Page 7 of Forced Virgin Bride of the Bratva (Sharov Bratva #13)

The club is loud. Bass pulses through the floor before the door even shuts behind me. Low lighting casts long shadows over mirrored walls and velvet booths. I walk in expecting a quiet drink—something slow, forgettable—but the setup slaps me across the face before I’ve taken three steps.

Two waitresses are already clearing the VIP section. One glances up, registers me, then vanishes like she knew I was coming all along.

This wasn’t spontaneous.

Platon leans against the far wall, arms folded. He lifts his glass in a lazy salute, the corner of his mouth twitching with a smirk he doesn’t bother hiding.

He’s in on it.

I don’t need confirmation. The layout, the timing, the sudden shift in tone from private to performance—it’s all obvious.

Somewhere deeper inside the room, laughter erupts.

“To the groom!”

Another voice echoes it, louder, drunker. Applause follows, and I catch the flash of gold teeth and expensive suits in the low light. Familiar faces. Old Bratva friends. Men I haven’t seen in months. Men who’ve killed beside me, bled beside me, toasted death like it was a lover.

Now they’re here, raising glasses like this is something to celebrate.

Kion, of course, is at the center of it all.

He’s stretched out along the booth like it belongs to him, shirt half unbuttoned, drink in one hand. He summons a waitress with two fingers, then grins when he sees me.

“Sharov!” he calls. “Late to your own party!”

He laughs before I can respond, gesturing wide, like this is some grand surprise and not something he’s been planning all week.

Bottles arrive—vodka, champagne—labels older than most of the girls pouring them. Then the women appear. Sleek, poised, all legs and curves and trained smiles. Dresses so short they may as well be decorative. Every one of them knows exactly what kind of party this is supposed to be.

I don’t fight it.

I sit. The leather groans beneath me, cold at my back. I light a cigarette without asking if it’s allowed. No one here will stop me.

Around me, laughter swells. Ice clinks in glasses. One of the girls perches beside me, leans in with a rehearsed pout, but I don’t look at her. I watch the room instead.

Kion’s pouring shots for men already drunk. Platon raises his glass across the table, unreadable. The others toast, shout, pull at their ties.

This isn’t about marriage. This is theatre. A party for the sake of it, because Bratva need no excuse to drink.

I exhale smoke through my nose and let it hang in the air between us.

The women begin their routine with glossy precision.

Every movement is practiced, each gesture refined—arms lifting in perfect symmetry, hips swaying in rhythm with the bass that thuds through the floor.

Their hands trail across shoulders, skim thighs, lean into laps with mechanical ease.

Applause swells. Glasses clink. The air thickens with forced enthusiasm and expensive perfume.

I sit in the curve of the booth, elbow resting along the backrest, glass loose between my fingers. My face doesn’t move.

Another girl approaches, lowering herself at my side. She angles her body, close enough to graze mine, her perfume sharp—sweet at first, but underneath it, something synthetic. Her smile is fixed, practiced, made for rooms like this.

I give her nothing.

My eyes track the room. Champagne spills into flutes, ice melts in untouched glasses, laughter spikes from the far end of the booth where two girls share a man’s lap. He pours vodka straight from the bottle into their open mouths. No one watches anyone else. They only perform.

The girl beside me reaches for my wrist. Her nails are perfect, her touch meant to tempt. I shift away before she connects, posture changing by degrees. My drink stays full.

They’re beautiful, in the way a showroom car is beautiful. Designed to be admired, not driven. Every curve is calculated. Every smile aimed to disarm, but there’s nothing behind their eyes. No hunger. No resistance. Nothing real.

I think of Kiera.

I picture her sitting across from me, back straight, hands folded in her lap. Her voice low, her expression unreadable. There was no defiance in her silence, but no submission either. She watched me the way a woman watches the edge of a blade.

I remember the line of her mouth when she said it: “I don’t like you.”

She meant it. It wasn’t bait, wasn’t defensive. It was honest.

My jaw tightens.

She hadn’t been performing. Her body didn’t ask to be seen. It simply existed. Full, curved, soft—but not fragile. She carried herself with restraint, not fear. Her strength was in what she withheld, not what she offered.

I taste something bitter at the back of my throat.

I set the glass down. The girl next to me still hasn’t moved. She glances up, confused by the shift in energy, but she doesn’t speak.

I rise. The sound of the chair sliding back draws a few eyes, though most of the room is still too drunk to notice. Someone near the bar calls out to me—probably Kion. The tone is teasing, good-natured, meant to keep the mood alive.

Platon watches from across the table. He says nothing, but I catch the subtle tilt of his head, the small flicker of understanding that passes between us.

I step through the crowd, past the noise, the heat, the rehearsed pleasure. There’s nothing here I want.

The night air bites at my skin the second I step outside. The noise behind me dulls, swallowed by the heavy door swinging shut. The chill is sharp, honest. A cleaner kind of discomfort than the heat inside, thick with cologne and lies.

I reach for a cigarette, light it with the match I strike against the base of my boot. The flare cuts the dark for a second, then fades, leaving only the ember and the steady pull of smoke through my lungs. I inhale deep, let the bitterness settle in my chest before exhaling slow.

This isn’t who I am.

The party, the spectacle, the women performing what they think men like me want—it’s all for show. A costume we all wear when we’re trying to forget we’re wolves.

I’ve never needed noise to distract me. I’ve never wanted softness built for someone else’s gaze. Control has always been the point. Control over the room. Over the moment. Over the outcome.

I lean against the side of the car, one foot braced against the tire. Smoke curls around my face. The silence out here is different. Less demanding.

Kiera’s voice cuts through it. “Maybe my brother doesn’t like me very much.”

She’d said it with that calm, flat honesty that always lands harder than anything shouted. She hadn’t asked for sympathy. She hadn’t asked for anything at all. She had said it like someone naming the weather: unchangeable, inevitable.

That line won’t leave me.

It creeps back in quiet moments, when the world is still and my guard is down. The way she looked when she said it—her mouth set, eyes steady, like she’d stopped expecting anyone to argue.

She hadn’t meant to provoke me. That’s what makes it worse.

I drag another breath from the cigarette and let it go. The smoke rises into the night, thin ribbons twisting above me, vanishing before they can settle.

I don’t know why I’m still thinking about her.

There’s no shortage of women who know how to play their part. No lack of offers, of names dropped at meetings, of daughters and nieces and cousins draped in silks and sent to dinners with carefully worded proposals.

She didn’t play my game. She sat across from me and refused to.

Something in that sits wrong under my skin. Not because it showed weakness—but because it didn’t.

I take another drag, flick the ash off the tip. The breeze catches it, carrying the embers out into the dark.

Kiera Vargas isn’t built for war. That much is obvious, but war is built around people like her. People thrown into things they never asked for and forced to survive.

I exhale again, watching the smoke drift.

There’s no peace waiting on the other side of this.

Movement catches my eye—quick, fluid, out of place against the steady rhythm of the street. A flicker of laughter, followed by a sweep of dark fabric caught in the breeze.

Then I see her.

Kiera steps from one of my sleek black cars across the road, her friend already at her side.

The hem of her dress catches on the curb before she rights it, one hand brushing her thigh.

Her hair is pinned loosely at the nape, strands slipping free in soft waves that graze her neck.

The dress fits too well to be accidental—black, close-cut, draped low across her back and hugging the curve of her waist like it was sewn in secret.

The light above the club door casts a warm gold over her skin. It glows. Soft. Undisturbed.

She’s laughing—head tilted slightly, mouth open, one hand lifted as if to bat away whatever her friend just said. I don’t hear the words, but I don’t need to. That laugh sinks into my chest like a punch, and I know by her face that this whole thing is an act.

She doesn’t see me, but she knows that I’ve allowed this last night of freedom. That she’s only here, because I said so.

Kiera’s too busy walking into the opposite club with her chin up and shoulders bare. The other woman reaches for her arm, guiding her through the line with ease. Kiera doesn’t glance behind. She doesn’t hesitate.

I don’t move, not at first. My lungs catch against the weight in them. I’ve never seen her laugh like that. I didn’t think she could.

Then something shifts. Not jealousy. That’s too small. Too soft.

Possession. It burns hotter.

She’s mine. Or she will be. That was the deal. The ring said everything that needed saying. I gave her time to adjust, time to process. I didn’t expect gratitude. I didn’t even expect obedience, but I expected caution. Quiet. Respect for the position she’s been handed.

Not this.

Not dresses that show skin I haven’t touched. Not laughter shared with people who don’t know what her silence means. Not being on display where anyone could watch her—anyone could take her in and imagine something that isn’t theirs to want.

My fingers tighten around the cigarette until it snaps between them. Ash spills onto my coat.

She has no idea I’m watching. No idea what she’s walking into. She’s radiant under the lights and unaware of the way it stirs every dark instinct in me.

She doesn’t belong here, not unless she walks in on my arm.

I flick the broken cigarette to the curb and step away from the car. I don’t call out. Don’t cross the street. Don’t send a message to the guards still on payroll, waiting nearby.

Instead, I stand where I am, watching the door she vanished through like it might open again. It doesn’t. She’s gone, swallowed into that club’s warmth, its noise and bodies and hands too loose with attention.

My eyes locked on that entrance, I imagine what’s inside. The music. The bodies moving too close. Men with their collars undone and their hands wandering. Her in the middle of it, laughing again, soft and unguarded. A drink in her hand. A stranger leaning in, close enough to smell her perfume.

My jaw locks. The muscles tense until they ache.

She’s mine.

Not in some poetic, abstract way. Not in the language of longing or romance. In fact. In deed. She was given. Offered like tribute from a crumbling house, her name placed on the table between powerful men who understood exactly what it meant. Her brother handed her over, and I accepted.

Which means she doesn’t get to vanish into clubs without my permission.

She doesn’t get to wear that dress, to toss her hair, to smile at the world like nothing is wrong. She doesn’t get to offer what was promised to me to a crowd of strangers who don’t know her name, who wouldn’t care if she disappeared by morning.

I thought that I was gracious, allowing her one last evening of enjoyment. Now I see that I never should have allowed it. A girl with this much freedom is dangerous.

She was given to me, and now she’s out, unsupervised, with her skin bare and her mouth open in laughter that wasn’t meant for anyone else.

Kiera doesn’t know what she’s doing, she doesn’t understand what she provokes.

This isn’t a game to me. This isn’t a childhood rebellion she’ll walk away from unscathed. She was delivered into my hands with full knowledge of what I am.

She’s mine, and this is not acceptable.

I turn back toward the car. The driver straightens when he sees me approach, but I don’t open the door.

“Wait,” I say.

He nods once and steps back, the engine still humming. He doesn’t ask questions. He knows better. Most men who work for me learn quickly when to keep their mouths shut.

I stay on the sidewalk, facing the club she disappeared into.

The music spills faintly into the street every time the door swings open, flashes of colored light slipping through the crack before the bouncer pulls it shut again.

Somewhere behind that wall of noise and sweat, she’s moving through a crowd of strangers, smiling, laughing, playing at freedom she doesn’t own.

There’s no need to follow her. I already know exactly where she is, who she’s with, and how long she’ll be inside. I know the name of her friend, the driver of the car that brought her, the bouncer who let her pass without hesitation. Every variable is accounted for.

That should be enough, but it isn’t.

She thinks she’s free. Thinks walking into that club without my approval makes a point. Thinks laughter is protection. It’s not. It never has been.

Next time, she won’t walk into a room without someone knowing her exact steps. Not unless I say she can. Not unless I decide it benefits me.

She wears my ring. Maybe not where anyone can see it. Maybe she tucks it into a drawer and pretends it doesn’t carry weight. But she accepted it. She opened the box. She knows what it means.

So does everyone else.

That ring isn’t jewelry. It’s a boundary. A warning. A brand.

If she wants to act like she’s still untethered, fine. Let her. But the consequences won’t be soft. They won’t be gentle. She wants to test limits, and I’m more than capable of showing her where they begin and end.

My mind begins sorting through the next steps, even as my gaze stays locked on that door. Surveillance. Eyes at the back entrance. Schedules. Proximity.

I won’t cage her, but I will remind her what belonging means in this world. What it means when your name is linked to mine. What it means when you’re claimed.

She won’t see the leash, but she knows it’s there. Maybe then she’ll start to understand the difference between possession and affection. Between safety and indulgence.

The space between us is temporary. Her rebellion is temporary.

What isn’t temporary is this: I decide how close she gets to the fire.

I step toward the club, hands flexing at my side.

When I slip inside, I find her at the bar.