Page 33 of Forced By the Obsessed Bratva (Yezhov Bratva #8)

The call had dragged for nearly fifteen minutes, and every second of it grated on my nerves like glass against teeth.

I stood by the window of my study, swirling the last inch of whiskey in my glass as some idiot on the other end droned on about logistics, permits, and how “the girls haven’t shown up consistently for the past three weekends.”

Like I hadn’t noticed the dip in revenue myself.

“Yuri,” I snapped, “I don’t give a fuck about their sick grandmothers or whatever sad story they’re selling this week. I pay for presence. For smiles. For legs and heels and mood lighting. Not ghost shifts.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, Matvey,” Yuri replied with a sigh. “But you know, maybe nightclubs ain’t the thing right now. The market’s weird some nights. You know this. You ever thought about starting a farm? Chickens don’t call in sick.”

I stared out the window for a beat, waiting as the silence hung heavy.

Then I said, dry as ash, “And you ever thought about opening a graveyard, Yuri?”

He might have as well choked on his own saliva. “What?”

“Because if you don’t get me fucking green results by Friday, I’ll send you your first customer. Or who knows? You might do the groundbreaking honors by testing a casket first.”

There was a pregnant pause over the line before he nervously chuckled.

I drained the last of my drink and set the glass down.

My fingers drummed against the windowsill.

Down in the driveway, my wife’s car was just pulling in.

Even from here, I could tell she was irritated, with the way she shut her door, and with that perfect little slam that said she was fed up with the day.

“Look,” Yuri mumbled, “I’ll call Mikhail, see if we can get those girls back. And I’ll check on the liquor distributor issue.”

“You’ll do more than fucking check,” I said. “You’ll fix it. Or I swear to God, I’ll have your mother working the bar by Sunday night. She can pour vodka with one hand and slap sense into you with the other.”

Another heavy silence. Then, “Understood.”

I hung up before he could say anything else. Zoella was already walking up the steps. And I, apparently, was not in the mood to pick more fights tonight.

These past few weeks, since Mira’s birth, there had been a quiet kind of tension hanging over everyone’s head, like a tight rope waiting to snap.

It lived in the silence, in the soft sighs, in the way my hand would hover a second too long near hers when I passed her the bottle. I could feel it every time she walked into a room. Like gravity shifted. Like I couldn’t breathe until she was out again.

Zoella wore more frowns than smiles. Appointment after appointment, she looked wearier than the last.

She moved through the days like a ghost of herself, silent on most days, with her eyes always somewhere far away.

Her hair stayed in a tangled knot, and she’d discarded her dresses in the closets, choosing oversized shirts instead to hang off her frame.

What pissed me off more was how she barely looked at me or anything else that wasn’t Mira. She held our daughter even more fiercely than a mother hen protecting her chicks.

She fed her, rocked her, whispered to her when she thought I wasn’t listening. She didn’t sleep unless Mira did. Didn’t eat unless I placed the food in her hands.

And still….

The stubborn woman didn’t ask for help.

But I gave it anyway. I took the night shifts. I cleaned. I held Mira when she let me. I rubbed her back when she cried into the baby monitor static. I tried, more than I ever thought myself capable of.

Tonight was the worst.

I found her in the nursery, the lights off, sitting in the rocker with Mira pressed to her chest. She was crying silently, like when you’re trying not to wake anyone.

“Zoella,” I said softly, stepping inside, and she flinched like I’d slapped her.

“I’m fine,” she rasped, and that lie scraped against my skin like a fork dragged across steel.

“No, you’re not.” I crouched in front of her. “You haven’t been fine since she was—”

“Don’t.” Her voice broke. She looked at me then, with her eyes wild and swollen. “I’m trying, Matvey. I’m doing everything I can, and I still feel like I’m failing her.”

She clutched Mira tighter, and our baby stirred, fussing softly.

“You’re not failing,” I said, hands reaching to touch hers. “You’re doing the best you can. We both are, and that’s enough. You’re enough.”

Her lips trembled, but she didn’t look convinced.

“I don’t know how to be a mother,” she whispered. “I’m scared all the time.”

I took Mira gently from her arms, cradling our daughter against my chest. Zoella let me. Her hands dropped to her lap like she didn’t know what to do with them anymore.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” I told her. “You never did.”

Resigned, she leaned against me and was out like a light.

***

A few hours later, I was trying to cool the fire inside me with a glass of water, but it wasn’t working.

I stood in the kitchen, shirtless, with my legs crossed over the tiled floor. I tried thinking about work, and what to do about Yuri’s report.

But all plans flew out the window at the soft pad of her steps down the hallway.

I didn’t move when she entered the kitchen without a word. Her hair was tied up, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Mira was still asleep.

Zoella stopped the moment our eyes met for half a second, but it was enough to read the tension in her shoulders, and the flicker of hesitation in her eyes.

She looked like she had something to say, but then changed her mind and turned around at the last second.

She walked to the fridge like she’d come down for a drink, but I knew suspicious moves when I saw one.

“You couldn’t sleep till dawn.”

She didn’t answer at first. She opened the fridge door, letting the cold light pour over her bare legs, her oversized T-shirt— mine , again, I realized.

Seeing it on her did something dangerous to me.

“No,” she finally said. Her voice was clipped.

That thread between us, pulled taut for so long…it was fraying, and ready to break. Or bind, maybe.

“I’ve got to ask: Did I do something in particular? Are you mad at me?” I asked quietly.

Her back was to me. “I’m tired.”

“So, it’s Mira.”

“Don’t do that, Matvey. Just don’t.” She shut the door of the fridge and crossed the floor, eliminating the space between us.

“So, if it isn’t Mira, then it’s me. I’m the problem.”

“Yes, it is you. You’re the problem.”

Her sudden outburst barely shocked me, but it left her rattled, and she was spilling more and more from her heart before she could stop herself.

“I don’t…” she stuttered, and combed her fingers through her hair, frustrated. “I don’t know how to…put this out there, but I’ve been silently hoping that you—”

“That I would what?”

She paused. My voice seemed to reel her back to the fact that I stood right in front of her, and wasn’t just some figment of her imagination that she could freely yell at.

“Don’t you want this too?”

My fingers curled tighter around the glass in my hand, knuckles white against the crystal. The water inside trembled. I stared at her, at the curve of her mouth, the fire in her eyes masked beneath all that uncertainty.

Taking my time, I set the glass down, like I was disarming myself. Then I stepped close enough that her breath caught, and I could taste it in the air between us.

My hands slid around her waist, carefully testing if she’d let me. She didn’t stop me. My lips brushed her shoulder.

“You think I don’t see you?” I murmured. “You walk around like I don’t exist, baby. Like it doesn’t kill me. Yes, I want it. I’ve wanted it,” I said, my voice rougher than I meant it to be. Frustration simmered just beneath the surface, tied on every syllable. “But you’ve been busy…being a mother.”

The words came out sharper than I intended. It was barely a complaint, just brutal honesty expressing the ache I’d swallowed day after day, watching her drift farther away while pretending I didn’t notice.

Her chest rose and fell, lips parted slightly, eyes scanning my face like she didn’t know whether to hit me or kiss me.

And then—

She launched into me.

***

Her hands were in my hair, tugging hard enough to hurt, and her mouth crashed into mine with a desperation that snatched the breath from my lungs.

The kiss wasn’t gentle or careful. It was all the words we’d left unsaid, all the nights we’d turned away from each other instead of reaching across the silence.

I gripped her waist roughly, spun us so her back hit the wall with a soft thud, and kissed her like I’d been starved. Because I had.

“Baby,” I breathed against her lips, my voice cracking open after each letter. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

She gasped into my mouth, nails digging into my shoulders. “Somehow, I want to say I hate you,” she whispered against my mouth.

“I know,” I whispered back. “But you love me more.”

Instead of denying it, she just pulled me closer.

I lifted her onto the marble counter without breaking the kiss. Her gasp hitched against my mouth, and it lit a feral reaction in me. The cold stone met the back of her thighs, but she yanked me closer even more desperately.

Her fingers threaded into my hair, tugging, dragging me deeper into her heat.

I growled low, pressing between her legs, feeling her legs wrap around me like chains I didn’t want to break free from.

The kitchen was dimly lit, but she was all fire, with skin flushed, lips bruised, pupils blown wide with unadulterated lust.

“If you think I’m letting you get off easy, you’ve got another thing coming,” I breathed against her jaw.

Boldly, and almost out of breath, she smirked, dragging her nails down my bare chest. “Thought didn’t even cross my mind.”

I claimed her mouth again, deeper this time, and more possessively.

One hand fisted in her hair, the other sliding up her thigh beneath the cotton of her dress. Her breath hitched, hips arching into mine, silently begging.

God, I was ready to give her everything: to burn for her, kill for her.