Page 19 of Forced Pregnant Prisoner of the Bratva
“The boss requires you in his office,” she says.
The words hit harder than a slap. My stomach curls tight, dread coiling low and sharp. I rise slowly, palms pressed to the table to steady myself. Lace scratches my arms as I straighten. My legs feel heavy, but I force them to move.
If I falter, they’ll smell it. If I cry, he’ll see it.
So I steel myself. Chin high. Shoulders back. I walk toward whatever waits.
The office feels like stepping into the lair of a predator. Dark wood gleams under muted light, leather chairs line the walls, and the massive desk dominates the space, a fortress of polished oak that keeps him elevated, unreachable. The air carries smoke and the faint tang of iron, both lingering marks of the man who rules here.
Rostya sits behind that desk, perfectly at ease, his presence filling the room more than the furniture ever could. His eyes fix on me the moment I enter, cool and merciless, and the silence stretches just long enough to remind me who commands it.
“You will work for me now.” His voice is flat, stripped of ceremony. No introduction, no preamble. Just the strike of law laid bare. “The skills you used to crawl into my system will be bent toward repairing it. You will undo the damage. Hunt the trail. Close the breach.”
It isn’t a request. It lands like a sentence, heavy and sharp, the menace tucked into every word.
Outrage pricks under my skin. He stole my freedom, my future, my name—and now even my work? Rage curls tight in my chest, begging for release. But fire here will cost me more than pride. I force it down, tasting blood where I bite my tongue.
Still, the sarcasm slips, sharp and brittle. “Didn’t exactly plan on a nine-to-five after my wedding night,” I mutter, eyes fixed on the desk so I don’t have to meet his.
The silence that follows is taut, dangerous. Then another voice enters the space. Softer, sharper.
“You’ll find it’s less nine-to-five, more twenty-four-seven.”
My gaze shifts. A man stands near the corner, leaner, younger, his presence quieter but no less dangerous. Theresemblance is there—sharp eyes, controlled movements—but where Rostya radiates dominance, his brother hums with precision. If Rostya is the hammer, Miron is the scalpel.
Rostya doesn’t glance at him. His decree is already carved in stone. “You will work with him.” His eyes pin me again, leaving no doubt who holds the leash. “Together, you will expose whoever used you as their mask. When you succeed, you will ensure no one touches my empire again.”
I stand stiff under his gaze, the weight of chains I can’t see pressing heavy across my shoulders. Bound in every way that matters—by name, by law, by work.
A prisoner, a wife, a weapon. All at once.
The days begin to smear together, one bleeding into the next until I lose track of time. Morning and night blur into the same pale glow of monitors, the same lines of cascading code, the same cold burn of concentration that knots my shoulders and reddens my eyes.
The chains at my wrists are gone, but it hardly matters—another kind of restraint holds me now. Not iron. Obligation. A leash dressed as purpose.
I sit for hours at the long desk they’ve given me, monitors stacked two high, wires curling across the floor like veins. Accounts. Proxies. Ghost trails that vanish only to flicker alive again somewhere else. I trace them, click by click, thread by thread, pulling at knots until the system begins to unravel under my hands. It’s what I’ve always done, what I’m good at.
The worst part is how much I feel it—how the old thrill claws up through the fear, how the rhythm sinks into me, familiar and damning.
He doesn’t hover, but he’s always there. Rostya’s shadow falls across my work when I least expect it. The creak of the officedoor, the measured strike of his shoes on stone. He doesn’t say much, never wastes words, but when he does speak, it’s surgical.
A question that cuts straight through my progress to remind me he knows exactly how to unsettle me. A critique that lands not like frustration, but like a blade pressed carefully to skin just enough pressure to make me bleed if I shift the wrong way.
His cruelty is never careless. That, I’m beginning to understand. It’s a weapon he unsheathes only when it serves him, when it cuts deepest. Recklessness would almost be easier; it would mean he lost control. But he never does. That’s what makes him unbearable.
Miron is different. Where his brother looms, Miron drifts. Quieter, sharper, a presence that slides in close without warning. Sometimes he leans near, pointing out a string of code I’ve missed, murmuring something dry and cutting that makes me grit my teeth.
Sometimes—rarely—he listens. When my frustration boils over and I mutter curses under my breath, he doesn’t scold or sneer. He just lets the words hang, maybe even lets a ghost of a smile touch his mouth.
It’s nothing. Less than nothing. To a heart starved for any kindness, even that feels like a spark. Fragile. Tentative. Dangerous.
I tell myself not to trust it. Not to trust him, but when he lingers a second longer, when his voice lowers enough that it feels like something private, I can’t stop the small relief that slips through.
The longer I sit here, the more I hate what I’m becoming. The truth is, I’m good at this. Too good. My fingers fall into rhythm, my eyes adjust to the blur of code, my mind sharpens inways I can’t stop. The deeper I dig, the more threads I pull, the more the system bends to me again, just as it always has.
Even as resentment seethes in me, even as I curse the chains tying me here, discovery still sparks. The click when a firewall gives, the rush when a hidden account emerges, the satisfaction of seeing patterns where others saw only noise. The thrill I thought was buried rises again, fierce and undeniable.
Every success binds me deeper. Every breakthrough pulls me tighter into their world. I hate myself for it, but the truth presses hard in my chest: part of me still craves this. And that craving is the cruelest chain of all.
