Page 80 of Forced Virgin Bride of the Bratva
“I’ll be ready,” I say.
Tiago tosses a folder across the table. It lands open, revealing grainy photographs—satellite images, timestamps, messages. “Sharov won’t stay quiet for long. He’ll come looking. We’ll be gone before he gets a scent.”
“If he finds us anyway?”
Tiago meets my eyes. “Then we finish it.”
I close the folder slowly, careful not to let my fingers tremble. I’ve spent weeks threading a needle through the eye of this man’s world. I know how deep Maxim’s influence runs. How tight he holds his empire. If he comes for us in Brazil, he won’t come half armed. He’ll come with fire.
I nod again. “Understood.”
I walk out before Tiago can look too long at me. He’s sharp, and he’s starting to read beneath the surface. He’s watching for cracks now, and I can’t afford to show them. Not with what’s coming.
***
Back in my room, I throw everything into a bag—clothes, money, IDs. I reach for the burner phone out of habit, then stopmyself. It’s too hot now. Burned through and compromised. I toss it into the sink, pour water over it until the screen goes dark.
That part of the game is over.
I change into something simple, practical. Black jeans. Flat boots. My hands keep moving, but my mind won’t stop. Every step forward pulls me farther from New York—and from him.
Maxim. Even now, even with everything ruined, part of me aches at the thought of him.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter. That São Paulo is the next phase. That we regroup, rebuild, retaliate.
But my reflection in the mirror doesn’t look convinced.
We will be prepared, but I don’t know if I’m ready.
The ceiling above me is cast in faint amber, the only light coming from the hallway under the door. I haven’t moved in hours, but sleep won’t come. My body aches—bruised ribs, a pulled shoulder, muscles sore from the fight. It’s not the pain keeping me awake.
It’s the noise in my head.
Everything’s changing. No, not changing—crumbling. I can feel it, the tremors of collapse under my skin. This whole operation was built on precision: quiet infiltration, silent manipulation, a marriage crafted to bleed the Bratva dry from the inside out. And I was doing it. I was inside his walls, inside his bed. Closer than anyone.
Until it all came undone.
The war Tiago spoke of is real now. Not abstract. Not theoretical. It’s here. It has a name, a face. Maxim. The man who should have been the easiest to hate—who should have been nothing more than a target.
My hand curls over my stomach as if it might settle something inside me, but the ache is deeper than that. He’s in my blood. The memory of him is in my bones. I can still feel his breath on my neck, the scrape of his beard along my skin, the weight of his gaze—how it made me feel seen, known, owned.
I want to scream at myself.
How did I let it get this far?
At first, it was easy. A game. Seduction turned power play. I knew how to touch him, how to look at him just long enough without giving too much away. I knew what kind of silence made him curious. I was playing the role I’d been trained for my whole life.
Something shifted. Somewhere between his bruised knuckles brushing my cheek and the way he murmured my name when he thought I was asleep—I started to want it. Not the mission. Not the end goal.
Him.
The first time I kissed him like I meant it, I told myself it was a tactic. A necessary escalation, but I remember how my lips lingered. I remember the way he stilled, like it caught him off guard. Like no one had touched him that way in a long, long time.
I remember how badly I wanted to do it again.
Now, lying here, surrounded by stone walls that aren’t mine, wrapped in a blanket that smells like dust instead of leather and spice—I let myself admit it.
I miss him.
