Page 83 of Bratva Bride
"If she's so happy," Viktor countered smoothly, "why does she require stuffed animals to sleep? Why the reported regression episodes? These are symptoms of someone in distress, not a happy new bride."
Marina and Peanut, turned into evidence against me. The little space where I'd felt safe for the first time, weaponized. Everything good, everything healing, twisted into proof of damage.
"Enough," Besharov said, and his voice carried the exhaustion of a man forced to enforce laws he didn't believe in. "We must vote. All those in favor of Viktor Morozov's invocation of Article Seven?"
Kozlov's hand went up immediately, smug satisfaction radiating from every pore.
The Sokolovs consulted briefly, whispers behind hands, then their patriarch raised his weathered hand. Neutral no more—they'd picked the winning side.
A family I didn't know well, the Antonovs who controlled the ports, raised their hands after longer deliberation. Three.
"Those opposed?"
Alexei's hand shot up, followed by Dmitry's, followed by Ivan's though he wasn't technically voting leadership.
Besharov looked at his wife, something passing between them—forty years of marriage condensed into a glance—then raised his hand in opposition. But it wasn't enough.
Three to two.
"The Council has spoken," Besharov announced, each word falling like dirt on a coffin. "Anya Morozova—"
My maiden name. I wasn't even Anya Volkov to them anymore.
"—will return to her father's custody pending investigation into the marriage's legitimacy and the bombing's origins. This is a temporary arrangement until we can determine the truth of these matters."
Temporary. The lie settled over the room like ash from a crematorium. Everyone knew temporary meant forever. Everyone knew investigation meant never. Everyone knew I wasbeing torn from the first safety I'd ever known and thrown back to my father's cage.
The ruling stood.
Democracy had spoken.
And I was going home to hell.
Chapter 17
Ivan
TheSUV'sleatherseatscreaked as I shifted for the hundredth time, trying to find a position that didn't make my chest feel like it was caving in. Brighton Beach stretched out beyond the tinted windows—Russian bakeries and nail salons and check-cashing places, the familiar ecosystem of my world that suddenly felt alien because I was about to lose the only part of it that mattered.
Anya sat beside me, hands folded in her lap with the kind of stillness that only came from complete emotional shutdown. She hadn't spoken since we'd left the church basement two hours ago. Hadn't cried. Hadn't raged. Just sat there in that horrible black dress, my grandmother's cross still resting in the hollow of her throat because no one had thought to demand its return.
The Council had given us two hours. Two hours to deliver my wife to her father like returning a defective purchase. Two hours with Volkov security required as escorts—Dmitry driving, one of our lieutenants in the passenger seat—to ensure "safetransfer." The euphemism made bile rise in my throat. This wasn't a transfer. This was imprisonment. This was me handing the woman I loved back to the man who'd spent twenty-six years destroying her.
"We can run," I said, the words escaping for what had to be the tenth time. My voice came out raw, desperate, nothing like the controlled strategist everyone expected. "Right now. I have safehouses in six countries. New identities ready. We could be on a plane in forty minutes."
Anya's head moved slightly—not quite a shake, just enough movement to say no without actually forming the word. Her eyes stayed fixed on her folded hands, but I saw the calculation happening behind them. That brilliant mind running probability scenarios, weighing outcomes, reaching the same conclusion every time.
"They'd kill your brothers," she said quietly, her first words in an hour. "Viktor would demand retribution for the insult. The Council would side with him. Alexei and Dmitry would die for our selfishness."
She was right. I knew she was right. But knowing didn't stop me from wanting to tell Dmitry to keep driving, to head for the airport, to save her even if it meant burning everything else to ash.
"There has to be another way," I said, though we'd exhausted every option in those two hours. Legal challenges that would take months. Appeals that required evidence we didn't have yet. Negotiations that Viktor had already refused.
"Ivan." Just my name, but the way she said it—gentle, final, resigned—made something crack in my chest. "We both know how this goes. You deliver me. Viktor keeps me during his 'investigation.' Maybe weeks. Maybe months. Maybe—" She stopped, swallowed. "The Council has spoken."
The democracy of tyrants. The votes of men who'd never been owned, deciding the fate of a woman they saw as property.
Clara reached back from the front passenger seat, her hand finding Anya's briefly. "We'll get you back," she said with fierce certainty. "Alexei's already working on it. This isn't over."
