Page 70 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

I almost laugh.

Help.

There’s no such thing as help without a price in our world. No favors without blood on the receipt.

If Jackson is lying—or worse, if he’s trying to use Alina to get to me—there will be no second chances.

No negotiations.

I end the call with a curt command for Dima to keep digging. Deeper. Faster. I want Jackson’s life mapped out to the bone—who he talks to, where he goes, what deals he tries to broker while he thinks no one is watching.

I stare down at the phone for a moment longer, mind already racing ahead.

This isn’t just business anymore.

Alina changes the equation.

She always has.

Anyone who touches her, who tries to reach for her without my permission, signs their own death warrant. Jackson just doesn’t realize he’s already crossed the line. Already marked himself.

I lean back, the plan forming in my mind—quiet, brutal, necessary.

Waters will be watched first. Let him feel safe. Let him think he has room to move, to maneuver. He’ll show me his hand if I give him enough rope.

When he does? I’ll tighten the noose myself.

I stare at the dark window beyond my desk, the faint reflection of myself caught in the glass—blurred, indistinct, like a man already halfway vanished into shadow.

Jackson Waters isn’t simply a threat to my operations. Not just another opportunist sniffing around the edges of my business, looking for cracks to exploit. He’s something far more dangerous: a crack in the foundation I’m building between Alina and myself.

If Alina listens to him—if she believes Jackson’s whispered promises, his easy smiles, his polished lies—if she trusts someone else more than she trusts me—

I could lose her.

The thought hits harder than it should, sinking sharp teeth into the center of my chest. It isn’t just her body I’ve claimed. It isn’t enough. Not anymore. I want more. I want everything.

I want her to wake in the middle of the night and think of no one else. I want her to come to me first—fearful, desperate, needing—and never doubt who she belongs to. I want her choices, her defiance, her broken whispers, her fucking soul laid bare before me.

That makes her a weakness. A terrifying, inevitable weakness.

The realization coils cold and tight inside me. I’ve built an empire on discipline. On the ruthless ability to sever ties before they become chains. On the principle that anything can be sacrificed for survival.

Except her.

I can’t sacrifice her, not to Jackson. Not to anyone.

Yet, even knowing that she is a weakness, even feeling the heavy weight of it pressing down on me—I don’t regret it.

Not for a second.

Not for the night I spent inside her. Not for the way she clung to me afterward, trembling and wrecked. Not for the way she stood in that office tonight, barefoot and shaking, and still dared to speak.

I will protect what’s mine.

Even if it means becoming something worse than I already am.

I grab the vodka and finish it in one harsh swallow, the burn searing its way down to my gut, grounding me in a way nothing else can.

---