Page 54 of Bratva Brother’s Bride

“So you sacrificed yourself instead?”

I’m goading her and we both know it. She accepted her father’s decision and she accepted being stuck with Dmitri the same way she accepted being stuck with me. There’s a fire in Vera though, and I want to see it.

“I did what I had to do to survive,” she snaps.

“You did what was easy.”

Her eyes flash with something hot and bright. “Easy?” She stands up from the bench, her hands clenched at her sides. “You think being married to Dmitri was easy? You think living with a man like him, who controlled every aspect of my life, who made me feel like I was nothing; you think that was easy?”

“I think you could have fought back.” I stand too, facing her. “You could have found a way out if you’d wanted it badly enough.”

“You don’t know what it was like!” Her voice is rising now, the anger spilling over. “You don’t know what he did to me. I woke up every day and knew that there was no escape, no one coming to save me. There was no hope of anything ever getting better.”

“You survived.” I step closer to her, and her skin is warm to the touch. “You endured, but somewhere along the way, you stopped fighting. You accepted your cage and you made peace with it.”

She steps back, eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why are you saying this stuff? Stop it.”

“You let him break you, Vera. You let him convince you that you were worthless. Why?”

“I said stop.” Her voice cracks on the last word.

Except I can’t stop. I can see the fire in her eyes, the spark that’s been buried under years of abuse and neglect. I want to fan it into flames. Let Vera understand her own worth, even if it means angering her in the process.

“Maybe after a while,” I say quietly, “you stopped believing you deserved anything better.”

“You’re wrong.” She’s crying now, tears streaming down her face. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you’re stronger than this.” I step even closer, until we’re almost touching. She tries to back away but I don’t let her.

Vera has no idea that I watched her all those years. There were cameras all over Dmitri’s home, and all I had to do was tap into them. I saw him drain the life out of her.

“You have fight in you, Vera. I’ve seen it. That’s the real you, Vera. Not this broken thing you’re pretending to be.”

Her hand comes up and slaps me across the face.

The sting is sharp enough to make me stumble. My head turns with the force of it and for a moment, all I can hear is the sound of my own breathing. Then I turn back to her.

Her eyes are blazing, and her whole body is trembling with the force of her anger.

“Fuck you,” she says. “Fuck you and your judgment and your assumptions. You don’t know what I went through, so you don’t get to stand there and tell me I should have fought harder.”

There she is. Vera’s magnificent like this, furious and fierce and so alive it takes my breath away.

“Say something,” she demands. “Anything. Stop looking at me like that.”

I grab her wrist and pull her toward me.

She stumbles into my chest, her hands coming up to push me away. I don’t let her.

I wrap my arms around her and hold her against me, feeling the heat of her body and the thunder of her heartbeat.

“Let me go,” she says, but her voice is muffled against my shirt.

“No.”

She struggles, but it’s half-hearted. Her hands are fisted in my shirt, pulling me closer even as she tries to push me away. “I hate you,” she says. “I hate you for saying those things.”

“I know.”