Page 25 of Pregnant Virgin of the Bratva
“You’re threatening me,” I say flatly.
“I’m informing you,” Yuri replies. “If you forget your place, it won’t be him you’ll answer to. It’ll be me, and I am not sentimental.”
My pulse kicks harder. “I’m not trying to cause problems.”
“That’s smart,” he says. “Stay smart.”
I grit my teeth. “You think I wanted this? I was just trying to survive.”
He studies me, cool and calm. “Then keep doing that.”
He turns to leave, pauses at the door. “Eat your lunch,” he adds. “You’ll need the strength.”
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I mutter.
He faces me again fully. “No one’s asking what you want. That’s not how this works.”
“Then why pretend?” I snap, voice rising. “Why the robes, the food, the silk sheets? Why not just throw me in a cell and be done with it?”
He takes a step closer, eyes cold. “Because Kion wants you cooperative, not broken.”
“It doesn’t feel that way, sometimes.”
“Well, it’s true whether you believe it or not.”
I stare at him, trembling with something I don’t have a name for—fury, grief, sheer disbelief. “You talk like this is all normal.”
He shrugs. “It is, at least for us.”
His eyes drop to the untouched tray. “Eat.”
“Or what?” I whisper.
His reply is quiet. “Or I feed you myself.”
The air between us tightens.
I don’t know if he means it. I don’t want to find out. My feet move before I make the choice, crossing the room. I sit stiffly in the chair by the table and reach for the fork, my hands still shaking.
Yuri watches until I take the first bite.
Only then does he move again, slow and purposeful, to sit in the chair across from me. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t look away.
He’s not leaving, not until the tray is clean.
Chapter Eight - Kion
The ceremony isn’t about love.
This is about power and silence. It’s about making a statement no one can afford to ignore. The old rules demand blood for a mistake like hers. Instead, I’ve offered something else—something colder. Binding. Permanent. A solution they can’t challenge without challengingme.
I stand at the far end of the aisle.
Let them glare. Let them whisper. They’re only here because they’re too afraid to miss the spectacle.
The chapel is dressed in shadows. Low lights flicker against stone walls and polished pews. Iron candleholders line the center aisle, their wax slowly melting into the floor. The scent of smoke clings to everything: wood, fabric, skin. Beneath it, the fainter bite of metal and gun oil. Old habits die hard.
The Bratva elders are already seated. They don’t smile. They don’t speak. They watch with flat eyes, their hands folded like this is just another meeting in another cold room. It might as well be.
