Page 3 of Innocent Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva (Sharov Bratva #15)

The music in the ballroom is soft, just loud enough to cover the hum of too many conversations. Crystal lights scatter reflections across polished floors, gilding the edges of expensive laughter.

I stand at the far end, half shadowed by the tall marble columns, untouched vodka sweating in my hand.

My security team flanks the exits, men in tailored suits, earpieces coiled close. They know their cues. They know mine. We don’t smile for cameras unless it’s necessary. We don’t speak more than we must. Power isn’t in what you say, but in how little you need to say.

This gala is an act, as all these nights are—our foundation’s orphan fund, branded with hope and mercy for the press. The money helps, yes, but the donors in this room? Half of them are wolves in formalwear, empire-builders who think charity is a shield.

I tolerate their handshakes, their oily jokes, the way they lean in and ask if Moscow is colder than New York. I play my part.

That’s the price of making Bratva legitimate in the eyes of the city. My silence is my signature. My silence is law.

Still, I would trade this ballroom for the cold and certainty of Moscow in a heartbeat. There, things run as they should. Here, the walls echo with too many accents, too many ambitions, too much American chaos. Presence is currency. Absence breeds rumors. So I stay.

My gaze moves through the crowd, cataloging—the arms dealer with his too-young wife, the local politician flushed with whiskey, the old-money matriarch who never takes off her gloves. Their alliances shift nightly. I trust none of them.

Something shifts at the edge of the event floor. Not a threat, no, but a disruption in the pattern. I see a girl, late teens or early twenties, standing too still at the margin. Dark curls pulled into a low ponytail, oversized camera at her hip.

Her clothes are unremarkable, almost severe: black blouse, loose trousers, flats instead of heels. She doesn’t belong to the world of these donors, but she moves as if she’s meant to be invisible. Most people succeed at that by shrinking. She does it by listening.

She’s watching, I realize. Not the event, but the room.

Listening to conversations she pretends to photograph.

Recording, cataloging. Her chin lifts as she scans the crowd, and for a moment, her face is clear under the ballroom lights.

There’s something in the eyes—focus, calculation, a quiet steadiness that’s rare in this place.

It tugs at my memory, but the thread won’t unravel.

She glances up. Our eyes meet. She holds it—one second, then two. She doesn’t flinch. Most do.

One of my men leans in, murmurs, “Intern from the media team. One of the students.”

I nod. I don’t look away.

Harmless, I tell myself, but there’s no such thing as harmless.

A string quartet plays from the raised dais near the back wall, their notes swelling and fading as waiters weave between tables, balancing trays laden with caviar and gold-rimmed glasses.

The hum of conversation never falters, not even when the security detail moves in their silent, practiced rotation.

Everyone here knows the rules—how to smile for the press, how to let a bribe pass for a donation, how to lower their eyes just enough in my direction to show respect without deference.

I let the vodka warm my palm, but I never taste it. Instead, I watch.

I watch the way the mayor’s aide whispers to a guest list sponsor, nervous fingers twisting a cocktail napkin into shreds.

I watch an oil baron slip an envelope under the table to a silent fixer with a pinched mouth and a white pocket square.

I watch the thinly veiled tension between two men who used to be allies and now barely share a nod.

Someone toasts the Sharov Foundation from the center of the room, glasses raised in my direction.

I give them a small, precise smile, the kind that makes men remember how easily I can end a conversation, or a career.

Around me, my own people—half of them Bratva, half of them handpicked for their silence—stand at easy rest, but I know none of them are truly at ease.

The interns circle the edge of the crowd, careful not to block the view of the photographers or draw attention from the high-profile guests.

The girl with the camera moves like she knows the floor plan.

Each time I look, she’s changed position.

Now she’s behind the dessert table, always with her eyes just above the lens, searching.

A heavy-set donor intercepts her, leaning in with a patronizing grin, gesturing for a photo. She lifts the camera with practiced hands and obliges, polite but expressionless. When he turns away, her face returns to that state of alert stillness.

A ripple moves through the crowd as my chief of security enters the ballroom. He signals, subtle—two fingers tapped to his watch, a tilt of his head toward the entrance hall. I know what he means. A new arrival. Perhaps someone late, or someone not on the list.

I scan for potential threats, but nothing stands out. The donors laugh too loudly, the press jostles for better angles, and the city’s most careful criminals trade compliments in three languages. I remind myself that this is all performance. My silence is the sharpest weapon in the room.

Still, I glance once more toward the girl with the camera. Her lens is pointed at the main table, but her eyes are on me. I acknowledge her with a tilt of my glass—wordless, warning, curious. She doesn’t look away. I find myself waiting to see what she’ll do next.

***

Eventually, the event ends with a slow unwinding, the way a clock runs down after too much winding.

The main lights return to their usual brightness, bleaching the gilded trim of the old palace and draining the guests’ faces of the shine they wore for the press. The crowd filters out in clusters, laughter softening to exhaustion, hands lingering on coat collars and elevator buttons.

My security details sweep the corridors, silent and methodical, ushering the last stragglers toward waiting cars.

I do not linger in the ballroom, but step into the shadowed hallway behind the scenes, my drink finally left behind, forgotten on a marble ledge. Here, I can breathe again… almost.

A bank of monitors flickers against the far wall, fed by a web of cameras hidden above the chandeliers and behind columns.

I watch the footage: maintenance men coiling power cables, caterers stacking trays, interns packing the remains of the media kit into battered rolling cases.

My eyes find her immediately. She moves like a professional, not a student—quick, purposeful, lifting heavy cases without complaint or need for help. Her hair is coming loose from its tie, a few dark curls springing free against her neck and jaw.

She is not beautiful in the way these parties prefer—no glitter, no fragile smile—but there is something arresting about her. The strong line of her nose. The stubborn curve of her mouth when she’s concentrating. The way her hands, quick and certain, barely pause between tasks.

One of the other interns jokes with her as they untangle a cord.

She smiles—brief, but real. There’s a warmth in her eyes that catches the light, the sort that makes a man want to linger, to see her look at him like that.

It’s an old habit of mine, noticing. Especially women who don’t preen, who don’t perform for the room.

She is not just attractive; she is, unmistakably, my type. Practical, unpretentious, with a beauty that grows more striking the longer I watch her.

It’s not just attraction that sets my instincts on edge. She surveys the room constantly, eyes never resting, cataloging every movement, every conversation, every possible exit. Her gaze lingers on the security teams, the placement of the cameras, the entrances and exits.

Not paranoia—curiosity, perhaps. Or experience. She’s not a tourist to this world. She might not have the polish of these guests, but she carries herself like someone who’s had to learn the world isn’t kind.

My second-in-command, Miroslav, lingers nearby, arms folded across his chest as he reviews his own feeds. His eyes flick between the monitors and my face, reading the lines in my jaw. I trust Miroslav—more than most, less than I’d like.

“She’s not leaving with the others,” I say, my voice low. On the monitor, the girl kneels beside a battered case, carefully checking the clasps before snapping it shut.

The others have started to laugh, tired and free now that the party’s over, but she keeps working, focused. She glances up only when a senior staffer calls her name, then nods, lifts the case, and carries it out of frame.

Miroslav makes a note on his tablet. “The intern? Media crew. Talia Benett. She checked out, no flags.” He says it with a practiced ease, but he watches my reaction closely.

I shake my head. “She’s not here for credit or a paycheck. She watches too closely. She’s clever, and she’s careful. I want her background run again. Every phone call, every social profile. Anything that doesn’t fit.”

Miroslav nods, already sending a message. “You want a tail on her?”

I hesitate. Attraction is a liability in this line of work.

It makes you reckless. I’ve learned to trust the part of me that doesn’t trust, the sense that twitches when someone is in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong eyes.

“Keep an eye on her,” I say, voice softer now, barely above a whisper.

On the monitor, she stands in the middle of the empty ballroom, waiting while a manager checks off items from a clipboard.

She scans the ceiling once. where she knows there’s a camera, but doesn’t look long enough to seem suspicious.

Then she catches her reflection in a glass display and smooths her hair back, tucking a stray curl behind her ear.

The gesture is absentminded, unguarded, and it makes something inside me tighten. I am used to women who preen, who want my attention, who look at me and see an empire, a myth, a ticket to something. She doesn’t look at me at all.

Yet, as she lifts the last case and heads for the door, she pauses, just a moment, and glances up toward the balcony where I sometimes stand during events. Her eyes are dark and searching, intelligent and steady.

For a second, I wonder if she senses me watching, even through the bank of monitors. It wouldn’t be the first time someone like her recognized the gaze of a hunter.

“Do you want to meet her, sir?” Miroslav asks, watching me sidelong.

I consider it, then shake my head. “Not yet. Let’s see where she goes, who she calls, what she tries to find. If she’s what she seems, she’ll fade away. If not—” I leave the sentence unfinished. There are a dozen ways it ends, none of them gentle.

Miroslav nods, accustomed to this calculus. He vanishes down the hall, already texting instructions to the night team. I linger, staring at her figure as it disappears into the utility corridor, swallowed by the palace’s narrow, labyrinthine halls.

The scent of expensive perfume and sweat hangs heavy in the air, clinging to the velvet walls and my shirt collar.

I let myself imagine, for a moment, what her hair would smell like if she pressed her face against my neck.

What it would feel like to curl my hands into those wild curls, pull her into my lap, watch her smile widen just for me.

The thought is dangerous, and I know it. I banish it ruthlessly, locking it away behind the same walls I’ve built for every other risk, every other distraction.

Still, I feel it—a tug of want, primal and inconvenient, threading through the cold certainty of my suspicion. It leaves a heat in my chest that is unfamiliar, and a flicker of anticipation that is not unwelcome.

The building is empty now, but for the ghosts of the evening. I take one last look at the monitors, committing her face to memory: the curve of her cheek, the tension in her jaw, the softness that lives only in the corners of her mouth.

Then I slip back into the darkness of the corridor, my footsteps silent, my mind already working through contingencies and plans. I don’t like unknowns. Especially not unknowns with eyes like hers, with secrets behind every steady look.