Conquered Bride (Belaya Bratva 1)

And I was pregnant with his child.

“Drive,” I whispered to Ivan, unable to take anymore. “Please. Just drive.”

He didn’t hesitate, pulling away from the scene quickly and back onto the road. I waited until we were a good distance away before I begged him to pull over.

I climbed out of the car and vomited in the grass. Tears ran down my cheeks as I emptied the contents of my stomach. I could still hear the shrieks of the women. And the image of what I saw was seared into my brain.

“Ma’am?”

I turned and found Ivan standing beside me, a worried look on his face as he held out a handkerchief and a bottle of water.

I didn’t know what he thought about the scene or if it was something he had seen before, but it wasn’t like he was out there standing in Gavril’s shoes.

“Thank you,” I whispered, taking the items from him.

He gave me a small nod and shuffled back to the car, leaving me alone to clean myself up and take a few sips of water.

When I finally climbed back in the car, his eyes found mine in the rear-view mirror. “Shall we go back home?”

Home…

I found myself nodding mechanically, not sure if the mansion was my home anymore. Suddenly, I was reminded of how I came here in the first place. Suddenly, I was reminded of the night before our wedding. The night after our wedding. Those torturous weeks when I was nothing but a set of warm holes to Gavril.

I wasn’t sure I belonged in this life, in Gavril’s life, period.

***

Ivan pulled the car back onto the road and I leaned back in the seat, my entire body shaking and weak. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t go back and look at Gavril and not remember how he had stood by and watched those women be raped and beaten.

My cell phone suddenly vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out with shaking hands, seeing Gavril’s name flashing on the screen. My heart seized.

Had he seen me? Did he know that I had been watching him and had seen it all?

Had someone alerted him that I was away from the mansion?

My thumb hovered over answering the call before I pulled it away, placing the cell phone on the seat next to me and letting it go to voice mail. I couldn’t talk to him right now. I couldn’t even form a coherent thought when it came to him.

My heart was shattered into a million pieces.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to just shut off the tide of feelings I had developed for Gavril over the past few weeks, but it was clear that I had never known him to start with.

The phone finally went silent, and I let out a sigh of relief. He hadn’t left a voice mail or a text, much like I hadn’t done earlier.

If I had, I might have been able to avoid seeing what I had witnessed. But in the end, it was probably best that I had seen it.

After all, it had opened my eyes to who Gavril Kirilenko truly was.

A monster.

I hated that I had seen the ugly truth. In that single moment, the bubble of happiness that I’d fooled myself into believing was pierced.

I had foolishly thought that this might actually work out in my favor for once. Instead, I had been disappointed yet again.

Yet again, my life was in shambles, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Except this time, I had more at stake. A child. One that I would protect with my life. I took a deep breath to calm myself.

Fuck whatever Gavril had planned. This was my child as well, and I would die before I subjected him or her to the cruel reality that I should have remembered from the beginning.

I had to keep my child safe from its monster of a father.

Now I would be smart to remember it all the next time Gavril was in my presence.

A man like that couldn’t love anyone. All the gentleness that he had shown me—everything that I thought meant something more than just that stupid plan of his—was just a lie.

“You’re tougher than this,” I whispered to myself, staring out of the window. I had endured so much in my life that even Gavril didn’t know about. I wasn’t some weak girl that he had put in his life.

He was going to find out that I was stronger than I looked and a hell of a lot smarter too.

And love, love wasn’t going to be on my lips any longer.

Despair washed through me as we crossed through the gates to the mansion. And just like that, it was no longer my home but my prison.

Exactly how it had looked all those months ago.