Page 70 of Forced By the Bratva

He wasn’t in control right now. He was reacting, the exact same way I was.

The gunfire faded slowly. Radio chatter took its place—voices calling clear across different sections of the estate. Minutes passed. Neither of us moved.

When the corridor finally went quiet, really quiet, Ilya’s grip loosened. He still didn’t step back completely. We stayed there, tucked into that narrow space longer than we needed to, both of us catching our breath in the dim red light.

That’s when I saw it.

Blood, dark and drying, stained the sleeve of his shirt near the elbow. Too much of it to be a graze he hadn’t noticed.

“You’re hurt.”

“It’s not mine.”

I reached for his arm anyway. Instinct took over before I could think better of it. My fingers wrapped around his forearm and turned it toward the light. He let me. Didn’t pull away. Just watched me check the fabric for a wound that wasn’t there.

“It’s really not mine,” he said again, quieter this time.

I believed him. No wince in his face. No tension in his arm that would have suggested pain. Just blood that belonged to someone else—someone who hadn’t survived whatever had happened downstairs.

I didn’t let go of his arm right away.

Neither of us said anything for a moment. The corridor stayed dim and close around us. The emergency lights cast everything in that same low red glow. I became aware of how little space existed between us. How my hand was still curled around his forearm. How his eyes had settled on me instead of the door.

Something had shifted. I felt it the same way I’d felt it in the library the night he stood too close behind my chair. Except this time it wasn’t tension building toward something unspoken. It was quieter. Steadier.

We weren’t captor and prisoner in this corridor. We weren’t even husband and wife playing a role for a room full of Bratva associates.

We were just two people who’d survived the same fifteen minutes together, both still shaking slightly from it. Both still holding onto each other longer than the danger actually required.

I finally let go of his arm.

Neither of us moved to leave the corridor right away.

Chapter 24 – Ilya

Who were these bastards, and why did they want my wife dead so badly? They attacked my estate twice in the space of a few hours.

Why?

Did she know something she shouldn’t? Was she not who I thought she was?

The more I thought about this whole mess, the more Ivan’s warning echoed at the back of my mind. At this point, doubt was starting to creep in, and I had no control over it because nothing made sense to me anymore.

At first, I thought the attack was linked to the missing funds in the Bratva ledger. I thought whoever was behind the rerouting of the organization’s money had sent men to silence my wife and me.

But I was wrong. This wasn’t a Bratva-coordinated attack. These guys were built differently in ways that disturbed me. They’d proven to be a force to be reckoned with—a force that wouldn’t stop until Iris was dead.

Those assholes had messed with the wrong woman. She was mine to protect, and I was going to stop at nothing until I put an end to this nonsense. Once and for all.

I was standing by the window in my office with a glass of vodka in my hand when the full report arrived.

Boris knocked once and walked in, folder under his arm. He dropped it on the desk without waiting.

“Boss, the breach report just came in,” he said.

I drained the remaining vodka down my throat and turned to face him. “Talk to me.”

“Two other places got hit in the last six weeks. Vetrov’s estate outside Moscow, and the warehouse complex in Kyiv.” He watched me flip pages. “Nobody linked them at the time. One got written up as equipment failure, the other as a local break-in.”