was brazen. Brash. Incendiary. I’d predicted this move, but what I hadn’t predicted was how smoothly she would be able to maneuver my men.
And yet, below the storm raging in my chest, something sharp twisted—not rage. Not terror.
Possession.
She could run all she wanted; she could reach the end of the world, but she was never going to be able to escape me. That was a fact I didn’t think she’d realized yet.
I was going to turn the entire world upside down to find her if that was what it would take.
My mask cracked open just far enough to show steel beneath, and my voice dropped into a lethal calm. “Find her.”
Chapter 5 – Zoella
The cold air felt like freedom against my skin.
I slipped out the back door, heart pounding, heels in one hand, phone already turned off so they can’t reach or track me.
The estate behind me was dark and quiet with guards patrolling the entire place. Luckily, none of them noticed me slip out of the building through the emergency exit.
There was no turning back now.
The vehicle of my friend, Marielle Rue, was a block away, down the street, with the engine idling and no lights on. A black convertible that she had no business being able to afford, yet she could. She leaned over and opened the door with a smile that could start revolutions as soon as she spotted me.
“Z,” she said, giving me a once-over. “You look…exhausted.”
“And you look like you’re about to own the night,” I replied as I threw myself into the front seat, panting for a second before turning my head to take her in fully.
She was wearing a short black dress that barely did anything to cover her cleavage and exposed most of her thighs. Her long hair was tied up in a ponytail, and she smelled like sin soaked in seductive flavors. She looked hot as fuck. Any man would be happy to even lick a drop of whiskey off her feet if it weren’t for the black, six-inch strap heels she was wearing.
“Thanks,” she replied with a wide smile, her eyes glinting with amusement as she stepped on the accelerator like the devil was after us, and perhaps he was because it was only a matter of someone discovering I was gone before we’d have one of the bodyguards or more on our tail.
Los Angeles blurred around us in streaks of silver and red. Streetlights. Neon signs. The heartbeat of a city that didn’t sleep.
I dropped my head back onto the seat, breathing as if for the first time in weeks.
No Matvey.
No Carter legacy.
No suffocating rooms or Bratva dinners or discussions of marriage like it was a prison sentence.
Just freedom at last.
And the kind of night that felt like it might rewrite the rules.
“I presented you with choices,” she said, looking at the road. “Red lips or black? Dagger earrings or hoops? You’ve only got one night to get wild, and I want you to feel good doing it.”
I laughed—loud, real, almost startled by the sound. “Trust me, I’ll feel good if all I had to wear tonight is my granny’s nightgown. You have no idea how trapped I felt in that mansion.”
Her lips curled with a smile. “You sound like you’re really excited about tonight.”
I was more than excited. I felt alive.
