Page 45 of Forced Pregnant Prisoner of the Bratva
Rostya is already moving. The door explodes open, the crack of it sharp as gunfire in the stillness. He steps out, broad-shouldered and rigid, his suit splattered with city light. His face is carved from fury. There’s no mask now, nothing but the raw edge of a man who’s had blood drawn and doesn’t know yet where to bury the knife.
For a moment, no one moves. Ivan waits behind the wheel, knuckles white. The other guards hover at a distance, their eyes fixed straight ahead, suddenly deaf to everything that happens between their boss and me.
Then: “Out,” Rostya commands, his voice soft and cold as snowmelt, each syllable razor-sharp.
I don’t hesitate. There’s no point. My legs tremble as I swing them to the ground, shoes slipping on slick concrete. The night presses in, cold and brackish, heavy with the stink of exhaust and the ghosts of burned rubber. It feels like a cage, four black cars hemming us in, empty warehouses towering overhead, windows hollow and watching.
He waits, backlit by the convoy’s headlights, hands loose at his sides but every line of him strung tight. I want to run, want to hide behind apology or explanation, but there’s no cover left. I’m the reason for every bullet, every swerve, every life risked and every inch lost. That truth sits in my chest, burning.
He doesn’t shout. That would be too easy. Instead, the anger rolls off him in silent waves, the kind that doesn’t fade when the shooting stops. The kind that festers, sharpens, becomes something colder and more dangerous.
The pavement is freezing under my bare feet. My dress clings to me, torn and streaked with dust, a reminder of just how far out of place I am in this world of guns and blood. I stand as straight as I can manage, arms wrapped tight around my ribs, chin lifted. If I cower now, I’ll shatter for good.
Rostya’s eyes burn in the dark, fixed on me with a heat that almost hurts. There’s no softness, no hint of the man who let me see his scars in firelight. Just the Bratva wolf, jaws bared.
He takes a single step forward. Slow, deliberate. Every muscle in my body coils, waiting for pain, for rage, for whatever sentence he’s decided I deserve.
The air between us crackles, raw, electric, impossibly taut. I force myself to meet his gaze, even as fear claws up my throat, even as my body screams to look away, to drop my eyes and beg. I won’t. I can’t. Whatever comes next, I’ll face it standing.
He stops a breath away, close enough that I feel the heat of his fury, the weight of his disappointment. Close enough that there’s nowhere left to run.
For a long, blistering moment, neither of us speaks. The night hums with the memory of gunfire, of what nearlyhappened, of what still might. My heart pounds so loudly I’m sure he can hear it.
He lifts a hand, slow, knuckles white with restraint. I brace for the verdict—his judgment, his wrath, whatever form it takes.
Nothing—not pleading, not lies, not silence—will save me now. The storm is here, and I have nowhere left to hide.
Chapter Twenty-Four - Rostya
Cold air bites deep as I slam the door behind me, boots crunching gravel, every step an act of fury. The armored car is a beast still breathing behind me, engine ticking, glass spattered with the memory of gunfire. Men fan out, guns drawn, their formation a net cast wide for threats I no longer care about. I only see her.
Karmia stands framed in the yellow wash of headlights, dress ruined, hair wild, arms clenched hard around herself. Each shallow breath steams in the night, mingling with the ghost of cordite still clinging to the air.
My jaw aches from clenching; my right hand never leaves the pistol at my hip. Metal for certainty. Metal for truth.
In my head, the scene loops: flash of pursuit, rattle of bullets, the moment the phone tumbled from her palm. It was clumsy, desperate, not a slip but a purge. She threw away the evidence, but not before it marked us.
That’s what undoes me. It isn’t just that we were hunted. It’s that the beacon was hers. My world, threatened from the inside. Every alliance I’ve bought, every secret paid for in blood, every reputation braced on steel… all of it teeters because of a single signal and the woman standing, trembling, in my headlights.
I taste the betrayal at the back of my throat, acid, old, familiar. Betrayal is the wound that never closes, the one lesson my father drove into bone. I catalog losses by instinct: rounds fired, men at risk, debts incurred for tonight’s chaos.
Reputation is a house of cards; one gust and the whole legacy cracks. This is more than danger. This is the kind of exposure men die for.
My steps quicken, the rhythm of anger echoing down my spine. Pavement glistens wet under sodium lights, the pattern of her shoes stamped in mud. The smell of exhaust, the distant murmur of my men repositioning, the static of the radio. It’s only background noise, nothing compared to the white-hot focus in my chest.
I raise the pistol, not as threat but as balance. A ledger in steel. The weight centers me, a reminder: I choose what ends, and when. Her eyes find mine, wide, shimmering, desperate to read judgment before it falls. She presses her hands to her stomach as if she can hold herself together, but I see the fracture, the shock.
That should please me. It should feed the cruelty that keeps the empire running. Instead, the sight complicates everything. For a flicker—a fraction of breath—I feel something like protectiveness twist through the rage. Inconvenient. Dangerous. I clamp down, focus narrowing to a point.
The world has boiled down to this: her, me, the gun, the moment before sentence. Every footstep, every breath, is anger given shape.
Under it, something begins to crack. Not forgiveness. Not yet. Just doubt, sharp as a knife pressed to the skin, impossible to ignore.
I raise the pistol, sighting her the way I’ve sighted a hundred men before—arm locked, hand steady, finger on the guard but not yet on the trigger. The metal glints cold beneath the streetlamp, light sliding down the barrel toward her chest. My breathing is slow. Controlled. She doesn’t move, doesn’t shrink. Her eyes find mine, wide, liquid, terror glossed with the threat of tears.
“Stop it!” The words are raw, torn out of her, more shock than command.
For a split second, everything in me recoils. Not because of fear, not even because of her plea—but because of what it does to the space between us. Her voice isn’t an argument. It’s a fracture.
