Page 36 of Forced Pregnant Prisoner of the Bratva
“Do you know why?” I ask, softly, the words for the crowd as much as for the condemned. He shakes, stutters, his eyespleading for a mercy I never offer. I nod to Ivan, and the gun is pressed to his head. I pull the trigger myself, the crack of it shattering the hush, echoing into the woods.
Blood spatters across my hands, a warm mist on my shirt. I hand the gun back, wipe my palm on my trousers, and step over the crumpled body. The men disperse, some pale, some grim, all reminded. Loyalty is not just expected—it is enforced. Rumor and weakness die at my feet.
I walk back to the house alone, the scent of gunpowder clinging to my skin, blood drying in streaks. I pass through the back corridors, not bothering to avoid the staff. Let them see. Let them carry the truth to every corner of this place.
Karmia waits in the main hall, her posture tense, hands twisting at her sides. When she catches sight of me, she startles, steps back, eyes wide and dark as bruises. Her gaze darts from the stains on my shirt to the flecks on my knuckles. The fear is unmistakable.
I move closer, slow but direct, until the space between us shrinks to nothing. She tries to mask her revulsion, but I see it, how she shrinks from the violence, how her breath stutters, how her hands clench around the memory of what I am.
I don’t offer apology or comfort. I tilt her chin with one finger, forcing her to meet my eyes. “No one will ever take you from me,” I say, voice low and level. “No one will touch what’s mine.”
She flinches, the words sliding down her spine like ice. I let my hand fall, stepping back, watching her reaction. I see her confusion, part of her still searching for comfort, part recoiling from the truth. Safety and captivity, all twisted up together.
She looks at my hands, then my face, reading what she can in the hard lines, the blood I haven’t bothered to wash away.I see her pulse flutter at her throat, the calculation in her gaze. She wants to ask if I did it for her, or for myself. She wants to believe in protection, in the idea that brutality can ever be love.
She’s too smart for fairy tales. She knows the cage for what it is.
Her voice, when it comes, is hoarse. “Does it ever end?” she whispers. “The killing. The threats. The blood.”
I look past her, out the window to the night beyond, where the world is still and silent and cold. “Not for men like me,” I answer, my tone flat, almost gentle in its finality. “Not for anyone who stands at my side.”
She recoils again, arms wrapping around herself as if to hold in the pieces. I watch her turn away, shoulders hunched, the distance between us a wall neither of us can cross. For her, my words are shackles, not comfort. For me, they are the only truth that matters.
I leave her there, trembling, alone with her thoughts, the echo of the gunshot still ringing in the halls. My boots leave bloody prints on the marble as I disappear into the dark, already thinking of the next move, the next betrayal, the next body that will remind the world whose house this is.
Outside, the wind hisses through the trees. Inside, fear settles like dust. Between us, safety and captivity blur together—love as a prison, devotion as a chain—until there’s no longer any line to draw.
***
The next day, new rules descend. I call it security, protection, necessity.
“You don’t leave the compound. Not now. Not until I say so.” I watch her reaction closely, the stubborn set of her mouth,the flash in her eyes. I pretend I’m doing it for her safety, but we both know the truth: it’s a leash, velvet-lined, clamped tight.
She doesn’t shrink from me, not anymore. She stands in the center of my office, fists curled, voice hard as glass.
“You can’t keep me locked up like this. I’m not your prisoner. I’m supposed to be your wife.” Her words land like slaps, each one sharper than the last.
I lean back in my chair, letting her words batter against the walls. I could shout, threaten, break her to heel. I let her vent, let the storm build.
Then I answer, voice even, unmovable. “It isn’t safe beyond these walls. Not for you, not for the child. My word is law in this house. Learn it.”
She laughs, brittle and furious. “Law? You mean chains. You’d rather have me silent and small than risk losing even an ounce of control.” The accusation stings, but I hide it, watching the color bloom in her cheeks, the wild spark in her eyes.
Our arguments have become a daily ritual, a dance of fire and ice. She rails against the guards posted at every door, against the way her phone calls are monitored, against the endless suffocation of power masquerading as care. I parry her fury with silence, with reminders, with the cold inevitability of my rule.
With each clash, something in me shifts. Her fear has twisted into open resistance, and instead of crushing it, I find myself feeding on it. Every time she bares her teeth, every time she spits my own cruelty back at me, a dark satisfaction coils in my chest.
I want her like this: unyielding, defiant, alive. I want to watch her burn, to see the fury in her veins. The more she fights, the more I crave her. I don’t want her docile. I want her blazing.
I never tell her this. I let her think her rage is a weapon against me. I let her feel the cage and spit on it. I want the fight. I want to see how long she’ll burn before she realizes the bars don’t weaken her—they temper her, sharpen her into something no one else could ever own.
Even as the tension stretches, even as our war threatens to tear the house apart, I know I won’t let her go. Not now. Not ever. Her fire is mine, as surely as her fear once was. And that, I realize, is the only power I truly trust.
She leaves the office in a storm of curses, heels clicking sharp and angry down the polished hall. The taste of her defiance lingers in the air, sweeter than any victory I’ve had over men twice as dangerous. I follow, not running—never running—but closing the distance with each measured step, the thud of my boots echoing her fury.
She spins at the corner, almost colliding with me, her breath ragged, her cheeks flushed with anger that matches my own heat. For a moment neither of us speaks. The air thrums between us, charged with everything left unsaid.
I let my eyes drop to her mouth. Every argument, every insult, always leads me back to this: the memory of her lips, the way they tremble when she’s fighting not to yield, the way her voice breaks in pleasure, in rage, in every twisted note between love and hate. It’s all I see now. Every bruise and bruise-turned-kiss. Every time she’s bucked against me in battle or bed.
