Page 59 of Bratva Bride
Just a quick check. Five minutes on the laptop to scan emails, make sure the world hadn't ended while I was playing in pools and eating shaped food. Nothing wrong with being informed. Being prepared.
I slipped from the daybed with practiced silence—a skill learned from years of midnight wandering in my father's house, testing which floorboards creaked, which doors whispered. My laptop was in my bag, and the main room had that massive dining table perfect for spreading out research.
Just five minutes.
The browser opened to my email—nothing urgent, though my father's lawyer had sent three messages about "clarifications" that could definitely wait until never. But then my fingers were typing without permission, pulling up articles about DDlg dynamics, about trauma-bonded relationships, about whether what Ivan and I had was real or just Stockholm syndrome with better thread counts.
"Differentiating Genuine Attraction from Trauma Response"—twenty-three tabs open before I finished the first article.
"The Psychology of Age Regression as Healing Mechanism"—another fifteen tabs, plus a PDF download of someone's dissertation.
"Power Exchange in Arranged Marriages: A Statistical Analysis"—why did this exist, and why was I reading all forty-seven pages?
The clock disappeared. Time became measured in open tabs and typed notes, my fingers flying across keys with the speed of someone trying to outrun their own thoughts. Each article led to three more, rabbit holes spawning rabbit holes until my screen looked like a Wikipedia editor's fever dream.
Then the real panic started—the treaty. What exactly had my father agreed to? What escape clauses existed? What happened if I couldn't produce an heir, or if Ivan decided I wasn't worth the trouble, or if—
Contract law websites in Russian and English filled my screen. Byzantine legal precedents. Historical bratva agreements andhow they'd been broken. My notes grew into something resembling the manifesto of someone who'd forgotten what sleep was for.
"Baby, what are you doing?"
Ivan's voice cut through my spiral like a blade through silk. I hadn't heard him approach—bare feet on tile, that predator silence he could summon when needed. The clock on my screen said 3:23 AM.
Guilt flooded my system with enough force to make me nauseous. But underneath it, something else—anticipation? Fear? That complicated twist in my stomach that happened when consequences stopped being theoretical.
"I couldn't sleep," I said, defensive before he'd even accused. "I was just checking emails, then I needed to understand some things about our dynamic, make sure it's healthy, and then the treaty—"
"Screen time rules." His voice was quiet, controlled, but there was something underneath. Disappointment maybe. Or recognition. "Two hours maximum for work-related research. None after 10 PM."
"I wasn't working—"
"Contract analysis isn't work?" He moved closer, and I could see he'd thrown on pajama pants but nothing else. The laptop screen's blue light painted his chest in ways that made thinking harder.
"I needed to make sure we're safe."
"At three in the morning? By reading—" He glanced at my screen, eyebrows rising. "—'Bratva Marriage Dissolution Precedents 1987-2019'?"
Heat flooded my cheeks. When he put it like that, it sounded exactly as unhinged as it was.
"Anya." He said my name gently, but I could hear the steel underneath. "You know this rule. We discussed it, agreed to it. Itexists to protect you from exactly this—spiral researching until your anxiety eats you alive."
"I'm not a child," I snapped, but the words felt hollow when I was literally surrounded by evidence of my inability to self-regulate. "I can decide when to research."
"You can," he agreed. "But you agreed to limits because you recognized that sometimes you need boundaries. External structure when internal structure fails."
He was right. I knew he was right. But something in me needed to push, to test, to see if the framework we'd built would hold when I threw myself against it.
"Maybe I changed my mind about the rules."
"Did you?" He studied me with those gray eyes that saw too much. "Or are you testing whether consequences are real? Whether Daddy actually follows through or if this is all just talk?"
The word 'Daddy' in this context—when I was deliberately misbehaving, when consequences loomed—sent electricity down my spine. My breathing went shallow for entirely different reasons than anxiety.
"I don't know," I admitted, the truth scraping my throat raw.
"That's okay," he said, and reached for my laptop with gentle but firm hands. "But regardless of why, you broke a rule we agreed on. There will be consequences. We'll discuss them in the morning."
The laptop closed with a soft click that sounded like a judge's gavel. He picked it up, cradling it like evidence.
