Page 13 of Forced By the Obsessed Bratva

She fought like a wild animal contained in a glass cage.

I saw it occur day by day—her rage spreading like a storm just below the surface.

She barely spoke with her parents. And when she did, her voice was cutting enough to slice blood. The way she glided from room to room, stiff, guarded, shoulders drawn up tight as if ready to strike, spoke the volumes I needed to hear.

She hated me.

Good.

Hate was fine. It was a foundation. A fire that could be stoked. Hate was passion with an uglier face.

Love could be performed. But hate? Hate was real.

Every time I was mentioned, she winced, changed the subject, and left the room, according to what my men reported back.

Even when she had no idea no one was watching and she was sitting alone on the balcony outside her room with her hair unwashed and her eyes puffy from crying, she still looked as if she’d sooner burn herself alive than wear my ring.

I liked that. I respected it, even. But it did not change the fact that she would belong to me soon enough. And every ounce of that flame? I’d own it.

Tame it and mold it into something else.

***

It had been a week since the engagement was announced when a text came in from one of my men.

Dimitri: She yelled at her dad again. Wants to break out. Do we ramp up surveillance?

I pressed the reply button with a single word.No.

Let her have freedom a bit longer. I wanted her to believe she had games to play.

The more she resisted, the sweeter it would be the moment when she realized that defiance brought her nearer to me.

I sat in my office in Yezhov’s estate, the steam from the hot cup of coffee on my desk burning softly beside me as I went through the messages on my phone.

Zoella’s face flashed on the screen before me. It was a security video, dated twenty minutes earlier.

She was pacing back and forth, alone in the drawing room with her hair packed in a neat bun and her arms folded.

I could make out her clenched jaw. She was something, this one. Defiance in each line of her body. A piece of me—the cold, buried part that had kept me alive this long—wanted to break it. Shatter the pride out of her and crush that fire until she bent to my will.

But the part of me that burned hotter wanted something else, and it wasn’t her obedience or her silence or even her submission. I wanted something more than that. Something more intense than control over her, and I was going to get it. It was only a matter of when.

Blake requested that we give her time to come to her senses, but that was the problem; I didn’t have time to waste.

To hasten things up, I played a little game behind the scenes.

Deals he thought were ironclad began to slip through his fingers.

One of his suppliers dropped out without warning. No explanation, only nothing. A bank he had dealt with for yearssuddenly froze his accounts. City permits vanished from the system.

I didn’t have to intimidate him. I only had to remove a few screws, whisper in some ears, and let the system rot from the inside out.

Blake Carter was a proud man, but even pride would shatter when the walls began to crack.

He left a message two nights ago. Short as it was, it carried enough desperation for me to know he wasn’t going to back out regardless of what Zoella wanted.

Blake Carter: Please don’t damage the business. We’re cooperating.