Page 124 of His Forced Bride

She resists for a heartbeat, then collapses against my chest, her fingers clutching at my shirt.

The photographs scatter to the floor as she buries her face against my shoulder.

"I waited for her," she whispers through the tears.

"Every birthday, every holiday. I thought she'd come back for me."

My arms tighten around her.

Her pain cuts through my chest like a knife searing my skin and taking my heart from my body, awakening protective instincts.

This isn't about securing an asset or maintaining control.

This is about the woman trembling in my arms, the one who trusted her mother's love and all she got was devastation.

"She never cared about me at all," Inessa continues, her voice breaking.

"I was just another transaction to her."

I stroke her hair, dark silk slipping through my fingers.

"Hey, shh."

And suddenly, I'm transported to a different time, one where my previous wife was sobbing, where her body was growing weaker and there was nothing I could do to save her.

Cancer is an enemy I can't fight, but Viktoria Mirova is a brutal bitch who will feel my wrath.

And I've stored it up for decades now, ready to unleash.

"She's nothing to you,milaya. And I will take care of it all," I growl against her head before softly kissing her hair.

The honesty is brutal, but she needs truth now more than comfort.

Lies are what brought her to this moment—lies about family, about love, about the people who were supposed to protect her.

I won't add to that collection.

She cries harder at my confirmation, her body racked with sobs that sound torn from her soul.

I hold her through it, letting her grief run its course while fury builds in my chest.

Viktoria took something precious from the woman in my arms—not just money or property, but the fundamental ability to trust.

That theft demands payment in blood.

Eventually, her tears subside into exhausted breathing.

She doesn't pull away, and I don't release her.

We remain locked together as darkness deepens outside the windows.

Both of us have learned that family can be the cruelest weapon of all.

"I don't know who I am anymore," she admits in a hoarse voice.

"Everything I believed about my childhood, my family—it was all fabricated."

"You're exactly who you've always been. The woman who built an empire from nothing. The daughter who honored her father's memory. The wife who refuses to break even when the world crumbles around her."