Page 96 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

Maxim keeps speaking, his gaze fixed just past me—on something far away or just too deep to meet directly.

“The bullet didn’t kill me. It fractured my skull. Knocked me out cold, but I was still breathing when I hit the water.”

His voice is steady, but not indifferent. There’s weight behind every word. No dramatics. Just truth.

“I don’t remember hitting the water. Don’t remember being dragged out of it either. Only pain. Then darkness.”

He pauses. When he speaks again, it’s quieter. More human. “A fisherman pulled me from the water. A local. Old. Alone. He kept me alive. Kept me breathing when I didn’t have a name.”

The room is silent except for the slow creak of rain trickling through a hole in the ceiling.

“I woke up in his home. No past. No language. My face—” He touches the jagged scar that bisects the corner of his left eyebrow. “—wasn’t mine anymore. Everything I knew was gone. I didn’t even know I was Russian. Didn’t know I was Bratva.”

His eyes flick to mine then—sharp, sudden.

“I drifted for years,” he says. “Construction sites. Docks. Kitchens. Places that didn’t ask questions. I carried scars I couldn’t explain and nightmares that made no sense.”

I feel the weight of it then—not the story, but the time. The years. The birthdays missed. The vengeance left to rot. The silence that buried him while I bled for answers that never came.

“Then, a few months ago….” He exhales slowly, gaze hardening. “Pieces came back. Faces. Words. Guns. You.” He nods at me. “You most of all.”

Something twists deep in my chest. I ignore it.

“When I remembered,” he finishes, “I came home to finish what should’ve been done ten years ago.”

The room goes still again. No one dares speak.

Dima’s face is pale. Stiff. His fingers twitch near his belt like he doesn’t know whether to salute Maxim or draw his weapon.

Alina hasn’t moved at all. She’s watching him like she still isn’t sure he’s real. Like he might vanish if she blinks too hard.

I’m trained to keep my face still, to hold the world at bay behind an iron wall.

Inside… inside I feel every one of those years crash down at once.

I buried him, although not literally. I avenged him.

Now he’s back. Not the boy I remember. Not the clever bastard who used to laugh too loud and fight too fast.

This man is colder. Harder. A blade reforged in silence and exile.

Now, God help whoever stands in his way.

The silence doesn’t last. Not when I cross the room in two steps and grab Maxim like he might vanish all over again.

My arms lock around him in a brutal, crushing hold—bone-deep, blood-warm, the kind of embrace meant to remind the world that something lost has been found. My grip tightens like a man choking on the weight of ten years. My hands fist in the back of his jacket, clenching hard enough to leave wrinkles, maybe bruises. I don’t care.

I bury my face in his shoulder. “I thought you were dead,” I whisper.

My voice breaks halfway through. It’s hoarse and raw, stripped bare of control.

Maxim stiffens.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. His arms hover, uncertain, like he’s forgotten how to return something so simple. I feel the hesitation—the old instincts clashing with the new man time made him. Slowly, slowly, his arms lift. One closes around my ribs. Then the other.

He holds me back.

For a long moment, neither of us speaks. We don’t need to.

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