Page 127 of Bratva Bidder

“Get away from him,” I snarl, stepping forward without thinking.

Konstantin’s hand shoots out and presses to my stomach, stopping me instantly. It’s not rough. It’s gentle, firm, but it’s not a suggestion—it’s a command. He doesn’t look at me, but I feel the tension rippling through him like a wire pulled taut.

Dmitry’s smile only deepens, like he’s enjoying a performance he’s seen before and knows by heart.

“You taught her to speak before thinking, I see,” he says, tilting his head in mock amusement.

“Touch him again,” Konstantin says, voice like steel, “and I will kill you where you sit.”

Dmitry rises slowly. Unhurried. As if he’s not afraid at all. As if this is all a game he’s in complete control of. He buttons his coat, one finger at a time.

“You won’t,” he says. “Not here. Not with your daughter watching.”

I hear Konstantin suck in a breath through his teeth. He doesn’t move, but I feel the fury radiating off him. It coils around the room like smoke, thick and suffocating.

“What do you want?” he asks, each word dragged from him like it costs something.

Dmitry straightens his cuffs, glances at Nikolai one more time, then lifts his eyes—those same terrifying, unreadable eyes that Konstantin carries, but colder. Emptier.

Dmitry looks around the room like it’s his throne, like we’re all standing in his house. His gaze falls on Mila, who’s watching him with wide, confused eyes from Irina’s arms. Then on Nikolai, still seated on the hospital bed, fingers fidgeting with the edge of his blanket.

And then back to us.

“You really thought you could hide my grandchildren from me?” he says, calm as ice, his words soaked in something venomous. “From me?”

Konstantin doesn’t flinch, but I feel something shift in him. Like something sacred has just been touched by dirty hands. His hand is still against me, holding me back, but there’s a tremor under his skin now. Rage, barely leashed.

I feel it too. The same fury. Because it’s not just a threat—it’s a claim. He’s looking at my children like they’re part of some game he forgot to finish playing.

“They are not yours,” I snap, voice shaking with the force it takes not to scream.

Dmitry turns his gaze to me like I’m a curiosity. “You speak boldly for someone standing behind my son.”

“I speak as their mother,” I say. “Try me again.”

That makes him smile—dark, indulgent, full of the kind of pride only a twisted man like him could feel.

“How dare you come in here,” Konstantin says, his body shaking with rage. Dmitry rises. “How dare you? When your blood is the one that poisoned him in the first place.”

Dmitry raises a brow. “Don’t speak in riddles.”

“Konstantin—” I start.

“His heart is weak because of me, because of what we carry in our blood, because of you. You poisoned him.”

Dmitry’s expression shifts, and for a moment, I see a crack in the heartless man.

Then the door creaks open behind us, and I turn just enough to see him—Alexei. His tall frame fills the doorway, shoulders rounded with guilt, expression uncertain. His eyes flicker to me first, then to Konstantin, and finally to Dmitry.

He looks like he regrets being born.

“We came here to see family,” Dmitry says, eyes still on Konstantin but motioning slightly to Alexei. “Especially in times like this, when family should be everything.”

Konstantin’s voice cuts through the room, flat and toneless. “You have my condolences.”

That gives Dmitry the briefest pause.

“Ah, so you heard,” he murmurs, adjusting the cuff of his sleeve. “Tragic. Roman always was too impulsive.”