Page 74 of Forced By the Bratva

“Thank you,” she said, her voice sweet like honey.

“For what?”

A pause.

“Everything,” she answered. “You’ve saved my life twice now. And for that, I’m grateful.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” I said. “We still have a secret organization to find.”

“And we will.” She reached out across the table and held my hand. “We’ll find them…together. Whoever they are.”

The conviction in her tone was the inspiration I needed.

Chapter 25 – Iris

I sat by the window, a cup of tea cradled between my hands. Steam curled into the room's cold air, warming my palms more than anything else around me tonight.

Outside, stars scattered across a clear sky. Small. Distant. Indifferent to everything happening down here.

I used to look at stars like this back home. Before any of this.

Back when my biggest worry was whether I’d hit a deadline. Whether Eve would forgive me for canceling plans again. Whether my supervisor liked the report I’d sent in.

Small worries. Manageable ones. The kind that felt enormous at the time because I didn’t know yet what real fear looked like.

I took a slow sip of tea and let the warmth settle in my chest.

It had been months now. Months since a knock on my door changed everything I thought I understood about my own life.

Some nights I still couldn’t believe how far I’d drifted from the person I used to be. Iris Hart. Marketing consultant. Quiet. Careful. Someone who liked to read and kept to herself and never once imagined she’d end up married to a man capable of the things Ilya was capable of.

I thought about my father sometimes. Late at night like this, when the house went quiet, and there was nothing left to distract me from my own head.

He would have hated this. All of it. The kidnapping. The estate. The marriage I never chose. He would have wanted to fight for me the way he fought for everything in my life growing up.

I liked to think he’d understand eventually, if he could see how complicated this had all become. But I didn’t actually believe that. Some things a father never accepts, no matter how you explain them.

I missed him in a way that still caught me off guard sometimes. And it hurt so badly, especially because I had no one to call family.

I thought about Eve too. I wondered if she still looked for me. If she’d filed a police report.

I was sure she’d called my old apartment a hundred times. The poor girl must be worried sick, wondering what happened to her best friend.

Genuinely, I hoped she’d moved on, at least a little. I hoped she wasn’t still torturing herself over a goodbye I never got to say.

The guilt of disappearing on her weighed heavier some nights than the fear of everything else combined.

I turned the teacup slowly in my hands and watched the liquid ripple.

I wasn’t the same person who’d walked into that coffee shop months ago, annoyed about a deadline, unaware that her life was about to end and begin all over again in the same week.

I’d changed in ways I didn’t fully understand yet. Some of it scared me. Most of it, if I was honest with myself, scared me more than anything Ilya’s world had thrown at me directly.

I used to think Stockholm syndrome explained everything between us. A neat, clinical label I could hide behind whenever the feelings became too complicated to sit with honestly. It was easier than admitting the truth.

The truth was messier than any label.

I didn’t just tolerate him anymore. I didn’t just survive being near him as I had deluded myself into believing I was doing during those first weeks.