Page 5 of Forced plus-size Bride of the Bratva

Logan.

What has he done?

A sharp, tight feeling grips my chest. I recognize it instantly. The quickening breath. The buzzing under my skin. The heaviness behind my eyes.

Anxiety.

Panic.

I press a hand to my sternum, trying to ground myself. I’ve studied this. I know what’s happening. That doesn’t make it any easier to stop.

All I can think about is Logan.

Where is he?

Is he already—

No. Don’t think it.

God.

Logan.

He’s all I have left.

The thought slips out of nowhere and wraps around my chest like barbed wire. I press my hand over my heart, but it doesn’t stop the ache. If they kill him—whenthey kill him—I’llhave no one. Not a single soul in the world connected to me by blood.

It used to be different.

My mom, Samantha, always said she made her first mistake at eighteen—falling in love with the wrong man. He was charming until he wasn’t. A gambler. A drinker. A walking disaster with a winning smile and a losing streak. She got pregnant and married him because she thought that was what a good girl did.

That man was Logan’s father.

He fought her for custody when she tried to leave. And won. God knows how. Money? Intimidation? She never talked about it much—only that she lost her son and it nearly broke her.

She met my dad—Jim—when she was twenty-three. He was calm where her first husband was chaos. Steady hands. Steady heart. The kind of man who brought peace with him like sunshine. They got married. They raised me. And for the most part, I had a happy, quiet childhood—except for the shadows Logan’s name always carried into the room.

He came back when he was seventeen. His father had died, and the courts sent him to live with us for a year.

I was twelve.

He was…difficult. Wounded. Angry in ways I didn’t understand then. Like he carried rot in his bones. Like the world owed him something, and he was just waiting to collect.

But I loved him. In the way little sisters do. Unconditionally, even when it hurt. Even when he was cruel or reckless or stone-cold silent. I kept trying to get close to him, to prove we were family—even if we didn’t come from the same man.

And for a moment—just a moment—I thought he wanted that too.

But Logan left at eighteen and never came back for long. He’d blow in like a storm, charm me with bad jokes and fast cars, then disappear again.

And then our parents died.

A car crash. Late night. Black ice. I was eighteen. Barely an adult. Everything I knew gone in a blink.

Logan didn’t come to the funeral.

He showed up a week later. Said he couldn’t handle it. Hugged me once. Put a stack of cash in my hand and told me to call if I ever needed him.

I didn’t. Because I knew there was no point.