Page 40 of Forced Virgin Bride of the Bratva
We step outside into the sun. The breeze catches my veil and lifts it gently, almost like a whisper.
I wonder what it said. I wonder if it warned me.
Outside, guests spill into the courtyard, laughing and sipping champagne. The photographers swarm, jostling for angles, calling our names. Maxim stands straight, his hand on my waist now, guiding me through the chaos with quiet authority. Everyone wants a piece of us—a photo, a word, a moment. No one sees the cold distance between our bodies. No one sees the tremble in my hand.
“Smile,” someone says.
I do. It feels like baring my teeth.
We’re escorted to a waiting car, sleek and black with tinted windows that shut out the world. Inside, I fold my hands in my lap. He sits beside me, one leg crossed, calm as ever. The silence grows.
Finally, I speak. “It didn’t feel real.”
He doesn’t look at me. “It is.”
A long pause. “You didn’t smile. Not once.”
His jaw shifts slightly, a flicker of something in his eyes before it vanishes. “I wasn’t expected to.”
I look away, my throat tight.
The car moves, the city blurring past. People wave and cheer, and I wave back through the glass, playing my part. Perfect bride. Perfect pawn.
I feel the ring on my finger like a shackle.
When we arrive at the house, I hesitate before stepping out. He notices.
“You’re safe,” he says.
I nod, but I’m not sure I believe him.
We walk inside. As the doors close behind us, the hush of the estate returns.
I begin the quiet, careful work of becoming someone’s wife.
Staff wait by the door. They bow slightly, murmur greetings I don’t catch. No one meets my eyes. They move around me like I’m already part of the house—already absorbed into the machinery of it. An ornament. A Sharov.
Security men stand in every hallway, dressed in black, eyes blank and forward. They don’t flinch. Don’t nod. Juststatues, stationed in silence. I wonder how many of them know what I am now. How many of them were told to keep me inside, should I try to leave.
My room is enormous. High ceilings. Gilded mirrors. A canopy bed big enough to drown in. Everything is pale and marble and far too clean. There’s no softness to it. No history. Just curated beauty and clinical edges.
I try to take it in. To memorize the placement of the windows, the curve of the walls, the layout of the space. It slips through me. My brain won’t hold on to any of it. Everything feels loose. Weightless. Like my body’s here but the rest of me is somewhere else, still standing at that altar wondering how I let any of this happen.
No one tells me where he is. No one tells me what comes next.
I shower, letting the hot water scald my skin until I can’t feel the cold anymore. I dress in silence, simple silk pulled tight across skin that doesn’t quite feel like mine.
Then I wait.
I sit on the edge of the bed, hands in my lap, and stare at the ring. It gleams in the low light—heavy, elegant, unmistakable. A symbol of power. Of ownership.
It doesn’t feel like it belongs to me.
It feels like it never will.
Opening the door, Maxim stops in front of me like he’s been there all along—silent, immovable, carved from shadow and heat. I don’t hear the door open, don’t notice the sound of his steps. I only feel him. The weight of his gaze settles over me before he speaks.
“You waited up,” he says, voice low.
