Page 8 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

I let go, and his head drops again.

Then I take the knife from my belt. Not fast. Not theatrical. Just slow and quiet, like I’ve done it before. Because I have.

The blade glints under the chandelier’s low light. Thin. Precise.

“This isn’t for answers,” I say, crouching beside him. “I don’t need them.”

He grits his teeth. “Then what the fuck is it for?”

“For Maxim.”

His face shifts. Something in his jaw locks. I press the knife into his thigh, just beneath the muscle. Deep. A twist.

Carter screams, but I don’t stop.

I lean close, speaking softly, intimately—just for him. “This is how Maxim felt before he died.”

Another slice, this one across the ribs, under the line of his suit jacket. Not fatal. Not even deep, but it makes him writhe.

“He was so young,” I murmur. “Smart. Loyal. Stronger than you ever gave him credit for.”

Blood seeps down Carter’s side, staining the floor beneath him.

“He trusted you. That was his mistake.”

Carter gasps, sagging forward. I grab a fistful of his hair and yank him upright again.

“You made him suffer. Alone. In the dark.”

“I didn’t—”

I strike him across the face with the butt of the knife. The crack of bone echoes through the foyer.

“Don’t lie to me now. Not when we both know what you did.”

He’s crying now. Not sobs, not pleading—just tears. Silent and pathetic.

I release him, let him slump to the floor like discarded trash. Blood pools beneath him, but it isn’t enough. Not yet.

I want him to live with it. I want him to wake up tomorrow and every day after that with this pain in his body and my face in his memory.

I want him to see everything he built crumble brick by brick while he’s too broken to stop it.

I stand, wiping the blade clean on his jacket. My guards say nothing. They know better.

There’s blood in the grooves of the marble, dark and thick, soaking into the cracks like it belongs there. I stare at it for a long moment, then nod toward the stairs. “Bind him to the banister.”

One of them hesitates. “Downstairs?”

“No,” I say. “Here. Let him freeze. Let him listen to this house breathe while he falls apart.”

They drag him toward the foot of the staircase—carved oak banisters and iron rails, the kind of old-world craftsmanship his kind never respected. He moans as they move him, too weak to fight, one leg twisted, one arm dangling uselessly at his side.

He tries to lift his head again, but it hangs heavy, chin smeared with blood. His suit is shredded now, soaked through, rain and sweat and red blooming together like rot.

The guards bind his wrists behind the banister with coarse rope—not zip ties, not cuffs. Rope. The kind that burns as it tightens. One loop, then another. They secure his ankles next, wrenching them back until his spine arches.

“Too tight?” one of them murmurs mockingly.

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