Page 138 of His Forced Bride

She looks at me with eyes that hold too much pain for someone so young.

"I feel like I'm losing myself, becoming someone harder and colder. Someone who can plan another person's destruction and feel excited about it."

"You're becoming someone who can protect herself. There's nothing wrong with that."

"Isn't there? Three months ago, I was designing dresses and worrying about fabric shipments. Now I'm planning psychological warfare against my own mother. What does that make me?"

"Alive. Adaptive. Stronger than your enemies expected."

She pulls her hand free and stands, pacing to the window.

"I look at myself in the mirror now and don't recognize the person staring back. Everything I thought I knew about myself, about my values, about what I was capable of… it's all changed."

I join her at the window, standing close enough that I can feel the tension radiating from her body.

"Change isn't always loss, Inessa. Sometimes it's evolution."

"But what if I evolve into someone I don't want to be? What if I become the monster my mother tried to paint you as?"

"You won't."

"How can you be so certain?"

"Because monsters don't worry about becoming monsters. The fact that you're questioning yourself, that you're afraid of losing your humanity—that proves you haven't lost it."

She turns to face me, and I see tears threatening at the corners of her eyes.

"I don't know who I am anymore."

"You're my wife. You're a survivor. You're the woman who looked at evidence of systematic betrayal and chose to fight back instead of surrender."

I reach up to cup her face in my hands.

"You're stronger than you know, and you're definitely not alone in this."

The tears spill over then, and she collapses against my chest.

I wrap my arms around her, holding her while she cries out months of accumulated pain and fear.

This isn't the composed breakdown from earlier.

This is raw grief for the life she thought she had, the family she thought loved her, the innocence she can never reclaim.

I carry her to the bedroom when her legs give out, settling us both on the bed with her curled against my side.

She cries until exhaustion takes over, her body finally relaxing as the vodka and emotional release combine to drag her toward sleep.

"Stay with me," she whispers against my chest.

"I'm not going anywhere," I say, kissing her temple.

How dissonant it feels to be so gentle in a world that's so hostile, but she's stolen my heart, and this gentleness was earned by violence I will forever continue so long as she remains in my arms.

"Promise me."

"I promise."

She's quiet for so long, I think she's fallen asleep, but then her voice emerges soft and vulnerable in the darkness. "I love you."