Page 21 of Bratva Bride
We. Like this was something we were deciding together rather than something that would be done to me.
"Weeks," he continued, still maintaining that careful distance, his gray eyes steady on mine. "Months. Years. However long you need."
Years. The word didn't make sense in the context of my life, where everything had been measured in hours until the next encrypted file, days until the next state dinner, weeks until my father found new ways to monetize my skills.
"Why?" The question escaped before I could stop it. "Why would you—the treaty gives you rights. Legal rights. To me. To my—" I couldn't say the word. Body. Sex. Whatever you called it when ownership papers had been signed.
"I know what your father's house was like," Ivan said, and something shifted in his expression. A crack in the ice, maybe. "I've seen the surveillance reports. The psychological assessments."
Surveillance reports. They'd been watching me. Of course they had. The Volkov bratva didn't make treaties without intelligence.
"You were a prisoner there," Ivan said, stating it like fact rather than interpretation. "A tool he used and controlled. Kept isolated except when your skills were needed. Fed when he remembered. Locked in when he didn't trust you. Which was always."
Each word was a small wound because they were all true. But hearing them from this stranger's mouth made them real in a way I'd never let them be before. I'd told myself itwas protection. Security. The price of being valuable. But Ivan Volkov called it what it was—imprisonment.
"You're not that here." He leaned back slightly, giving me more space even though we were already separated by the length of the table. "You're not my property. You will be my wife legally, but you're also a person with autonomy who gets to make choices about her own body."
Autonomy. The word felt foreign in my mouth, like trying to speak a language I'd studied but never practiced.
"The treaty—" I started.
"Blyat. Fuck the treaty."
The profanity was so unexpected from his controlled voice that I actually blinked.
He stood, moving with that same deliberate precision he'd used while cooking. Not toward me—he went to the kitchen instead, to a drawer near the coffee maker. I tracked his movement automatically, cataloging exits, weapons, the knife block that was too far for me to reach but close enough for him.
He returned with something small in his palm. Silver. A key.
"This is for the elevator," he said, placing it on the table between us. Exactly between us, like he'd measured the distance. "The only copy besides mine."
I stared at the key like it might be a snake. Or a trap. In my father's world, everything that looked like kindness was a trap.
"The doors aren't locked," Ivan continued, returning to his seat with the same measured movements. "There are no guards. If you want to leave—right now, tomorrow, next week—you can. I'm not your jailer. I refuse to be."
The words didn't compute. I'd been locked in my entire life. First by my father's paranoia, his fear that someone would steal his prize decoder or that I'd embarrass him by having an actual life. Now by a treaty that legally bound me to this man. And he was offering me a key?
"My father said—" My voice cracked. "He'll kill me if I—if I run. If I violate the treaty. He was very specific. He'll kill me himself to preserve his honor."
"And I swear I will protect you if you run. I have no fear. Zero. Not of your father, not of anyone," Ivan said, and there was something sharp in his tone now, like winter ice. "If you leave, you leave safely." He leaned forward slightly, and I could see his eyes more clearly. Gray like the ocean before a storm, but steady. Calm. "I'll help you disappear if that's what you want. New identity. Money. Whatever you need."
"Why?" The word came out as barely a whisper. "Why would you do that?"
He was quiet for a long moment, and I watched him choose his words with the same precision he'd used to plate our untouched dinner.
"Because my grandmother would come back from the dead to beat me with a wooden spoon if she knew I'd kept a woman against her will."
His grandmother again.
The key sat between us, catching the last of the sunset light. Such a small thing. Just grooved metal. But it represented something I'd never had before—choice.
"What if I stay?" I asked, surprising myself with the question.
"Then you stay because you chose to," Ivan said simply. "And we figure out the rest as we go."
The rest. The treaty. The consummation.
I reached for the key slowly, like it might burn. The metal was cool against my palm, real and solid and impossible.
