Page 8 of Pregnant Virgin of the Bratva (Sharov Bratva #14)

The room they bring me to looks like it belongs in another world.

It’s nothing like the basement, nothing like the damp, concrete silence I’ve grown used to.

This place is soft and warm, flooded with golden light.

There’s a chandelier above the bed, too small to be grand but still real crystal, with little droplets of glass catching the afternoon sun.

The windows are dressed in ivory curtains with gold trim, and the floor is covered in thick, expensive rugs that silence my footsteps.

The bed is huge. It looks like it’s never been used.

The kind of bed that doesn’t just belong to wealth, but to someone untouched by violence.

The pillows are velvet, the sheets some impossibly smooth material that I don’t recognize by feel.

There’s a mirror leaning against one wall—tall, with an ornate frame of gilded silver and etched glass at the corners.

It looks like something stolen from a palace.

This isn’t what I expected.

The confusion builds slowly, thickening with each passing hour.

I wait for cold metal, for new bindings, for shouting or threats.

Instead, I get hands, soft, efficient, and disturbingly polite.

Maids flit in and out like ghosts. They speak little and never to explain.

One brings me clean towels, another draws a bath.

A third sets a tray of food on the side table and leaves without making eye contact.

They undress me with practiced ease. I don’t protest. My body’s too sore, my mind too clouded.

The bath is hot—almost painfully so—and it stings where the rope left red grooves around my wrists and ankles.

They wash my hair, brush it through until the tangles melt away.

Someone applies lotion to my arms, massaging gently, saying nothing.

It feels wrong.

Wrong to let them care for me like this. Wrong to lie back and accept silk and soap and warmth when only yesterday I was crying in the dark. My body accepts it anyway. It drinks in the comfort like it’s starved. My mind tries to resist, but my limbs sag deeper into the water.

They dress me in something soft and silver. Silk, I think, but not like anything I’ve touched before. The fabric clings to my body as though it remembers it. It has no right to feel as good as it does. I want to hate it, but all I feel is tired.

Food comes again. Real food. Steamed vegetables, white fish in a delicate sauce, something sweet and flaky for dessert.

I eat in silence, alone on the edge of the bed.

My eyes dart toward the door every few seconds.

I wait for someone to burst through, to yank the tray away, to tell me it was all a mistake.

No one comes.

No one explains.

They just serve me like it’s become habit already.

I haven’t spoken since they brought me upstairs. Not a word. They haven’t asked anything of me, and I haven’t volunteered. It feels safer that way. As though silence might grant me some kind of invisibility. If I speak, maybe it breaks whatever spell I’ve been caught in.

My thoughts don’t stop racing. I don’t know what any of this means.

The silence grows heavier as the hours pass.

No television. No music. Just the sound of the wind against the windows and the occasional click of a door opening when someone brings something new.

I wonder if the door is locked. I wonder what happens if I try it.

I wonder if this is a reward for obedience or a trick meant to lower my guard.

I want to scream.

I want to curl my hands into fists and shout until someone gives me answers, until someone looks me in the eye and tells me why I’m here, why I’m being treated like a guest instead of a hostage. But another part of me—quieter, colder—is too afraid to find out what screaming earns me here.

So I sit on the edge of the bed wearing silk, with clean hair and full stomach, while my wrists throb beneath gauze wraps and my head spins with questions no one will answer.

I don’t know how long I stay there. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. Long enough to feel the weight of it settle fully over me.

***

By the second day, the silence begins to unravel.

Not in any dramatic way—there’s no shouting, no sudden violence, no slip of a key in the wrong lock.

The door stays closed, but it’s not locked.

The meals keep coming, three times a day without fail.

Breakfast with fruit and eggs and coffee too rich for my empty stomach.

Lunches that arrive in silver-domed trays with linen napkins and matching silverware.

Dinners with warm bread, fresh vegetables, and wine I do not drink.

No one watches me like I’m dangerous. No one yells if I linger too long by the window.

That’s what makes it worse.

They act like I’m not a prisoner, like this is my home. As if they’re waiting for me to stop being scared and start being grateful.

By the second day, I can’t hold the questions in any longer.

They build in my throat like pressure, and when the younger maids enter—two of them this time, barely older than me—I watch them too closely.

One carries a fresh change of silk nightclothes.

The other sets out rose-scented lotion and brushes the bed linens smooth.

They whisper to each other when they think I can’t hear.

I sit stiff-backed on the edge of the bed, palms pressed to my knees.

They hover near the footboard, glancing up now and then, always looking away just before my eyes catch theirs. They don’t speak to me directly. They smile politely and murmur pleasantries. One of them—dark-haired, pretty—reaches for the hem of the blanket to straighten it, but her hand is shaking.

I snap. “What is this?”

My voice cracks, sharper than I intended, scraping from my throat like broken glass. The girls both go still.

I rise to my feet, barefoot, fists clenched at my sides. “Why are you treating me like this? Why is no one watching me? Why does the food keep coming?”

Neither girl answers. One stares at the floor. The other swallows visibly, her hand still caught on the blanket’s edge.

“Say something,” I demand, my voice ragged. “Tell me what’s going on. Why are you pretending this is normal?”

I don’t know what I expect—tears, shouts, maybe a guard storming in to drag me back downstairs. Part of me wants a fight. Something real. Something with edges.

Instead, it’s the senior maid who speaks.

She appears in the doorway like she’s been waiting, like she’s heard everything and decided now was the time to step in. Her name is Lidia. She’s older than the others, maybe in her fifties, with silver in her hair and a spine too straight to belong to anyone broken.

She moves past the girls without a word, carrying a stack of fresh towels. She sets them on the armoire, smooths one at the top, and begins folding with methodical ease.

“You are to marry Mr. Kion,” she says.

The words are casual. Unbothered.

I don’t move.

The word hammers inside my skull, loud and echoing, like it can’t quite find a place to settle.

Marry. It makes no sense. None of this does.

The luxury, the silence, the endless procession of food and silk.

All of it felt surreal before, but now it twists into something worse.

Something cold and real. Something permanent.

I blink at Lidia, still folding towels as if she hasn’t just ripped the floor out from under me.

“You’re lying.” My voice comes out uneven, too quiet to sound convincing. “That’s not… that’s not a thing that happens. People don’t get kidnapped and then married off like—like some medieval fairy tale gone wrong.”

Lidia doesn’t pause her folding. “I don’t lie, Miss Esme.”

I stare at her, heart pounding. “How can you say it like that?” My voice rises. “Like it’s normal? Like it’s something you do every week?”

She glances at me then, folding a towel in perfect thirds. “Because here, it is normal.”

I take a step back, as though the very air might shift around me. “I’m not from here. I don’t know what the hell this is, but it isn’t normal. You can’t just dress me up and feed me and tell me I’m someone’s—someone’s bride. That’s not how the world works.”

Lidia’s voice doesn’t change. “This isn’t your world.”

I shake my head. “I had a job. I had friends and an apartment. People know I’m gone.”

Her gaze meets mine without flinching. “Then Mr. Kion did you a kindness.”

I laugh—sharp and bitter. “A kindness? He dragged me off the street. He hit me. He tied me up like an animal and left me in a basement.”

“And yet, you’re here,” she replies evenly. “Alive. Breathing. Bathed. Fed. He didn’t have to make that choice.”

My mouth opens, but I can’t find the words. My throat tightens with rage and confusion. “You think that matters? That because he didn’t kill me, I owe him something?”

“You owe him nothing,” she says. “But your survival comes at a price. It always does.”

I fall onto the edge of the bed, legs folding beneath me like paper. “This is insane.”

Lidia crosses the room, places a towel in a drawer, and smooths her hands over the fabric. “It’s survival. That’s what this is. You saw something you were never meant to see. The punishment for that is death. He could have followed tradition.”

I grip the edge of the mattress. “So instead he decided I’d look better in silk?”

There’s a flicker of something—sympathy, maybe, or understanding—but it vanishes quickly. “He claimed you.”

“I’m not a thing to be claimed.”

“In this world, you are,” she says. “We all are, in the end.”

I close my eyes. “Why would he do this?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “He must like you a great deal.”

I open my eyes again. “You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’ve worked in this house for more than twenty years,” she says. “I’ve seen him make choices out of anger, out of power, out of necessity. Never once have I seen him act out of affection. Until now.”

My mouth goes dry. “Affection? That’s what you’re calling this?”