Page 29 of Forced Virgin Bride of the Bratva (Sharov Bratva #13)

The smell of gunpowder still lingers in the air by the time we breach the final door.

The walls of the safe house are thick, reinforced in places, old blood embedded in the tile grout like permanent ghosts.

My boots echo off the floor as I step inside, weapon drawn, chest tight with the promise of violence. I already know what I’m going to find.

Nothing. The silence confirms it.

Empty rooms. Abandoned gear. Half-packed bags. A glass of water still sweating on the windowsill like someone left it there only moments ago.

They’re gone.

I feel the tension in the men around me—the crackling disappointment, the wasted adrenaline.

Platon moves through the space with quick efficiency, barking orders, signaling our sweep teams to check every room, every exit, every footprint in the dirt.

We tear through it all, like wolves denied a kill.

She’s not here.

They knew we were coming, which means someone warned them.

I walk through what looks like the main living room, where blueprints are still taped to the wall, red string pulled taut between marked locations.

The names are familiar: mid-tier cartel families, Bratva defectors, logistical weak spots.

It’s all laid out like a spiderweb. They’re building something—or they were.

Now they’re gone, and all that’s left is the echo of what they almost did.

I run my hand down one of the strings and rip it from the tack, letting the red line fall limp between my fingers. I want to destroy the whole thing. Burn the fucking house to the ground.

I want her to know I saw it. I want her to know I came.

Platon finds me in the kitchen, eyes sharp beneath his shaved head. “They moved fast,” he says. “Left in a hurry, but clean. No bodies. No tech. No messages. They scrubbed it.”

I grunt in response, jaw tightening. “They had help.”

He nods, like that was already obvious. “What now?”

I step around him, heading toward the back patio, the sliding glass door left cracked open as if in invitation. The view outside is nothing but dark jungle, moonlight catching on leaves slick with humidity. Somewhere out there, she’s running.

I picture her: blood dried on her face, body bruised, heart racing with adrenaline and fury and fear. I want to see it. I want to see her eyes when she realizes I’m not a step behind her anymore.

I’m already ahead. “She won’t get far,” I say quietly. “None of them will.”

Platon doesn’t press. He never does when my voice gets like this—too calm, too certain. He’s seen what comes next.

Still, there’s a pause. Then: “You’re not thinking clearly, Maxim. You’ve been chasing her for weeks. This isn’t about strategy anymore. It’s personal.”

I look at him. He doesn’t flinch, but he doesn’t hold my gaze either.

“You’re right,” I tell him. “It’s personal, but don’t mistake that for weakness. I know what I’m doing.”

Platon nods, once. No questions. No arguments. That’s why he’s still alive.

I turn back to the jungle, to the vast black expanse that swallowed her. The breeze carries the scent of something faint—maybe perfume, maybe imagination. Either way, it coils around my throat.

Kiera.

She’s clever. Faster than I gave her credit for. She fights like someone who has nothing left to lose, and runs like someone who still has something she wants to protect.

That’s her mistake, because it means she’ll slow down. She’ll hesitate when the stakes climb high enough. When Tiago starts looking expendable. When the lines between survival and vengeance blur in her pretty little head.

I’ll be waiting.

“She was here,” I murmur, more to myself than to anyone else. “I can feel it.”

Platon steps back inside, leaving me alone with the night. I close my eyes for a beat and see her in that crimson dress again—spinning at the gala, mouth painted, eyes glittering as she looked at me like she owned the world. Back then, I thought I was the one seducing her.

The joke’s on me, but I’m not laughing.

“You don’t get to disappear,” I say aloud, voice low and steel-edged. “Not from me. Not after everything.”

She left my house, my bed, my hands. She tore herself out of my world like ripping a vein from flesh. I can still feel her pulsing in me, under my skin. Her name is a bruise on my mouth. Her betrayal, a blade still warm in my side.

There is no place she can run that I won’t find.

No country she can hide in that won’t open its doors for me. She started this, and I will end it but not with a bullet. Not yet.

She’ll come back to me, maybe in chains. Maybe on her knees, but she will come back.

Hate like this—it’s not a fire that dies. It’s a fucking star. And I’ve been burning since the day she smiled and said “I do.”

So I wait in that doorway a moment longer, watching the darkness. Listening. Breathing.

Then I turn back inside, already planning where we strike next.

It’s only the beginning.

The estate feels gutted when I return.

Not a single light left on, no murmurs from the staff, no scent of her drifting through the halls like it used to after a shower or sleep. The warmth has bled out of the walls. It’s still beautiful, still opulent, but it’s hollow now—expensive bones without flesh.

I shrug off my coat and hand it to the silent housekeeper by the door. She nods once, eyes dropping quickly like the atmosphere in the room tells her enough. I don’t speak to anyone else. There’s nothing I want to hear.

I walk the length of the main hall, past the paintings she used to glance at but never comment on.

Past the corner she once sat in reading, legs curled beneath her, mouth curved in concentration.

Past the stairs where she once paused before saying good night, her voice unsure, her eyes even more so.

She’s in everything. Her absence screams from every corner.

I pour a drink in the study, though I don’t want it. I sit in the chair she touched. I stare at the desk she once used to rest her elbows on while pretending to be bored. I grip the glass until my knuckles ache, but I don’t lift it to my lips.

Instead, I sit there, letting the silence mock me.

This isn’t about the betrayal. Not entirely.

I could deal with that. Hell, I expected it eventually.

Everyone I’ve ever trusted has tried to kill me or sell me out.

Loyalty isn’t real—it’s currency. Yet, with her, I thought…

I don’t even know what I thought. That she was too young to be that cruel?

That she wanted something more than power?

That she wanted me?

Still, none of that explains why it feels like something’s been ripped out of my chest and left to rot on the floor.

I sleep like a corpse. Dreamless. Cold.

The next morning, I wake to the faintest slant of sunlight creeping through the curtains. My room smells stale, untouched. The bed feels larger than it should. I dress in silence, buttoning my cuffs like I’ve done a thousand times, but slower now. Less certain.

Then I see it. A flicker of movement near the doorway—too light to be a shadow, too quick to be a servant.

I freeze. A woman’s silhouette, disappearing around the corner of the hall.

My breath stalls in my throat. It’s not possible.

I move fast, out of the bedroom and down the corridor. I round the corner—

Nothing, empty air. A trick of the light, maybe. Or the fucking guilt crawling inside my brain like rot.

I curse under my breath and turn back… and she’s there. Standing right behind me.

Kiera.

Hair tangled, face pale, mouth set in a line I’ve seen before—when she’s already decided what she’s going to do and nothing I say will matter.

For a second, I can’t speak. My eyes rake over her: low heels on her feet, no visible weapons, loose clothes wrinkled like she threw them on fast. She looks exhausted. She looks like hell.

She looks perfect.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask, low and sharp, but it’s not anger that chokes me. It’s disbelief.

She doesn’t answer immediately. She just meets my gaze, steady and unflinching.

No apology. No fear. Her shoulders square like she expects me to hit her or pull a gun or shout, but she’s daring me to do it. Daring me to react.

She came back. Back into the house she fled. Back to the man she betrayed, and she looks like she means every second of it.

“I thought I was hallucinating,” I mutter, almost to myself. “Thought maybe I’d finally lost it.”

“You might have,” she replies, her voice rough with exhaustion but still threaded with that same fire. “Or maybe you never had it to begin with.”

My eyes narrow. “This isn’t a game, Kiera.”

“No,” she says. “It never was.”

The air tightens between us. Her presence is a fuse, and I’m already burning. There’s blood between us now, betrayal thick in the air. She stabbed me, ran from me, plotted against me. Yet here she is, standing in slippers like she’s come home from the store.

“I should kill you,” I say. Not a threat. A fact. A reminder.

Her chin lifts. “Then do it.”

God help me, I don’t move.

This isn’t the girl who flinched at my threats in the beginning. This isn’t the woman who trembled under my hands in bed, whispering my name like a prayer.

This is someone else, and I don’t know what the fuck to do with her.

“Why?” I ask finally. “Why choose Tiago?”

She hesitates and for a moment, something flickers across her face—vulnerability, maybe, or the shadow of regret.

“There’s nowhere else left to go,” she says. “I’m leaving, Maxim, but I wanted to stay behind to see you one last time.”

That last part guts me. One last time.

Like she’s already written the end of the story.

I don’t realize I’ve closed the space between us until she’s close enough to touch. My hand lifts of its own accord, fingers brushing her jaw. She doesn’t pull away. Her breath hitches. Mine does too.

“You don’t get to decide when this ends,” I murmur.

“Neither do you,” she replies.

We stand there, suspended. Two wolves in the same cage, tired of the hunt but unable to stop baring teeth.

I don’t let go of her face.

Her skin is cold. Or maybe it’s mine that’s burning. Hard to tell anymore. Everything feels off-balance. Tilted. She’s standing here like she belongs, like this isn’t the same woman who drove a blade into my arm, locked me in my own study, and disappeared into the night with war in her wake.

I raise an eyebrow, and it’s the only thing I can do to keep from snapping. My voice would be too much right now—too raw, too loud. I don’t trust it.

“You can’t go with them. You think I’ll let you?” I ask, but it’s quieter than I mean. Like the words are slipping past my teeth before they’re fully formed.

Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Her eyes flicker, not with fear, but something worse. Resolve. Whatever she’s about to say, she means it. She’s thought this through.

“Either you let me go, or you kill me. Those are your options.”

I let her go. My hand drops, heavy and reluctant, and I take a step back. Not far. Just enough to breathe. My chest feels like it’s being crushed, ribs bending in on themselves, caught between fury and—God help me—relief.

“You tried to kill me.” The words are flat. A reminder. A tether to reality.

She nods. Doesn’t deny it. “You would’ve done the same.”

“Don’t you fucking dare compare us.”

Her eyes sharpen. “Aren’t we already on the same path? You, chasing revenge. Me, chasing justice. Isn’t that what all this is?”

“You think stabbing me and running into the arms of your brother is justice?”

“I think survival doesn’t come clean,” she says. “I think if I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t be standing here.”

I laugh. A dark, humorless thing. “You still think you’ll walk out of this safehouse alive?”

“I didn’t come to walk out.”

That stuns me. I stare at her, really stare. Her voice doesn’t waver. Her spine is straight, her chin lifted. She’s not bluffing.

My voice lowers, careful and cold. “So you came back to die.”

“No.” Her gaze doesn’t drop. “I came back to choose.”

That stops everything. The house could collapse around us and I wouldn’t notice. “Choose what?”

“You.” She swallows. “Or Tiago. What I want. What I can live with.”

“You think there’s a version of this where you can live?” I ask, stepping forward again, slow and deliberate. “After what you did? After what I know?”

Her lips press together. Her body doesn’t flinch. “Maybe not, but I need to try.”

I study her. The bruises are faint now, but still visible. There’s a cut near her collarbone, half healed. Her clothes are wrinkled, bags under the eyes. She’s been running. Bleeding. Fighting. Yet here she stands, proud as ever. Beautiful as ever.

God, I want to break something.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” I say, softer now. Almost impressed. “You caused this war.”

“I didn’t start it,” she says. “I just lit the fuse.”

“Now?”

Her voice trembles, but her eyes don’t. “I’m here to see if I can put it out.”

The silence hangs like smoke between us. It’s a lie, or it’s half a lie. But I don’t care. She’s here. That’s all that matters. The rage in my chest shifts, mutates into something messier.

I take another step forward. Her breath stutters.

“If this is a trap,” I say, “if there’s one fucking cartel member hiding in my walls—”

“There’s not.”

“If Tiago even looks in my direction—”

“He’s gone, waiting for me around the corner. I asked for some space.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m not lying.” Her voice is steady. “I’m not here for them. I’m here for you.”

I reach for her again, my hand finding the curve of her waist. She lets me. Doesn’t move, doesn’t shrink.

“Say that again,” I whisper.

She looks up at me, lashes heavy, mouth parted like a prayer. “I came back for you.”

I hate her. I want her. I want to destroy her for making me believe it. More than that—I want to believe it again.

“Then prove it,” I murmur. “Stay.”

Her fingers twitch against her side. “You’ll let me live?” she asks, voice low.

“No,” I say. “Maybe.”

“Not good enough.”

Then she grabs her bag, turns, and leaves. In the doorway, she says. “We’re leaving the country. Last chance to kill me, if that’s still in the cards.”

Kiera already knows I’m going to let her go.