Page 11 of Forced By the Obsessed Bratva (Yezhov Bratva #8)

The dining room was uncomfortably hot.

Not the comforting sort of warmth, but thick, and suffocating. Weighty with cigar smoke, cologne, and the collective bulk of men who believed the world belonged to them.

I sat stiffly next to Matvey, hands folded in my lap as I observed everyone at the dinner table.

The mahogany table stretched out in front of us, gleaming under silver knives and golden-rimmed glasses. Crystal decanters reflected the chandelier light, casting glints like warning beacons.

And the men around us—the seasoned Bratva members whose hands were dipped in blood and all sorts of evil—cracked jokes about their latest conquests as if taking a human life was the same as hunting a pig, and not even pigs deserved the brutal deaths they described in their sickening jokes.

I slowly spun my head around to glance at Matvey.

He hadn’t spoken a word all evening; he didn’t even smile or contribute to the murder and sex jokes passing round a table as if it were a plate of everyone’s favorite dish.

He just sat in his chair as if a crown had been carved into his very bones. One hand lay casually on the armrest, and the other wrapped itself around the stem of his wine glass. His dark eyes were void of any emotions, and his face remained the usual cold, blank mask.

I could feel him, even when he was not looking at me.

Especially then.

My designated seat was deliberate, tucked comfortably in his shadow. Not in front of him, but next to him.

Every time a seated man looked too long at my exposed shoulders, or kept a comment about the bride on his lips a beat too long, I could feel Matvey’s tense reserve growing tighter.

Not possessive in a loud way.

I fought to hide the rigidity that had taken its grip on me, longing painfully to disappear behind the refuge of my wine glass or imagine a hundred excuses to leave.

But I was not going to give them the pleasure.

I held my spine straight.

No one dared to say a word to me all evening, not with Matvey beside me. I could tell they all feared him, and for the first time, I found myself wondering how much more brutality he was capable of.

One of the men across the table leaned forward, a smile spreading across his lips, but never making it to his eyes.

I’d heard they called him Yakov. He was older—late sixties, maybe. Piercing white beard, rings on every finger, and a voice slick with vodka. He was Matvey’s distant uncle.

“Well, Matvey. Another weak Carter girl, eh? I thought you’d be smarter after the first one.”

My blood turned to ice, and a wicked shiver rolled down my spine.

The table chuckled, though not fully, as if they were unsure whether to take the joke or not until Yakov raised his glass and added, “Recycled brides must come cheap these days.”

Yulia.

She wasn’t….

My hands clenched under the table, rage surging through me like thunder. How dare he make a joke like that about my sister?

Before I could answer, before the flames could even reach my face, Yakov lifted his glass in a slow gesture and continued, his words slightly slurred. “Recycled brides do come at a discount, don’t they?”

The air snapped.

The laughter stopped.

My breath stuck in my throat as all heads turned slowly, not to Yakov. To Matvey.

He hadn’t moved a single muscle; he just lifted his icy gaze to Yakov. He didn’t raise his voice or change expression. Instead, he tightened his fingers slowly, silently around the wine glass until the crystal broke with a clink.

Glass shattered into fragments on the floor. Red collected along the creases of his palm, yet he didn’t even flinch.

I kept my eyes locked on his hand, watching his blood mix with wine, and my heart pounded in my ears.

Matvey remained calm—almost too calm. “You forget yourself, Uncle.”

Yakov’s face turned pale as the alcoholic flush vanished from his face in an instant.

Matvey inclined forward in his chair, blood dripping quietly onto the spotless white tablecloth.

“Mention my wife once more,” he warned. “And the next drink you have will be a glass of your own blood.”

The tension in the room grew sharp enough to cut bone.

Yakov stiffly nodded. “I was only joking.”

Matvey smiled, a vacant and slow smile. “So was the last man to try me.”

He used his uninjured hand to retrieve his napkin, cleaning the blood off his knuckles as if it was just a stain of ink, as if he hadn’t just shattered a glass between his palms.

Every man in that room now knew precisely where the line had been drawn, and what happened when it was crossed.

I didn’t know if I was meant to be safe. I didn’t feel safe, not when I was surrounded by blood-thirsty men, and even my husband was one of them.

I hardly ate anything all evening despite the mouth-watering banquet on the table—roasted deer, stuffed peppers, and homemade bread.

Despite how good every meal looked, every bite tasted like cardboard.

I just wanted to go home and bury myself under the duvet for a couple of hours or days. Maybe even weeks.

The tablecloth on the table was still damp with Matvey’s blood, yet the other men still managed to feast on the food like the blood on the table was merely a spill of wine to them.

I tried to ignore it too, but my nervous system was a mess. Anxiety burned in my throat. I was hyperaware of everything, especially him.

Matvey.

I managed to steal glances at him whenever I felt he wasn’t looking. At first, only to keep an eye on him. It was a survival instinct, not curiosity or interest.

But then…it became a habit throughout the night.

It surprised me how little he said yet how much command his voice carried. Men listened to him, perhaps not out of respect, but out of fear.

He wasn’t proud or arrogant, and he didn’t demand attention.

He simply was the center of it.

That frightened me more than I cared to admit. I’d thought I understood the man I’d been made to marry. I’d assumed he would be cold, arrogant, and ruthless, but this was something different.

Matvey was more like a mystery than an open book, and I needed to decode him little by little if I stood a chance of getting out of here alive.

The voice beside me brought me back to reality. I shifted in my seat as a man I had not noticed before took the empty seat beside me.

He was perhaps in his mid-thirties, dressed in a dark gray suit with a tie that was a fraction too narrow, and a charisma that fell just short of reaching the eyes.

“Don’t be afraid. Dinner nights are usually like this,” he said, a wry smile curling his lips. “In fact, I think this is one of the most peaceful dinners we’ve had in a while.”

I did not smile back. “Should I know you?”

He inclined his head. “Isaak Yezhov. Underboss of the Bratva. Logistics and international strategy, depending on which side of the table you’re asking from.”

His tone was casual, almost playful.

“Oh. Nice to meet you,” I replied.

It wasn’t nice to meet anyone on this table, but this one didn’t carry as much darkness with him as the others. He seemed a little more normal than the rest.

“The pleasure’s all mine.” He inclined his head in Matvey’s direction. “Hard to say no to him, eh?”

I stiffened. “Excuse me?

Isaak chuckled softly, swirling his drink. “Didn’t mean it like that. Just…people are naturally drawn to him; he’s quite a charmer. A cold one at least. Yezhovs always are. But Matvey? He bends people without even touching them.”

I turned back to Matvey. He was speaking quietly with one of the older Yezhovs. He’d wrapped a cloth around his bleeding hand.

A part of me wondered if he’d even noticed I was talking to some other guy next to him. If he hadn’t, I wondered how he’d react to it, if he would see a need to put up his possessive act.

“You seem like you know a lot about my husband,” I said, almost wincing at how easily the word husband rolled from my tongue.

“I’m a Yezhov myself. If anyone knows my family well enough, then it’s me. Matvey and I have been close since we were little,” Isaak explained, his tone dropping just a little. “But he’s loyal. Protective, even. He was the same with your sister, even though she was only his brother’s wife.”

The color drained from my cheeks. “You knew Yulia?”

Isaak’s eyes fluttered. He nodded. “She was…a sweet girl.” He smiled weakly. “Too sweet and soft for this world. I always thought she deserved better than what she got.”

Something in the way he expressed it sent a shiver up the back of my neck. I squinted a little, interested. “What do you mean?

His eyes held mine for a moment too long, then he looked away, as if deep in thought, and smiled at one of the guards who were beside the door.

“Never mind that I said that,” he finally said when he returned his attention to me, as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on me.

“I’m sorry,” I replied, ignoring his last sentence. “What did you actually mean by that?”

Isaak blinked. “Mean by what?

“That she deserved better than what she got.” I knew he wasn’t talking about Rurik cheating; to men in this world, that was normal. He had to be referring to something.

He cocked his head. “I’m saying her death could’ve been avoided if someone had not been careless with it.” He scoffed and lifted a glass of champagne from the table. “I’ve said too much.”

I stared at him intently, my heart racing. “Are you saying that her death wasn’t an accident?”

Isaak leaned back in his chair. “I didn’t say that.”

“But you implied it.”

He sipped his drink, taking his time. “I imply a lot of things, Mrs. Yezhov. That does not necessarily ensure that they are all true.”

Before I could go on, one of the older Bratva members called his name from across the room.

Isaak winked at me, rose to his feet, and walked away.

I sat there, frozen, my heart pounding and my mind wandering in all directions.

The room spun around me, laughter rising again as though nothing had happened.

But something had.

Something certainly had.