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

It was the day I stopped being Zoella Carter. The day I died, along with my name and identity.

Not with bullets and blood, not in a tragic explosion like the ones many people in the Bratva had died in.

No.

I was being laid to rest in white silk and champagne pearls. Dressed for slaughter in a room full of roses and fear.

I sat facing the mirror, stiff, as I gazed at the face looking back that didn’t look anything like mine.

The dress was too weighty. The veil choking. The imported lace bodice wrapped around my ribs like a vise, holding me rigid. They’d cinched the necklace—a heavy choker of diamonds and gold—so tight I could hardly breathe.

And perhaps that was the idea.

Zoella Carter had been stubborn. Defiant. Untrainable. She was free to live life as she wanted and explore the world at her own will.

But Zoella Yezhov?

She would be compliant. Quiet. Molded into whatever Matvey and the entire Yezhov family needed or wanted her to be.

The door creaked open behind me and then shut as quickly.

I didn’t turn. I didn’t have to. I could tell who it was from the scent of her perfume and the soft, measured footsteps that betrayed her. Lillian.

She glided slowly through the bridal suite, the pale satin of her dress flowing gently with each movement. I caught a glimpse of her in the mirror—not the typical stepmother who was happy for her stepdaughter’s wedding. She looked almost sad.

She came behind me like a shadow, smoothing the edge of my veil between her fingers.

“You are beautiful,” she whispered. Her voice was gentle, the same way it sounded the day Yulia married Rurik.

I did not respond.

Not at first.

Because there was nothing to say to someone who helped me get to the edge of a cliff and pushed me off with a smile on her face.

Her gaze met mine in the mirror. She hesitated. Then, quietly, she spoke the words I’d been dreading since the engagement was announced.

“Yulia went into that household,” she said, her fingers tightening slightly on my veil, “and only came back in a coffin.”

My breath left my lungs, and my nails dug into the armrests of the chair.

Lillian’s voice shook, but she didn’t stop. “There is no divorce, Zoella. No exit. Not from them.” She paused. “You must survive.”

I turned my head slowly, finally meeting her gaze. “They will kill me,” I said in a whisper. “The same way they killed Yulia.”

Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “Only if you let them.”

I stood up, the hem of my gown drifting behind me like smoke.

“You knew what they did to her. You saw her become a shadow of who she used to be and the way she disappeared behind her smile.” My voice trembled.

“And you let it happen anyway. You knew he was never going to treat her with any respect; he was cheating on her.”

“I tried—”

“You chose silence,” I cut in. “You chose safety. Your sons. The empire. Anything but her. You could have convinced Dad not to let her marry him, but you didn’t.”

Tears streamed down her face, blurring the edge of her mascara.

“I’m choosing survival,” she said. “For you. For all of us.”

I stared at her for seconds and scoffed. “For me? For all of us?”

We both knew she was doing all of this for herself and her sons. Those were the only things that mattered to her.

“Forget it,” I said, my voice almost inaudible. Then I returned to facing the mirror.

The girl in the glass was a stranger.

Perfect. Porcelain. Powerless. Just like Matvey wanted me to be. His pretty little bride, who would use her womb more than she used her voice. That was all I would be to him.

“You don’t understand everything, Zoella. You shouldn’t judge me when you don’t understand me.”

Liliana walked away and slammed the door behind her on her way out. Her words haunted the room long after she’d left. They clung to the walls, the ceiling, my skin.

“There’s no divorce. No exit. You must survive.”

I stood there for an eternity after the door slammed shut behind her, staring at my own face. My hands trembled at my sides. My heart was no longer a slow rhythm. It was chaos in my ears, and the sound of it was choking.

Was this all I was to them? A pawn to move on a board already soaked in my sister’s blood?

First Yulia.

Then me.

Two daughters.

Two sacrifices.

Two stories that would end in silence.

I tried to breathe, but my lungs were too constricted, too small. The white dress clung to me like a second skin, as if it had already been my own.

A sob fought its way up into my throat, but I forced it back down.

Don’t cry.

The makeup. The hair. The picture. I needed to look perfect today; that was all I was good for now anyway, at least until Matvey started to demand I push out his babies.

I rubbed my face against the back of my hand. There were no streaks, no tears, only anger suppressed behind eyeliner and powdered cheekbones.

The vanity chair groaned softly as I dropped into it, grasping the lip of the glass table as if it were the only thing keeping me upright.

I could still smell Lillian’s perfume. Lavender. Calm.

It made me sick.

I pressed my nails into the edge of the table. The agony worked. Enough to keep the tears back.

Outside the windows, the sun was setting, painting the estate in liquid gold, as if the world believed this day was lovely.

It wasn’t.

It was a funeral in disguise.

The distant hum of music drifted in from somewhere deeper in the house—the muffled thrum of violins, the far-off scuffle of feet, the buzz of hushed words.

The ceremony was beginning.

They were placing people. Pouring drinks. Pronouncing my name with smiles on their faces as if it were not being ripped away from me.

Zoella Yezhov. That would be my name from today forward.

I wanted to scream.

Instead, I stood frozen in my cage of white, wrapped in silk and diamonds, telling myself that cages don’t always have to be made of iron.

They were sometimes hand-stitched and zipped up.

***

The doors groaned open with a deep, sonorous boom.

The music swelled, violins intertwining with cello, slow and dirgelike. Too slow. As if each note was another step along the path to the graveyard.

I stood at the door, surrounded by gold and white flowers, but I was standing at the edge of a cliff.

I was gasping for air.

I stood paralyzed for one heartbeat before someone nudged me gently from behind, the signal to begin.

So I began, one step at a time, and another.

The aisle stretched out like an eternity. The space between me and the man waiting at the altar was gauged in fear.

Guests turned to look as I passed by. I didn’t catch their faces, only the sheen of black jackets and expensive dresses, their civil complicit muteness filling the room.

I didn’t look left.

I didn’t look right.

I looked only at him.

Matvey Yezhov stood under the great arch of lilies and gold, his hands folded in front of him, wearing black-on-black with a silver pin at his collar. Still. Unyielding. An ice-and-iron sculpture.

We locked eyes for a moment, and I almost shivered from the iciness in his gaze. There was no warmth to them, no softness. Nothing to say he was human.

But then, my eyes darted to his mouth, and my heart skipped a beat.

That mouth had kissed me so possessively weeks ago. He’d claimed and marked me with that one kiss.

That mouth had said things still echoing in the darkest corner of me, and I hated that my body remembered. I hated that a single look could have warmth seeping under my skin.

I looked away quickly, unable to bear the heat from his gaze and the butterflies in my stomach.

He held out a hand to me when I reached him, and I reluctantly took it, standing beside him, my hands trembling against the bouquet of roses I was holding.

He said nothing. Didn’t blink. Just gazed straight ahead as if already giving the eulogy for the girl I used to be.

The priest began to speak. His voice was distant, as if he were speaking from far away, and my head was submerged under water.

My replies were mechanical when it was time to say our vows. I couldn’t make sense of most of the things I said, except the words that I didn’t even mean.

“Yes.”

“I do.”

I felt none of them.

They did not belong to me.

They were Zoella Yezhov’s—the girl who would take my place now—and then the priest uttered the words that pulled me back into my body:

“Under the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

The room stopped moving.

I stopped breathing.

Matvey turned toward me, and the world narrowed to inches between us as he leaned closer.

My stomach churned in anticipation, my breath hitched, and my heartbeat raced as I waited for the inevitable.

The kiss.

My heart was a wild drumbeat in my chest, but my face was still. I’d learned to wear a mask, and I wore it now: porcelain bride, flawless and impassive.

Matvey’s gaze met mine. For a moment, I saw something behind them, something almost soft.

But no—it was icier than that.

It was intentional.

He leaned in on purpose, and I prepared myself.

Not for tenderness.

For ownership. For possession. For the cold feel of power masquerading as love. But when his lips landed on my skin, they did not meet my mouth.

He kissed my forehead softly.

My entire body tensed.

That wasn’t what I expected. I expected him to curl his arms around my waist and kiss me as if to prove a point, the same way he did in that club. This show of affection didn’t fit him. I needed him to act as possessively as he had that night.

The room applauded, but I barely heard them through the sound of my heart pounding in my chest.

I angled just close enough for my lips to move, my voice so low that he could hear but no one else.

“I didn’t know you had that in you to be this gentle,” I whispered, a wisp of sarcasm curling around the tip of my tongue.

His lips didn’t curve into a smile, and his eyes didn’t flicker, not with rage or anything else.

He leaned in again, and this time his mouth brushed against the shell of my ear. “You think I’m being gentle?”

Goosebumps rose on my skin as his breath caressed my ear and neck. “Aren’t you?”

I expected a smirk or something, but he barely blinked. “Be ready for the night, little bride.”

I gasped, a shiver slicing down my spine.

He leaned back, taking my hand and placing it in the crook of his elbow as he turned us to face the crowd.

I willed my back to stay straight, my feet to walk, and my face to remain stoic as we walked down the aisle ceremonially together as husband and wife—Mr. and Mrs. Yezhov.

But all along, I kept reminding myself not to react to his words or let them affect me. That was his goal, and I wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction.

Don’t fall. Don’t break. Don’t feel.

Because the moment I would let myself feel…I would not survive him.

We turned.

The priest’s voice rang out, “Husband and wife.”

The guests started cheering and clapping.

The weight of Matvey’s arm still hung slumped across mine, his fingers lightly resting on the silk of my cuff. Distantly, it would have been intimate, but within my skin, from the inside out, it was like chains of ice.

I smiled.

Or at least, I tried to fake it.

My lips were curled the way I’d learned to curl them, but it wasn’t because I was happy or sad.

It was armor.

The masses didn’t see the way my jaw clamped down, or the way my throat seared, or the way my body protested against the diamonds and silk.

All they saw was a Carter daughter married into Bratva royalty.

A fusion of power and blood.

A victory for both families.

But they didn’t see me.

Not the part of me that was shattering, little by little, with every second I stood beside him.

And yet beneath all the rage, all the fear, there was something else. Something worse.

It was an unwelcome heat that blistered where his hand lay against mine, where his words still echoed in my mind. Where his lips had rested, lightly, deliberately, against my forehead like a brand.

It shook me because that flame hadn’t been anger; it had been something darker.

Something fascinating.

I shoved it down so hard I could feel the pain in my chest because I knew he didn’t deserve this part of me.

He’d taken everything else.

But not this.

Not desire.

Not control.

Not me.

And yet, as we walked down from the altar to greet our guests and so he could introduce me to whoever he cared to introduce the latest Mrs. Yezhov to, all I could think was about our wedding night and what he planned to do with me.