Page 89 of Forced By the Bratva

“Your father got too close,” he said, voice rough. “Started asking the wrong people the wrong questions about money that wasn’t supposed to have a paper trail. We gave him a chance to walk away. He didn’t take it. So we closed the file. Quiet. Clean. The way these things are done.”

I held the gun to his head, my heart racing as I tried so hard to let my anger take control.

“You can’t do it, can you?” He chuckled. “You’re weak. Just like your old man…”

Ilya didn’t let him finish.

One shot. Center mass. Vale’s head snapped back, and his body dropped onto the concrete, motionless.

The terminal went quiet except for the ringing in my ears and the low crackle of a radio someone had left open.

Shell casings littered the floor. Blood pooled under Vale’s body and ran toward the drain channel cut into the concrete.

I stared at him, feeling the gun grow heavy in my hand. Then the weight lifted entirely. It hit the floor with a dull metallic sound.

My knees followed.

Everything I’d held back since I was sixteen came rushing up at once—the porch, the locked study, the police who hadn’t listened, the years spent wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing. I couldn’t breathe around it. My hands shook so badly I had to press them against the concrete.

Ilya found me there.

He dropped to a crouch in front of me, hands on my shoulders, then pulled me in when I couldn’t lift my head.

There was nothing cold in it. No calculation. He held me like the only thing that mattered was keeping me from coming apart in front of his men.

I sobbed against his chest. Ugly, raw sounds I couldn’t stop. He didn’t tell me to be quiet. He just kept one hand on the back of my head and the other locked around my shoulders, body still angled to shield me from the rest of the room.

“I’ve got you,” he said near my ear. “I’m not letting anything touch you again.” A breath. “Because I love you.”

The words landed in the middle of the shaking and somehow made it worse and better at the same time.

“What?” I raised my head and met his gaze. “What did you say?”

He wiped my tears with his thumb, eyes locked on mine. “I said I love you.”

I hesitated, lips quivering from all the emotions coursing through me. “You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean.”

He cupped my face in his palm, refusing to look away. “I mean every word, Iris. I love you.”

Tears trickled down my cheeks again. This time, they didn’t come from a place of sadness. They came from a place of joy.

I held on tighter.

“I love you too,” I got out, voice wrecked.

He kissed me—brief, firm, tasting of salt and smoke—then pressed his forehead to mine and stayed there while the last of the adrenaline drained out of both of us.

Around us, men moved bodies and secured weapons. Ivan’s boots climbed down the metal stairs. None of it reached us for a long minute.

When I finally pulled back, my eyes burned, and my throat felt scraped raw.

Ilya’s forearm was still bleeding freely where the knife had caught him. He didn’t seem to notice.

He helped me to my feet, kept an arm around my waist, and walked me toward the exit while his men finished clearing the terminal.

Outside, the night air was cold and clean. I breathed it in and let him hold me upright.

The past had finally been dragged into the light and shot dead on a concrete floor. What remained was the man beside me and the fact that I was still standing.