Page 27 of Forced By the Bratva

I’d built my entire life on not caring about the wrong things at the wrong time. Attachment was a liability. Ivan had said as much without needing to say it outright, and he wasn’t wrong.

I knew better. I’d known better my whole life.

Since I couldn’t bring myself to put a bullet in her, I considered something else. Perhaps I could send her somewhere far away, somewhere no Bratva official would think to look.

But even that didn’t sit well with me. Instead, something cold settled under my skin at the thought. Irritation. Resistance. Something I didn’t have a name for and didn’t want one.

I’ll figure something out. But in the meantime, she stays here. With me.

***

Later that night, I was lying awake in bed when a scream tore through the house. My head snapped toward the door, and I was up before I even processed the sound.

The sound had come from her room, loud and disturbing.

I grabbed my gun, sprinted out the door, and down the hall. Something crashed upstairs, furniture or a lamp, hard to tell from the noise alone.

My mind ran through the worst scenarios first. Intruder. Attack. Someone Ivan sent without telling me. I raced up the stairs in a blur, hoping to arrive in the nick of time before something catastrophic happened.

I reached her door in seconds and kicked it open. “Iris!” My voice echoed off the walls as I held my gun in front of me.

She stood barefoot on the bed, one hand gripping the headboard, pointing at the far corner of the room. Her charcoal gray button-down shirt was thin and oversized, the silk slipping off one shoulder.

My gaze swept over her body, making sure she was all right. Fortunately, she was.

No blood. No intruder. No threat I could see.

“What happened?” I asked, stepping inside, still alert.

“Spider!” Her voice cracked on the word. “There’s a spider in my room.”

My brows slowly rose in disbelief, a gust of relief blowing across my face. I lowered the gun, adrenaline still surging through me too fast to just switch off.

I scanned the room again out of habit, checking corners, windows, and the door behind me, before I let myself actually look at what she was pointing at.

A spider. Crawling along the wall near the curtains, small, harmless, moving at its own unhurried pace.

Neither of us said anything for a second.

The adrenaline hadn’t left my system yet. My pulse was still too fast for a threat that turned out to be an insect the size of a coin. That made the whole scene feel worse, standing there with a gun in my hand over something this small.

I lowered my head, fingers rubbing my eyes.

The spider moved again, dropping slightly along the wall, and Iris made a sound that wasn’t quite a scream this time, more of a strangled gasp, and crossed the room toward me without thinking.

She hopped off the bed and grabbed my arm. Then my chest, both hands fisting in my shirt, her whole body pressed against mine before either of us decided it should happen.

I felt her warmth and the softness of her gentle swells through the thin fabric immediately. Her breathing came fast and uneven against my chest, her fingers curled tight into the material like she needed something solid to hold onto.

She buried her face briefly against my shoulder, just for a second, hiding from a spider, a harmless insect.

It hit me harder than it should have.

I stood there, gun still loose in one hand, and didn’t move. Didn’t pull her closer. Didn’t step back either. Just stood still and let her hold on, my other hand hovering near her back without quite deciding to land there.

“What’re you waiting for? Kill it—chase it away,” she said, still holding on to me. “Shoo! Get out of here!” she barked at the little insect.

It crawled toward the window and found its way outside. Only then did she let out a deep sigh of relief.