Page 30 of His Stolen Bride

I meet his eyes. “I always am.”

For a moment, something like regret shines in those beautiful eyes of his. Then it’s gone. Dinner is formal and restrained. His mother watches me with interest that doesn’t feel kind or cruel. Just evaluative. I answer questions without giving anything away. I don’t mention my parents. I don’t mention the night that changed everything.

When I return to my room, I feel heavier than I did before.

The house is pressing in again.

I shower and sit on the bed afterward, towel wrapped tightly around me, trying to shake the sense that something is building without my permission.

I fall asleep late.

When I wake, it’s with a sharp wave of nausea that comes out of nowhere. I sit up fast, heart racing, hand flying to my mouth. The room tilts. I breathe through it, waiting for it to pass.

It doesn’t. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and barely make it to the bathroom before I retch. There’s nothing in my stomach, just acid and the unpleasant realization that my body is reacting to something I don’t understand yet.

When it passes, I sit on the floor with my back against the tub, breathing hard. This makes no sense.

I haven’t been sick or eaten anything unusual. I don’t feel weak, just unsettled and off-balance in a way that’s new. I press my hand flat against my stomach and sit there. The thought comes uninvited and sharp enough to make my breath hitch.

No. He used protection.

I push it away immediately. There are too many variables, too much stress and upheaval.

Still, when I stand and look at myself in the mirror, I don’t recognize the woman staring back.

9

MIKHAIL

Idon’t call for my wife for days. I don’t send for her or ask where she is or what she’s doing. If her name comes up in a report, I shut it down and move on. I bury myself in work because work has rules, and rules don’t blur when you cross a line you were supposed to protect.

Sleeping with Alina was a mistake.

I don’t say it out loud. Naming it gives it weight, and I don’t need more weight pressing in on this house. I tell myself it was situational. Grief. Proximity. A moment that got out of hand. I tell myself distance will correct it.

Distance always has before. But none of my befores involved a girl with eyes like the forest lit up by the sun or a mouth like a rose with a bunch of thorns. She moves me, she makes me yearn for her, and that’s precisely why I keep myself away.

I double the patrols on the outer grounds and increase rotation on the internal cameras. I pull two men from the city and station them near the north road. This has less to do with her and more with the fact that Sergei’s unfinished business keeps surfacing in places it shouldn’t.

Vienna notices silence.

I sit in my office with files stacked high and screens lit with movement logs. Every delivery gets flagged. Every unfamiliar car gets noted. I don’t like patterns that form too quickly, and I don’t like gaps at all. It isn’t new news that I took what belonged to my brother, because succession inside the Morin structure has never been sentimental, and Vienna understood the shift the moment Sergei died and I stepped fully into his place. What bothers me is that the Bratva knew well enough that there was another buyer, and yet I wasn’t informed, which means silence was chosen over warning.

That doesn’t happen by accident.

In Vienna, my name carries weight because the Morins didn’t rise on noise or spectacle, and we didn’t carve territory through chaos. My father built influence through ports, shipping lanes, and finance structures that made violence optional and reputation mandatory. We were the family you dealt with when you wanted stability, when you wanted contracts enforced quietly and mistakes contained before they became wars. The Bratva respects that kind of order, even when they resent it, because order keeps money moving and funerals rare.

Vladimir Kosov represents the opposite tradition, even if he wears it well now. His syndicate grew out of border violence and forced consolidations, and his rise was fueled by absorption rather than alliance. Where the Morins integrated, Kosov consumed, and where we relied on internal discipline, he relied on fear and spectacle to keep his people aligned. Older Bratva leaders remember that history because they lived through it, and they also remember that Kosov survived every purge meant to break him.

That’s why they didn’t come to me.

Warning me would have meant choosing a side openly, and choosing me would have meant acknowledging that Kosov still needed to be managed rather than appeased. Instead, they let it play out, because Bratva politics favor outcomes over intentions, and whoever emerged intact would be recognized as having earned it.

Kosov’s connections mattered because he knew how to keep conversations off record and pressure indirect, and he knew exactly which elders would rather avoid another open conflict between old rivals. By positioning himself as the wronged party without ever stating it outright, he made silence seem reasonable and caution seem wise.

They didn’t warn me because they expected resolution through attrition. They assumed Sergei would fold or disappear, and when he didn’t, they assumed I would absorb the consequences quietly and restore balance without forcing anyone to declare loyalty. What they didn’t account for was that I don’t forgive being excluded from my own political reality, and I don’t forget who decided I didn’t need to know.

At any rate, I can’t act unless I’m certain Kosov is the one behind the killings. The Bratva would never forgive a man who prioritizes impulse over reason. Enzo brings me updates every two hours. I don’t ask for opinions. I ask for facts.