Page 85 of Bratva Bride
She pressed something into my hand—small, metal. Her wedding ring, I realized. She was giving it to me for safekeeping.
"I know," she whispered back, but her voice said she didn't believe it.
The guards pulled us apart before I could say anything else. Viktor's hand landed on Anya's shoulder, possessive and controlling, and she flinched—barely visible, but I saw it.
"Come, detka," he said, guiding her toward the house. "Your room is exactly as you left it. We have much to discuss about your recent experiences."
I watched her walk up those steps, her spine straight but her shoulders curling inward with each step. Making herself smaller. Disappearing into herself. She didn't look back—I think because she couldn't. One look back and she might have run.
The door closed behind them with the finality of a coffin lid.
"We need to go," Dmitry said quietly. "Now, before someone decides we're violating the supervision order."
But I stood frozen, staring at that closed door, her wedding ring burning in my clenched fist. Through one of the upper windows, I thought I saw movement—maybe Anya looking down, maybe just a curtain shifting.
It didn't matter. She was gone.
Ourpenthousefeltlikea crime scene where the body had been removed but the chalk outline remained. Everywhere I looked, I saw the shape of her absence. The Eames chair held the ghost of her curled up with those comparativeliterature books she'd checked out from the library. The sofa cushions still bore the slight indentation from where she'd sit cross-legged, coloring with the focused intensity of a child who'd never been allowed to be one.
I sat at my desk, monitors glowing with data I couldn't process. The bombing investigation files blurred together—forensic reports, financial transfers, surveillance footage.
It felt like I was back at the start, back in depression and desperation, scheming like a rat trying to survive.
Every thought spiraled back to the same questions: What was Viktor doing to her? Was she scared? Was she eating? Was she regressing under the stress? Did she think I'd abandoned her?
The spreadsheet in front of me showed Kozlov financial movements for the past six months. Clear patterns that should have meant something. Money flowing through shell companies, suspicious timing around certain events. But the numbers kept morphing into other calculations.
My phone sat on the desk. Ten calls to her number. Ten times it had gone straight to voicemail. I'd left messages at first—careful ones, knowing Viktor would likely hear them. "I'm working on the investigation." "The lawyers are filing appeals." "I love you."
Now I just called to hear her voicemail greeting. "Hi, you've reached Anya. Leave a message." Recorded two weeks ago, when she'd finally felt safe enough to set up her own phone properly. Her voice carried a hint of laughter in it—we'd been at the beach house, and I'd been making faces at her from behind the phone to try to break her serious recording voice.
I called again. Number eleven.
"Hi, you've reached Anya. Leave a message."
The beep came, and I sat there in silence, just breathing into the phone like some kind of stalker. What was there to say that I hadn't already said? That the penthouse felt like a morgue? ThatI'd worn the same clothes for two days because everything else reminded me of her? That I felt like I’d betrayed her by letting her stay at her father’s place?
I hung up without speaking.
The kitchen made it worse. Every surface held evidence of our morning routines. The specific mug she liked for her coffee—oversized, with a chip on the handle she'd worried with her thumb. The spot at the island where she'd eat breakfast, always the same stool, always turned slightly so she could see both the door and the window.
I'd tried to make breakfast yesterday. Managed to burn eggs—eggs, the simplest fucking thing—because I'd gotten distracted wondering if Viktor was letting her eat properly. She needed routine. Structure. Regular meals at predictable times. Without that, her anxiety would spike, and when her anxiety spiked, she'd stop eating entirely.
Movement in my peripheral vision made me turn—Clara stood in the doorway, holding a bag that probably contained food I wouldn't eat. Behind her, Eva hovered with the particular nervousness of someone who didn't know how to help but desperately wanted to try. They’d let themselves in, clearly on the orders of my brothers. They’d let themselves in, clearly on the orders of my brothers. I hadn’t even heard the door open.
"You need to eat something," Clara said, unpacking containers onto the counter. "And shower. And change clothes. You look like—"
"Like someone whose wife was legally kidnapped?" The words came out sharper than intended. "Because that's what I am."
Clara's expression didn't change. "Like someone who's going to get her back," she corrected, pulling out what looked like soup. "But not if you fall apart first."
"I've been working," I said, gesturing at the monitors. "The investigation—"
"Come on," Clara said, her teacher voice gentle but firm. "Let's eat something, and you can tell us what you're really thinking."
I was about to reluctantly agree, when my phone buzzed—I assumed it would be a message from Dmitry, but it wasn’t. This time it was a private number.
I answered without thinking, desperation overcoming rational thought.
