Page 20 of Forced Pregnant Prisoner of the Bratva
The first threads didn’t look like much—numbers trickling across the screen, transfers so small they could’ve been shrugged off as noise. Noise doesn’t repeat. Noise doesn’t loop. I lean closer, fingers flying over the keys, and the rhythm starts to take shape.
Accounts shifting like shells in a con game. Encrypted bursts of text flashing across servers before dissolving into nothing. The kind of movements designed to confuse anyone stupid enough to stop after one layer.
I don’t stop. I dig, unravel, pull. Hours stretch long, my eyes raw, the air around me stale from too much time spent breathing in wires and screens.
The map builds itself, slow and brutal, until I can’t deny what’s staring back at me.
Volkov.
The name spikes in my chest, cold and hard. The rival syndicate, the one whispered about in Bratva corridors, known for carving up enemies and burning the scraps. I sit back, pulse hammering, the cursor blinking on my screen like a heartbeat mocking me.
I wasn’t chosen for my skill. I was bait.
The realization hits like a blade slipping between ribs. Someone—faceless, untouchable—picked me up like a piece off a board and threw me at Rostya, disposable, meant to wound him and nothing more. I can still hear the click of the door the night they dragged me out of my apartment. I thought I’d been hunted. No, I was delivered.
My fists clench, nails biting into my palms. Rage burns hot, making my skin prickle. Rage at them, the unseen puppeteers who turned me into their weapon. Rage at myself, for not seeing it, for believing I could stay anonymous in a world that feeds on blood and names.
Beneath the rage—fear. If they used me once, they can use me again. If Rostya decides I’m no longer useful, I’ll be nothing but collateral.
Later, in the council room, the elders sit in their velvet chairs, smoke curling from their cigars. I’m tucked near the edge, silent, pretending my eyes are glued to the files spread in front of me. But I steal glances. Always at him.
Rostya doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. Every word is deliberate, as if he’s thought ten moves ahead before opening his mouth. The men across from him listen like schoolboys waiting for permission to breathe. Even the silence bends toward him, heavy, inevitable.
It terrifies me, that sharpness, but my brain won’t stop mapping it, won’t stop tracing the precision of his control. I hate that I can see the brilliance behind the cruelty. I hate worse that my eyes keep finding him, that my stomach knots when his gaze slices past me.
That night, back in the gilded cage he calls my room, I sit on the bed too soft to sleep in and turn the ring on myfinger. It gleams in the lamplight, mocking, cold. I press my thumb against it hard, imagining the metal bending, breaking, snapping away.
It doesn’t. It never does.
Each day I get closer to untangling the threads, closer to the truth that should free me. Each day, I fall deeper into his orbit, whether I want to or not.
I can feel the line blurring. Between hate and something sharper, something I don’t dare name. And that blur terrifies me more than the Volkovs ever could.
Chapter Ten - Rostya
I stand at a distance, half in shadow, watching her. She sits at the desk Miron claimed for their work, monitors glowing blue across her face, her fingers flying over the keys with sharp, relentless precision. There’s no hesitation in her posture, no slump of submission, no meekness. She leans in as if the machine belongs to her, as if the world on the screen bends to her command alone.
Most would wilt in this house, under the weight of my gaze, under the constant reminder of what waits behind locked doors. She doesn’t. Even caged, she bristles with the same defiance I saw the night I first closed my hand around her throat. I expected her to shatter after that—most do. But here she is, spine straight, hands steady, refusing to bend.
She works. God help me, she works well.
The reports she deciphers, the trails she unravels, the coded threads she teases apart—all of it, piece by piece, sharpens the picture we’ve been chasing. What takes my men days, she cuts through in hours. She has a way of pulling truth out of static, weaving order where there was nothing but chaos.
I hate the thought, but it’s undeniable: she makes herself indispensable.
I’ve built an empire on the foundation that anyone is replaceable. Everyone—brother, ally, soldier—has a weakness that can be exploited, a failing that makes them disposable if they falter. Reliance is a chain, and I’ve never allowed myself to wear it.
Yet here she sits, binding me in ways I did not choose. Every keystroke tethers me tighter, every breakthrough proves I can’t afford to discard her, no matter how much I tell myself otherwise. It irritates me. It drags me closer.
Then there is the other thing. The thing I don’t want to name.
I don’t bother with words. A single glance, sharp as a blade, is enough.
“Out,” I tell Miron.
My tone leaves no room for argument. He studies me for a beat, sharp eyes glinting with faint amusement, as though he knows exactly what game I’m playing but won’t name it aloud. Then he pushes back from the desk, gathers his notes with practiced calm, and leaves. The door shuts behind him with a mutedclick.
The silence that follows swells like smoke, filling the office until it feels heavier than stone. Shadows stretch long across the floor, the glow of the monitors painting her face in shifting blues. She leans back in her chair as if to claim more space than she has, arms crossing tight over her chest.
