Page 84 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

His hand lifts before I can move. Two fingers brush lightly along my chin.

I flinch, every muscle locking tight. The bile rises so fast in my throat I almost gag.

He sees it. Worse—he enjoys it.

“Don’t be shy, princesa,” he murmurs. “You’re the whole reason this story’s going to end the way it should.”

I take a slow step back. My legs tremble, but I force myself to stay upright. To not give him the satisfaction of seeing me break. My fists clench at my sides, nails digging into my palms. My voice is hoarse, but steady when I finally speak.

“Andrei will come for me.”

Matías stops circling. The smirk deepens into something darker, more dangerous. “Oh, I’m counting on it,” he says, spreading his arms like I’ve just confirmed his grand plan. “That’s the point, princesa.”

His tone is gleeful now, electric with satisfaction. He leans in close, his breath warm and sour against my face.

“You’re not a hostage,” he says. “You’re bait.”

The floor feels like it shifts beneath me.

“We don’t want money. We don’t want negotiations. We want him.” His voice lowers, each word deliberate. “Big bad Andrei Sharov. We want him to walk into our hands, thinking he’s invincible. Thinking you’re still worth dying for.”

The breath stutters in my lungs. Cold spreads through me, numb and vicious.

“When he does,” Matías continues, eyes burning with pleasure, “we’re going to kill him. Slowly. Publicly. Symbolically. In front of whoever’s watching.”

I can’t breathe.

“You know why?” he whispers. “He’s gone soft. Over you. All that ice in his veins… melted by some trembling little girl who cried in his bed. It’s pathetic.”

My heart slams so hard against my ribs I think it might break.

Not just fear for myself.

Fear for him. For Andrei.

Whatever else has happened between us, however twisted and wrong and painful it’s been… I know one thing with a terrifying, sick certainty.

He will come for me.

He won’t hesitate. He’ll walk straight into this trap, into whatever bullets and blades they’ve prepared, and he won’t stop until I’m safe—or he’s dead.

That fear? It’s worse than anything Matías could do to me.

If Andrei dies because of me, because he cared when he shouldn’t have, because I let myself believe in him for even one second—

Then I’ll never forgive myself.

Matías keeps talking, his voice full of sharp-edged satisfaction, but I barely hear him.

His words turn to static, fading behind the spiral in my mind—the roaring panic that makes it hard to breathe, hard tostand. My hands curl into fists at my sides, my fingernails biting deep into my palms, anchoring me in place as the worst thought settles in my chest like a stone.

If Andrei comes for me blindly… he’ll die.

The worst thing is, he will come. I know that with terrifying clarity now. He’s too ruthless, too prideful, too possessive to let anyone steal something that belongs to him—not without retaliation. Not without turning the world upside down to get it back.

I am his. He’s made that clear in a hundred cruel, quiet ways.

Now it’s going to get him killed.

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