Page 53 of Innocent Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva
I don’t see Adrian all day. I don’t know if he’s hiding, or if he’s giving me the space he thinks I need, but the mansion feels full of him anyway. His scent lingers on the pillows in our bedroom. His voice, low and clipped, echoes in the corridors when he speaks to his men.
Even the creak of the stairs at dusk makes me look up, expecting him—and then my chest aches when it’s not.
I try to escape the weight of everything that’s happened. I wander the gardens, trailing my hands through the wild roses and tangled vines, letting the cold air bite at my skin. I lose myself in the library, running my fingers over spines of books I have no desire to read, pretending that knowledge can still save me from the wreckage of love and war.
There is no hiding from it. There is no outrunning what Adrian has done, what I have become.
Every time I close my eyes and think of Eli, I also see Adrian’s face—the raw truth in his eyes when he said, I did it to protect you. That’s what undoes me. Not the lies. Not the violence. The fact that, for a moment, I almost believe him.
I’m still dazed, lost in a maze of memory and longing, when the housekeeper finds me. She’s breathless, anxious, as if afraid of the message she carries.
“Someone’s waiting for you in the study,” she says, eyes wide. “She said it was urgent.”
Something cold tightens in my stomach. The study is always locked unless Adrian is home, and even then, only a handful of people ever cross its threshold. I move quietly through the halls, senses straining, every shadow sharp with threat.
I push open the study door and freeze.
Yelena stands in the center of the room, back ramrod straight, lips painted in a cruel red smile. She’s alone, draped in an elegant coat, her hair perfect as always, eyes glittering with something feral. For a moment I almost laugh. She looks like she’s come for a duel, not a conversation.
“Surprised to see me, darling?” she purrs, her accent rolling off every syllable.
I don’t answer. There’s no point in talking to a snake.
She doesn’t wait for a reply. Instead, she slips a hand into her purse and draws a small pistol, sleek and black, aiming it directly at my chest. Her smile never wavers. “You really think this ends with a wedding dress?” she hisses.
The air is sucked from the room. I freeze, pulse thundering, every instinct screaming at me to run. Then I remember the lessons Adrian drilled into me in the bunker: how to recognize a real threat, how to use momentum, how to survive.
She moves to squeeze the trigger. Time fractures. My vision narrows to the weapon, her hands, the angle. I lunge sideways, knocking her arm away with a desperate swipe. The gun goes off, the crack deafening in the small space. I feel a white-hot sting slice across my upper arm.
I stumble back, half falling, breath ragged. The pistol clatters across the rug. For a second, I can’t move, can’t think, can only taste copper and fear. Yelena swears and dives for the gun.
Just then, the door bursts open. It’s Adrian, eyes wild, his own weapon already drawn. He doesn’t hesitate. He fires once, and Yelena drops, the shot punching through her thigh.She screams, the sound high and animal, echoing off the bookshelves.
Adrian’s men flood the room, moving like shadows. Two of them pin Yelena’s arms behind her back, dragging her, still shrieking, toward the door. Blood stains her stockings, her mouth twisting in agony and hate.
Adrian’s focus is all for me. He drops to his knees in front of me, hands trembling as he rips open my sleeve, searching for the wound. “Let me see,” he commands, voice breaking. “Let me—God, Talia—”
The pain is sharp, but it’s the fear in his eyes that undoes me. I let him press his hand over the bleeding gash, let him pull me into his arms, let the adrenaline and terror drain out of me in shaking sobs.
He holds me tight, whispering my name, his words hot and desperate against my hair. “You’re all right. I’ve got you. I’m here.”
I don’t let go, not until the room is empty again, not until the sound of Yelena’s screaming fades down the hall and out of the house. Only then do I realize I’m crying, clutching him, blood smeared between our fingers.
He touches my face, gentle now. “I should have been here. I should never have left you alone.”
I shake my head, dazed. “You taught me how to survive. I remembered. I… I did it.”
A ghost of a smile breaks through his fear. “You did more than that. You saved yourself.”
We sit there on the rug, surrounded by shattered glass and the scent of gunpowder, the taste of death hanging in the air. For a long time, neither of us speaks. The world narrows to hisarms around me, his breath in my ear, the rough cadence of his heart under my palm.
Somewhere outside, the night moves on.
Here, for just a moment, I let myself believe that survival is enough. That the man who nearly destroyed me is the same one who put me back together again.
And in that fragile silence, I know that forgiveness is possible—not because he deserves it, but because I need to let myself live.
Sometimes, even in a house built on secrets and blood, love finds a way to survive.
