Page 31 of Forced Virgin Bride of the Bratva (Sharov Bratva #13)

It’s strange, this stillness. Months have passed since the blood dried on the floorboards, since secrets split us open and nearly left us both in pieces.

I stand on the balcony, hands resting on the iron railing, watching her move through the garden below.

My estate—once built to hold men like me, hard and cold and fortified—is no longer a place I recognize.

It breathes now. There are flowers where concrete used to crack. Light where shadows used to live.

Because of her.

Kiera walks barefoot through the grass, her laugh rising toward me like music I don’t know the words to yet.

Her hair’s down, catching the breeze, sunlight painting her in gold.

Darya is with her, of all people. The same Darya who once looked at her like she was the poison in my veins.

Now they sit side by side on the old stone bench, eating pastries and bickering softly, like old friends.

Darya comes every week now. Brings sweets, gossips too loudly, pretends she isn’t watching us both with those sharp, knowing eyes. I haven’t asked what changed. I don’t think either of them would give me a real answer.

I suppose some wars end not with peace treaties, but with coffee and cake.

There’s still a gun tucked beneath my jacket. Some habits don’t break, but I haven’t needed it in a while. Not since Kiera came back to me, bruised and breathless, heart in her hands like an offering. She didn’t beg. She didn’t explain. She said she loved me, and for once, I believed someone.

It wasn’t easy after that. Love doesn’t erase betrayal.

It doesn’t stitch up bullet wounds or smooth over the kind of rage I used to live in, but she stayed.

That was the miracle. When I broke things—glasses, doors, myself—she stayed.

When I screamed, she didn’t flinch. When I went quiet, she climbed into my lap and held my face until I remembered how to breathe.

I didn’t know how to be soft. She never asked me to be. She just waited.

That first month, we barely spoke without fighting.

I didn’t trust her. She didn’t forgive me.

Not then. Not completely, but I caught her watching me in the mornings, eyes raw from sleep, and I started cooking breakfast for her, even though I can’t cook for shit.

She stopped flinching when I came too close.

I stopped expecting her to run. One night, when the nightmares clawed their way through her chest, she reached for me instead of locking the bathroom door.

That was the moment I knew we were going to survive.

Now, she gardens. Of all things. She curses at the weeds like they’ve personally offended her, dirt streaked across her cheeks, nails broken.

And I sit up here like a man who doesn’t quite know what to do with peace.

I still expect the phone to ring with bad news.

I still check the locks twice. But the world is quieter.

Not gentle—but steady. Like we’ve both learned how to breathe again, slower this time, without blood in our mouths.

There are days I still wake up ready to kill something. I think she knows. She never tries to fix it. She just pulls me back into bed and lays her head on my chest until the anger leaks out through the cracks.

She mourned her father quietly. Didn’t cry in front of me.

Didn’t demand I explain how I could still sleep at night after what I did.

She didn’t need to. Her silence said enough.

I don’t regret what I did, but I regret the pain it left in her.

Some nights she whispers his name in her sleep.

I never wake her. I let her dream of him in peace. That’s the best I can give her.

Me… I mourn the man I used to be. The one who didn’t feel anything. Who saw affection as a weapon and warmth as a weakness. He’s gone. Sometimes I miss him. Most days, I don’t.

She changed me. Not with pleading or threats. She simply refused to break under my worst. When I started to soften, she didn’t mock me for it. She kissed the broken pieces like they were sacred.

I look down again and catch her staring up at me. Her mouth curves, slow and knowing. That smile used to gut me. It still does. She waves Darya off and makes her way toward the house, slow steps through the grass, sun catching on her skin.

My chest tightens.

I meet her at the back door, hand already reaching before she’s even close. She fits against me too easily. My arms remember her before my mind does.

“I missed you,” she says, pressing her face to my collarbone.

“You saw me three hours ago.”

She shrugs. “Still true.”

I grip her tighter. I don’t say it back, but she knows. She always knows.

We head inside, the house silent around us. She pulls me toward the kitchen, toward the mess she’s already made of my life. Of me.

And I let her, because somewhere between the gunshots and the gardens, the betrayals and the breakfasts, I realized something I never thought I’d understand.

I don’t want to be the man I was before her.

***

It’s late afternoon when I find her in the solarium, curled in one of the oversized chairs she dragged in months ago. Her legs are tucked beneath her, hair spilling over her shoulder in a loose braid, fingers moving as she scribbles in one of those notebooks she guards like it’s a vault.

I step into the light, and she looks up immediately. “You’re back early,” she says, not surprised—just observant, as always.

“Platon’s handling the rest,” I answer. “Didn’t feel like sitting through another hour of Vasily’s complaints about grain tariffs.”

She smirks. “He still thinks he’s an economic genius because he once bought vodka in bulk.”

“Exactly.”

I move closer and brush a kiss to her temple, breathing her in. She smells like citrus and sun, and it makes something settle in my chest that has no business feeling this calm. For a moment, we sit in the quiet, the only sound her pen scratching against the page.

“They still don’t like me,” she says suddenly. Not bitter. Not insecure. Just stating a fact.

I lean back against the frame of the chair, watching her. “They don’t have to.”

She glances at me, eyebrow lifted. “You saying that as my overprotective husband or as the man who commands their loyalty?”

“Both.”

She snorts, setting the notebook aside. “Come on, Maxim. You heard what that old prick said at the dinner last week.”

“Yakov’s a relic. If I wanted his opinion, I’d dig up a corpse and ask it.”

Kiera laughs, but her expression sobers quickly. “It’s not about one man. It’s all of them. The way they look at me like I don’t belong. Like I wormed my way into this seat beside you.”

I reach for her hand, threading our fingers together. “You didn’t worm your way into anything. You survived it. Fought for it.”

“That’s not how they see it.”

I tilt my head. “Yet, none of them could negotiate that Milan shipment half as cleanly as you did.”

She gives me a pointed look. “Are you trying to compliment me or remind me of how close that deal was to turning into a bloodbath?”

“Both,” I say again, and this time, she smiles for real.

She goes quiet then, eyes drifting to the garden outside.

The tulips are coming in crooked—Darya’s influence, no doubt.

That woman visits like she owns the place, always bringing pastries Kiera claims to hate but always eats three of.

I’m not sure when they made peace, but I stopped questioning it after the third week of Darya calling her moya devushka and offering unsolicited advice about herbal teas.

“She’s mellowed,” I mutter, nodding toward the window.

Kiera follows my gaze. “She likes the garden.”

“She lied.”

“Obviously.”

A beat of silence passes, comfortable now. Kiera shifts closer. Her voice softens. “Tiago sent another message last night.”

I nod. “I read it. Short. Rude. On brand.”

“He said you’re still a bastard, but at least you’re consistent.”

“I’ll take it.”

She hesitates, then says, “He meant it, though. About staying in S?o Paulo. He’s not coming back.”

“That was always the deal.”

“You think he really made peace with this?”

I study her. “With us, you mean.”

She nods.

I shrug. “Peace isn’t the same as forgiveness. He doesn’t have to forgive me. I killed his father. That doesn’t go away.”

“He was my father too.”

I look at her sharply, but her voice holds no accusation. Only truth. “And yet you’re here,” I say quietly.

Her hand finds mine again, tighter this time. “You’re not the man who pulled the trigger anymore.”

“I could be. Under different circumstances.”

“But you’re not,” she says, eyes unwavering. “Not with me.”

It takes everything not to reach for her right then, but the moment is too fragile, too real, and if I touch her now, I might not say what needs to be said.

“They still talk, you know,” she murmurs. “The old guard. The new ones. Everyone in between.”

“Let them.”

“They think you’re soft.”

“Then they’ve never seen me when I think someone’s trying to take you from me.”

Her lips twitch. “They think I made you weak.”

I shake my head. “You made me smarter. And stronger. Love doesn’t weaken a man. It sharpens him. Gives him something to bleed for.”

“Bleed,” she echoes, like she’s tasting the word. “Not die?”

“No, because if I die, you’re alone again. I’m not cruel enough to leave you with that.”

She leans into me then, pressing her forehead to mine. “I used to think strength was silence. That surviving meant never letting anyone in.”

“And now?”

“Now I know better. Now I know it’s letting someone hold your bruises without asking you to explain them.”

I close my eyes. Her breath is warm against my mouth. “You’re more than they deserve, Kiera.”

“I’m yours,” she replies, and it’s not a vow—it’s a declaration.

I pull her into my lap, hands curling around her waist, her notebook forgotten on the floor. “Then let them keep whispering,” I murmur. “They’ll stop when they realize what we’ve built isn’t breakable.”

“Or,” she says, grin crooked, “they’ll stop when I start shooting back.”

I laugh, the sound rare and real, and bury my face in her shoulder.

“I have something to tell you,” she says then, quiet but firm.

I still, instinct flaring before I force it down. This isn’t that kind of silence. She reaches for my hand, lifts it with care, and places it over her stomach. Warm. Steady. Her fingers hold mine in place.

My heart stutters.

“You’re going to be a father.”

The words land heavy in my chest—not like a weight, but like something settling into place. I blink once, twice, and still, it doesn’t quite register. I know those words. I’ve heard them before, said by other men, but never for me.

She nods, confirming it without needing to speak again.

I don’t say anything. Can’t. I just pull her into me, bury my face in the curve of her neck, and hold her like the world might fall away if I let go.

She smells like sunlight and jasmine and something I don’t deserve.

I never thought this life could offer me anything like this. Not after everything I’ve done. Not after everything I’ve lost, but here she is. Here we are. Somehow, in spite of all the blood we’ve spilled, she’s carrying something new. Something alive. Something ours.

My lips find her collarbone first, then her mouth—soft, reverent. “You’ve given me everything,” I whisper against her, voice raw.

She smiles through her tears and brushes my hair back from my forehead with fingers that no longer tremble in my presence. “You gave it to me first.”

It’s true. We gave it to each other. Piece by broken piece.

I kiss her again, slower this time, and rest my forehead against hers.

I think of the man I used to be. The one with blood on his hands and nothing behind his eyes but hunger for revenge. And then I think of this moment—her breath against my cheek, her body warm beneath my hand, the tiny flicker of a heartbeat between us that hasn’t even begun yet.

I don’t know what I’ve done to earn this. Maybe nothing, but I’m not letting it go.

Not ever.

*****

THE END