Page 67 of Forced By an Obsessive Bratva Stalker

I watched her register, fully, for what might have been the first time, the actual scope of how thoroughly I had already taken her life apart and reassembled it according to my own design.

Her hands curled into fists on either side of her untouched plate. “You must be proud of yourself, changing the trajectory of a young girl’s life to fit your twisted scheme.”

The words were meant to sting, and they did, a little.

I remained calm and composed, refusing to fall into her trap. She wanted to get under my skin, to trigger the version of me that would lose its temper and prove itself as volatile and threatening as she’d already decided I must be.

I had no intention of giving her that version. “I understand this isn’t the life you had planned for yourself a month ago. I’m not asking you to be pleased about that. I’m telling you how it will function because the alternative—you spending every day fighting a structure that isn’t going to move—serves neither of us particularly well.”

“And if I fight it anyway?”

“Then you’ll spend a great deal of energy fighting something immovable and accomplish very little beyond exhausting yourself.” I set my fork down, folded my hands, and held her gaze.

She didn’t look away.

“I’d rather you direct that energy somewhere more useful. You’re clever, Aria. Cleverer than most people I deal with in any given week. I’d prefer to see that put toward something other than testing the locks on doors that were never going to open for you.”

“I don’t like threats, Rodion. And this is the second time you’re threatening me.”

“It’s not a threat. It’s an observation. However, you’re welcome to interpret it as it serves you.”

She stared at me for a long moment, something working behind her eyes. Her chest heaved, and her expression was darker than before. She appeared to be assessing me, as if calculating the risk of acting a certain way around me.

I didn’t mind being studied by her. I had spent years being feared, deferred to, handled with caution by men who never once looked at me with the kind of open, furious scrutiny she was giving me now.

I found I preferred it considerably.

“What about phone calls?” she asked, her voice quieter now, the fight in it banked rather than extinguished.

“Not allowed.”

“So I can’t see my friends and family?”

“That’s the whole point of being kidnapped,” I said flatly. “Nevertheless, if you cooperate and I’m convinced the narrative we’ve established is stable, we’ll work something out.”

Her lips quivered as she glared at me.

“Until then, no calls. No contact with the outside world.”

A brief pause.

“So, basically, you’re saying if I prove that I’m a ‘good girl,’ I get to ‘enjoy’ some privileges.” It landed more as a statement than a question.

I ignored the disdain and sarcasm in her tone. “Pretty much. Yes.”

“Okay. Got it.” She stabbed her duck breast with her fork.

“Make no mistake, Aria Bennett. Your presence here is not temporary, and any attempt to escape will attract severe consequences.”

She didn’t answer that.

Aria finally began eating in silence, her jaw tight, her eyes fixed somewhere just past my shoulder rather than on my face.

I watched her eat and said nothing further, content, for the moment, to let the silence sit between us rather than fill it.

She would test these boundaries. I had no illusions about that. Everything I knew about her told me she would spend the coming days and weeks searching for every crack in the structure I’d just laid out.

Knowing her, she would probe for weaknesses with the same relentless instinct that had whisked her into the Bratva world in the first place.