Page 24 of Watched and Bred By the Bratva
Maxim sneers, shoving Graham’s limp body sideways with a boot. “You two are insane. Both of you. We’re Ismailovs. Since when do we care what a woman thinks? If she belongs to me, that’s it. Happy or unhappy, alive or dead—it doesn’t matter.” His grin flashes feral. “She stays.”
I exhale heavily, the kind of weary sigh that doesn’t leave your bones. Maxim isn’t ready yet. Maybe he never will be. Something dark swirls in him that no woman’s touch has gentled.
“Just keep working on him when he wakes again,” I order coldly, standing. “Don’t let him die until I have those names. Those girls deserve justice, too.”
Maxim chuckles, cracking his knuckles as he turns back to the half-conscious man chained on the wall. “Not a problem.”
His laughter follows me out of the guest house, but his words cling like poison inside my head. I’m still tasting them, hearingthem, when I step back across the lawn toward the mansion. I walk upstairs, leaving the darkness of brutality and entering the darkness of silence.
The quiet between us tonight is the wrong kind of quiet.
Zara moves softly around me, but every gesture shouts distance. When I reach for her wrist at dinner, she pretends she didn’t notice. When I pass behind her in the kitchen, she drifts out of arm’s reach as though it’s coincidence. Her laughter never comes.
By the time the house grows dark and still, the unease is eating through my skin. I track her through the hall, every step light and uncertain, as though the floorboards might splinter beneath her feet. I tell myself it’s nothing. She is nearing ovulation. I’ve read enough in the quiet hours of the night to know her moods shift like storm clouds during these days. Hormones, I tell myself. Sadness. Restless tears.
I almost believe it. Until I see her come into our bedroom in pajamas.
Soft gray cotton clings awkwardly to her flushed skin—but fabric is fabric. It is a wall between the body that belongs to me and the man who owns it. Zara has never worn armor into our bed. She slides in bare, offering, trusting. Always naked. Always mine. Until now.
“Zoya,” I growl, low and warning. “What the hell is this?”
Her eyes widen. “What?”
“What the fuck is going on?” My temper breaks its leash. I sit forward, muscles tight, the dark rolling off me.
“Nothing,” she says too quickly. “I’m fine.”
I slam my hand down against the nightstand. The sharp crack of wood is an echo of the fury already in me. She jerks as if the sound lashes her spine. My chest seizes. “One rule,” I snarl. “One fucking rule between us. Don’t lie to me.”
Her lips tremble. Her voice is a whisper, unsteady as glass. “Then don’t lie to me either.”
My blood stills in my veins.
Her next words strike like a blade sliding against bone. “You didn’t tell me it was my mother’s boyfriend in the guest house.”
The air goes thin.
For the space of ten seconds, we do nothing but stare across the dark. The lamp glow paints her face golden, small and defiant on the far side of the bed. Every part of me burns to cross the gap. But I stay where I am because her words… they are knives.
So she found him.
She stepped through the door I forbade her. She saw the broken shell of a man I’ve kept alive only to hurt.
I force my voice steady. “We don’t discuss Bratva business. That’s the agreement.”
Her chin tilts up—frightened, yes, but not bending. “That wasn’t Bratva business. That was mine.”
The world narrows to the two of us alone, tearing.
“No. It isn’t yours anymore,” I bite out. “It became mine the moment you screamed and he touched you. It has been mine for years. My justice. My vengeance. My hands.”
Her breath hitches. Her voice breaks, but she pushes anyway. “Then it isn’t about me. Is it? You’re not doing this for me. You’re doing it for yourself.”
Terrible silence.
The truth is complicated, tangled, too vast to untie. But the fury bursts from me anyway. “I told you before—I would do it again. And again. Because this is who I am, Zoya. Don’t think you get to split me into halves. You don’t get to choose the parts of me to love and the parts you wish didn’t exist.”
Her eyes fill suddenly, painfully. “Then maybe I can’t do this. I thought I could, but—what if I can’t?” Her voice breaks, a knife driven into my chest. “Maybe I should leave.”
