Page 55 of Forced Pregnant Prisoner of the Bratva
Epilogue - Karmia
Two years later, the mansion feels like a different place. The echo of silence, once so heavy it pressed the air from my lungs, has been replaced by sound, by life. Laughter bounces off marble and glass, ricocheting down long corridors that used to taste of menace.
The ghosts of old battles still linger in the bones of these walls, but they’ve been chased back into the shadows by something stronger, something brighter.
Damian’s shrieks carry before I even see him. Almost two years old and already a force of chaos, he barrels down the corridor, his little feet slapping against the polished floor in a rhythm the whole house now knows. His curls bounce as he runs, a flash of dark hair and bright eyes, a whirlwind of noise in a place once built for silence and blood.
I lean out of my chair just in time to see him crash into the leg of one of the guards stationed outside my office. The man, towering and grim-faced, lets out a startled grunt, but when Damian squeals with laughter and darts under a table to hide, even he can’t keep the grin from cracking his face.
The others shake their heads, soft chuckles escaping men who once wouldn’t have dared breathe out of turn in these halls.
Damian owns this place in a way Rostya and I never could. His joy has soaked into the stone, reshaped it. No empire of fear could compete with the sound of his laughter.
I return to my desk, monitors glowing against the dark paneled walls. My fingers move quickly, scrolling through layers of code and firewalls, patching vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
Lines of data flicker across the screens—communication grids, tracking networks, defense alerts. The Bratva’s pulse runs here, through my hands, and when I speak in meetings now, men listen. My voice has weight. My insight carries decisions.
Two years ago, I was dragged into this house terrified, forced into a role I didn’t choose. I remember the suffocation, the helplessness, the way the silence felt like a prison closing in.
Now… now my place is carved into the bones of this empire. Not as a ghost, not as a captive, but as someone who has clawed her way into power. I am not simply tolerated. I am needed.
I pause, leaning back, watching Damian race past the door again, his giggles echoing down the hall. The ache of memory stirs, reminding me of the woman I was when I first stepped inside these gates—small, terrified, desperate to escape.
That woman is gone.
The one who sits here now commands firewalls that keep an empire breathing, who carries a son whose laughter reshaped a house of blood, who has remade her place in a world that tried to cage her.
I smile faintly at the screens, at the sound of Damian’s voice ringing through the halls, and let the truth settle deep. I am no longer just surviving. I am building.
***
The evening air is warm, the garden bathed in the last gold of the sinking sun. I lean against the doorway, the stone cool at my back, and watch them.
Rostya crouches low in the grass, his dark suit jacket abandoned on a bench, his white shirt already streaked with green. In front of him, Damian wobbles with his legs plantedwide, both hands gripping a small wooden gun carved clumsily but lovingly by one of the men.
“Hold it steady,” Rostya says, his voice low, serious, as though he were instructing a soldier and not a boy still learning his letters. He moves behind him, huge hands swallowing Damian’s tiny fists, adjusting his grip. “Like this. Firm. No shaking.”
Damian giggles, tilting the toy too high, and Rostya corrects him with a patience I’ve never seen in him before. Around them, a few of the guards stand at a respectful distance, their faces unreadable at first.
As Damian bursts into another fit of laughter, even they can’t hide their grins. Their boss, the man who commands them with fear sharper than any blade, kneels in the grass teaching a two-year-old how to aim at shadows.
I can’t look away.
Damian beams at every nod of approval, puffing his chest with pride. Rostya doesn’t smile often—his face was built for severity—but tonight, guiding our son, the corners of his mouth twitch upward. It isn’t much, just a curve, fleeting and raw. Yet it softens him in a way that makes my throat ache. For a man who once swore never to feel, he is undone by the child at his feet.
“Again,” Damian demands, shoving the toy upward with all the force of his small arms.
“Again,” Rostya echoes, steadying him, his voice warm despite the gruffness.
The sight fills me with a heat I never expected to feel in this place. It spreads through my chest, heavy and bright, burning away the old shadows of fear and silence. Here is not just the Bratva king, not just the man who built an empire ofblood. Here is my husband, crouched low in the grass, teaching our son to hold the world steady.
I realize then that Rostya’s truest vulnerability isn’t me. It isn’t the empire or the legacy that weighs on his shoulders. It’s this. Fatherhood. The boy who clings to his hands, the laughter that cracks open stone, the softness he cannot hide when Damian looks at him with adoration.
The sun dips lower, shadows stretching long across the lawn. Rostya adjusts Damian’s aim again, patient as the boy misfires, laughing at his own mistake. My lips part with a smile I don’t bother to hide, because I know in this moment—watching them both—that the man who once caged me has been caged in turn.
Not that he seems to mind at all.
Damian’s laughter cuts through the garden as he darts away, chubby legs pumping, wooden toy clutched in his fist. He chases after a bird that flutters just out of reach, his shouts echoing across the lawn. The guards shift subtly, eyes tracking him, but no one dares intervene—not when Rostya is watching.
