Page 68 of Forced Virgin Bride of the Bratva
We step out into a strange kind of quiet. Birds rustle in the olive trees. Bees hum lazily over the vines. The breeze is soft, touched with the warmth of old soil and ripening fruit. The whole place smells sweet, sun-drunk, untouched by anything sharp or brutal. It doesn’t match him.
We walk without speaking. No guards. No rush. Just the crunch of gravel underfoot and the occasional creak of a fence leaning too far into its old age. For the first time in weeks, I don’t feel the pull of eyes on my back. No watching staff. No cold mansion walls. Just me and him, alone in a place that feels suspended from everything we know.
He stays quiet for a long time. I do too.
Then, as we pass under a rusted archway where the vines have begun to grow wild again, I ask, “Why keep a place like this if you never come?”
He pauses mid-step. Turns his head slightly, like the question reached someplace too far back to ignore.
“I used to,” he says.
The breeze stirs the hem of his shirt. His eyes track the slope of the hill like it still means something to him.
“Before everything changed,” he adds.
I don’t push.
We keep walking, the air thick with birdsong and silence, until the neat rows of vines stretch out endlessly around us. It’s easy to forget who we are here. Easier to pretend we’re not each other’s undoing.
He stops near a low wooden bench, arms folded, mouth tight. I stop beside him.
“Where did you go?” I ask. Quiet. Careful.
He doesn’t answer right away. Then: “South.”
I wait.
“I was supposed to die. Your father made sure of that.”
My chest pulls tight, but I keep still.
“They shot me and dumped me overboard, but someone found me. I don’t know who. I barely remember the first weeks. There was a hole in my memory for months—maybe years. I didn’t know my name. Didn’t know anything.”
He doesn’t look at me as he says it. His eyes stay on the distant trees, like he’s still stuck back there in the ruin.
“What brought it back?” I ask.
His jaw works. “I saw a man beaten half to death in an alley. I heard him beg in Russian. Something about that—it snapped something loose. I dragged him to his feet, called him ‘brat,’ and realized I hadn’t said that word in years.”
He exhales hard through his nose.
“After that, it came back in pieces. Not all of it, but enough to find my way back.”
I don’t speak. Don’t move.
He finally glances at me, his face shadowed beneath the tilt of the sun. “You want to ask what happened next.”
My pulse jumps. “Did you go after him?”
He looks away. “No.”
Not right away. There’s a lie in that pause.
Then he shakes his head, like he’s brushing the weight off his shoulders. “I rebuilt. Quietly. Patiently. Until I wasn’t just a man coming back from the dead. I was someone who could end things permanently.”
My throat tightens. My fingers curl into my palm.
I want to ask the rest. Did you kill him? Did you put a bullet in my father’s skull and walk away without a backward glance?
