Page 104 of His Forced Bride

Lacking it, she becomes merely another wealthy man’s wife, dependent on my protection and generosity for survival.

The thought fills me with murderous rage.

I carry the documents to the fireplace and watch them curl into ash.

The flames consume each page the way I want to consume Viktoria Mirova and send her back to the hole from which she slithered.

But burning copies accomplishes nothing.

She likely retains the originals, along with whatever other evidence she's gathered during her exile.

If she is correct and Semyon arrogantly forged her signatures, she will take everything Inessa ever had.

Her own child.

The gall of it ignites hatred for her so deep, I have to stop myself from ordering a hit immediately.

It would be too obvious.

Legal challenges would take months to resolve and generate publicity that serves no one’s interests.

Bribery might work temporarily, but Viktoria’s ambitions extend beyond money.

She wants power, recognition, revenge against the daughter who prospered while she suffered in exile.

Most troubling of all, I suspect she's behind the escalating attacks on Inessa’s business.

The timing proves too convenient—Viktoria returns to St. Petersburg, and suddenly, Kozlov’s people target my wife’s warehouses and showrooms.

Someone has provided them detailed intelligence about security schedules and employee routines. Someone like Inessa's mother…

Viktoria possesses that information.

She's studied the business for months before revealing herself.

Now she's applying that knowledge systematically, using Kozlov’s violence to soften Inessa’s resistance while positioning herself as the solution to problems she helped create.

It's the only thing that makes sense. Kozlov would tire of attacking Inessa and come straight at me at some point, and he hadn’t.

I believed this was about Dominic, but it never has been.

It's been Viktoria all along.

The strategy reveals her fundamental nature—manipulative, calculating, willing to sacrifice innocent people to achieve personal objectives.

She burns Inessa’s employees to force her daughter into submission, then offers maternal protection from threats she engineered.

Except I won't allow the second half of her plan to play out, and that's why she's coming at me now.

I deliberate on what to do all evening, and around midnight, I climb the stairs to my bedroom, exhaustion dragging at my shoulders.

The day’s violence and Viktoria’s threats have drained whatever patience I possessed.

I need rest, clarity, time to plan her destruction properly.

I find Inessa asleep in bed, her dark hair spilled across white pillows.

She wears one of my shirts, the fabric dwarfing her slender frame while she curls beneath heavy blankets.