Page 123 of His Forced Bride
"How long have you known?"
"I've had surveillance on her since she returned to the city. When she approached the compound the other day, I knew exactly why she'd come. It's why I warned you not to be in contact with her."
I stare at the scattered photographs, evidence of a deception so complete it rewrites everything I thought I knew about my life.
My mother, my childhood, the reasons for our family's destruction—all of it built on lies I'd been too young and too desperate to recognize.
The little girl inside me who's spent years wondering what she'd done wrong, why her mother had left, finally has her answer.
She wasn't abandoned because she wasn't worthy of love.
She was discarded because she wasn't useful.
Until now.
"What happens next?" I ask, surprised by the steadiness of my own voice.
The grief and betrayal I feel start to stitch together into something caustic in my chest.
Anger isn't a strong enough word for it.
Loathing, maybe, or bitter hatred…
Yuri's expression hardens, and since this nightmare began, I've been terrified of him.
But now his coldness doesn't frighten me.
Instead, it fills me with savage anticipation.
"Now," he says, gathering the photographs into his hands, "we make sure Viktoria understands exactly what happens to people who mistake my wife for prey."
22
YURI
Iwatch Inessa's face as the truth settles into her bones.
Her eyes move between the scattered photographs and my face as I collect them, searching for some alternative explanation that doesn't exist.
The last traces of childhood hope drain from her expression, leaving behind the stark reality of what her mother truly is.
She doesn't cry, but I see the moment her world fractures completely—the slight tremor in her hands, the way her breathing becomes shallow.
She's fighting to maintain composure while everything she believed about her family crumbles around her.
I watch her absorb my promise, see the way her shoulders straighten as she accepts what I am and what I'm willing to do for her.
She's angry, and she well should be.
Now that the blinders are off, she can see her own mother for the despicable monster she is, and there is no one who can change any of it.
But then her composure shatters.
The tears come all at once, years of abandonment, betrayal, and grief pouring out in broken sobs.
She presses her hands to her face, trying to contain the sound, but her body shakes with the force of emotions she can no longer suppress.
I move around the desk without conscious thought and pull her into my arms.
