Page 8 of Sold to the Bratva
“You think your dreams matter more than peace between two powerful Bratvas?”
“Yes!” I explode. “Because they’re mine. I wanted a life I built with my own hands. A gallery, a family, a man I chose, not one assigned to me like a school project!”
His jaw tightens. “You will have stability,” he says, sounding exasperated. “Wealth, respect, power. No little boy from a club is going to offer you more than that.”
“What about love?” I counter. “Where’s love in your little business transaction?”
“Love doesn’t matter in our world.”
“Maybe it didn’t for you,” I whisper. “But it does for me.”
His voice drops, cold and final. “This is not up for debate, Katya. You are my daughter,” he says, “and this is what your mother would have expected.”
The air leaves my lungs in a rush.
He said the one thing he shouldn’t have. The one thing that guts me more than any of his cold logic.
“You don’t get to use her against me,” I say, my voice like broken glass.
“She understood duty,” he says, anger dripping from his voice. “She would expect you to do this.”
“You don’t know what she would’ve wanted for me,” I shoot back.
“She was loyal to this family,” he begins, but I cut him off.
“She was lonely,” I hiss, cutting him off. “And miserable. And married to a man who only ever saw her as a means to an end. It was probably a relief for her to die.”
His face freezes. For once, the weight of my words seems to hit him, and I hate that it hurts him. But I want to hurt him right now. I want him to feel the sting of helplessness, of havingeverything he wants stripped away and packaged as duty. His silence is answer enough.
But it doesn’t matter. The deal is done. The cage door is shut. And the key is in Isaac Kozlov’s hands. I step back from my father, suddenly exhausted.
“You don’t care what this does to me. You never have.”
“I care more than you know,” he says quietly. “Which is why I made the deal. You’ll understand in time.”
“No. I won’t.”
I turn away, too angry to cry, too shattered to stay composed. And that’s when I see Isaac. He’s leaning against the doorframe of his office, arms crossed, watching the scene like its theater.
There’s that damn smirk again, lazily amused, eyes gleaming with something dangerous and unreadable. My stomach turns. My fists clench.
His voice drips like molasses, slow, warm, cloyingly sweet.
“I’ll see you soon, wife.”
And he walks back into his office like he’s already won a game I didn’t know we were playing.
4
KATYA
The first shot of tequila lands harder than I expect. By the time the second arrives, my heels are abandoned under the table and I’m slumped against the paneled booth, letting out a long, weighted breath.
Evie sips hers like chamomile tea, lipstick un-smudged and spine arrow-straight. She was never the princess in a tower. She got to live, drink, and do as she pleased. Translation: her tolerance leaves mine in the dust, while I’m slowly melting into the leather cushions.
“You’re a mess,” she says, her tone bone-dry.
“I’m a bride,” I mutter, raising my glass in a mock toast. “Of a man I didn’t choose, in a marriage I didn’t sign up for, on a timeline I didn’t set.”
