Page 86 of Forced Virgin Bride of the Bratva
Chapter Twenty-Seven - Kiera
The engine hums low beneath me as we cut through the city, but I don’t hear it. Not really. I’m curled against the far side of the SUV, my cheek resting against the cool window, watching New York disappear in a trail of glittering lights and quiet ghosts. The skyline shrinks with every mile we put between us. I tell myself it should bring relief. It doesn’t.
Tiago is ahead. Mateo behind. The drivers don’t speak. Hired hands—temporary shadows. Every detail of this escape has been executed with surgical precision: multiple routes, burner phones, cash in small bundles, matching luggage. No paper trail. No trace. It’s the kind of operation Tiago was born for. Still, the closer we get to the airport, the tighter my chest pulls.
It’s subtle at first. A quiet unease curling at the base of my spine. I stare out into the dark, forcing my thoughts to stay cold, practical, forward-moving. Brazil will be safe. São Paulo is a fortress. That’s what he said. We’ll regroup. We’ll rebuild.
The moment the terminal lights come into view, something sharp lodges itself in my lungs.
I can’t breathe.
The SUV slows to a halt near the drop-off. We’re told to move quickly, efficiently. Our bags are already in hand. Mateo walks ahead, scanning our surroundings with the kind of military sharpness he never sheds. Tiago exits another car, nodding once, the signal to go.
I step out, but my feet feel wrong against the pavement. Too light. Too detached. The wind cuts across my skin, soft and chilled, and yet it hits me like a slap. I should be running. Ishould be inside that terminal, fading into a new name, a new life. But I can’t move.
My chest twists. My lungs forget how to pull in air.
Mateo turns, notices the way I’ve stopped. He’s at my side in seconds, his hand curling gently around mine. “Kiera,” he says, low but firm. “We have to go.”
I want to answer him. I want to explain the way the air has thickened, how my legs don’t seem to want to work, how my heart has started to beat a strange, broken rhythm. But nothing comes out. No words. Just that ache. That impossible ache. I shake my head slowly, as if that might make it make sense.
He squeezes my hand harder. “What is it, are you in pain?”
Yes, but not in the way he thinks.
I stare at the glass doors, at the steel and fluorescence beyond them. Everything in me recoils from it. São Paulo isn’t safety. It’s erasure. It’s stepping away from everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve touched. From him.
Maxim.
His name slips through my thoughts like a blade. And God help me, it doesn’t hurt the way it should. It calls.
I remember the way his hand gripped my jaw. The heat of his breath against my skin when he threatened to kill me and somehow made it feel like a promise. I remember the pain in his eyes when he realized I’d lied.
Most of all, I remember that kiss. That awful, beautiful kiss. The one I should’ve pulled away from but didn’t. Couldn’t.
My feet start moving before I know what I’m doing.
Mateo’s voice rises behind me. “Kiera—wait!”
I hear him, and still I run.
My legs burn, but I don’t stop. I shove past a woman with a rolling suitcase. I hear Tiago’s shout—sharp, commanding—but I don’t turn around. The wind bites harder now, but it wakes something in me. Something I thought I buried. This isn’t escape. It’s resurrection.
There’s no plan. No backup. No guarantee, but I know one thing—down to the marrow of me.
I can’t get on that plane.
Not because I’m afraid. Not because I’ve changed sides, but because running doesn’t feel like winning anymore. It feels like disappearing, and I’ve spent my whole life being invisible to someone. My mother. My father. The people who used me, trained me, sent me into a marriage like it was a suicide mission.
Maxim saw me. He hated me, yes. Hurt me. Dominated me.
Maybe I’m already ruined.
I break out into the street, crossing past rows of taxis, ducking between parked shuttles. No one follows, but they will. I don’t care. The wind roars in my ears, but I can hear my heart louder than anything else. It’s screaming one word over and over again—Go!
I run until I can’t feel my toes. Until the terminal is nothing but a faint glow behind me. I have no idea where I’m going. I have no phone. No money. I’ve stripped myself of every contingency.
I don’t stop, because going back to him isn’t surrender. It’s survival of a different kind.
