Chapter Eight - Rostya
The hall is stripped bare of pretense. No flowers, no music, no celebration.
A notary sits stiff-backed at the table, papers aligned in neat stacks.
Ivan stands to my right, a wall of loyalty and steel.
Two elders, gray and watchful, sit across, and a pair of soldiers linger near the door, witnesses and guards in equal measure.
This is no wedding. It is a transaction dressed in legality.
She stands opposite me, pale against the crimson drape that serves as backdrop.
Her eyes stay downcast, lashes shadowing her face.
When the notary prompts her, she speaks.
The words are brittle, hollow, each vow falling from her lips like stones she’s forced to carry.
She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t look at anyone.
Her voice shakes once, then steadies into that strange cadence of a hostage reciting lines with a gun pressed to her spine.
I see the truth. The slight tremor of her hands where she grips the paper too tightly. The way her jaw tightens with every forced “I do.” Beneath the compliance, her defiance simmers. A fire she can’t smother, though survival demands she bury it under obedience.
The notary’s pen scratches across parchment, finalizing what the Bratva will recognize as law. Just signatures, cold and efficient.
I study her while she bends her head, pressing ink to paper.
She doesn’t see me watching. For me, this moment isn’t about vows or ceremony.
It’s a battlefield—another front where territory is taken, power cemented.
Her name is now bound to mine, her freedom sewn shut by legal stitch.
She is no longer just the hacker who breached my walls; she is mine in the eyes of the council, the law, and every rival who might dream of touching her.
The air in the hall is wrong. Weddings are meant to hum with joy, with the warmth of families and futures.
Here, the silence feels closer to a funeral.
The scrape of chairs, the shuffle of papers, the faint clink of a soldier shifting his weapon.
There are no congratulations, and I don’t expect them.
Only the knowledge that something has been sealed, and it is heavy as earth on a grave.
When the notary closes his book and announces the binding complete, no one claps. No toast is raised. Only silence, broken by the scrape of chairs as the elders stand and turn away. Ivan stays a moment longer, his eyes flicking between us, then inclines his head and follows.
I remain. Watching her. She doesn’t lift her gaze, doesn’t dare.
Satisfaction curls slow in my chest. I have bent her without breaking her. More permanent than chains, more binding than rope, this is the weapon I wanted. She is mine now, not just in shadow, but in the sharp light of law.
There is no escape from it.
After, the maids deliver her like an offering, slipping into my room with careful steps, their hands guiding her forward.
They don’t linger. They bow their heads, place her on the edge of the bed like a fragile parcel, and leave.
The doors shut behind them with a heavy finality, sealing her inside my space.
She looks absurdly small against the vastness of the room. The mahogany bedframe towers over her, velvet curtains spilling shadows across the floor. Gold glints from the edges of the mirror, silk and velvet everywhere, but there is no warmth in any of it.
My room was never built for comfort. It was built to remind anyone who entered that I hold power they can’t touch.
She perches on the mattress as though it might swallow her whole. Her back is ramrod straight, her hands fisted tight in the fabric of her skirt. Her eyes flick toward the door, then away. She is still thinking of escape, even here.
The handle turns under my hand. I don’t rush. I never rush. The sound of my steps against polished wood echoes into the silence, deliberate, steady. With each stride I take, the room bends tighter around us until there’s nothing but her breathing and the weight of me approaching.
She doesn’t lift her gaze immediately, but she feels me. I see the shiver across her shoulders, the way her breath stalls when my shadow cuts across her body. I stop in front of her, close enough that the warmth of me brushes against her skin.
“Comfortable?” My voice comes low, almost casual, but the chain is in the question.
Her head jerks up, chin lifting like she’s holding it against a storm. “This doesn’t feel like comfort,” she answers. Her voice is brittle, ready to crack, but defiance shapes it all the same.
A flicker of amusement stirs in me, faint and cold. Even now, bruises still fresh at her throat, she tries to sharpen herself against me. She doesn’t see that the edge only makes her more interesting.
I let my eyes roam, cataloging every piece of her. The spill of hair loose over her shoulder. The angle of her jaw, tight with resistance. The way her hand rests in her lap, pale knuckles pinched around the ring I forced there hours ago. That ring gleams against her skin like a brand.
I raise my hand slowly, purposefully. My fingers hover inches from her cheek, close enough to feel the heat rising from her skin. Her breath catches, betrays her. The smallest tell, but I take it. I could touch her now, claim the last barrier she’s trying to hold between us.
Instead, I withdraw.
The air cools in the space I leave behind, colder than any touch I could have given. I see the flicker of confusion in her eyes, the flush creeping into her cheeks. Scorn tastes better than contact. I could, but I won’t. She needs to understand that even my restraint is another kind of control.
Her lips press together, strangling words she won’t give voice to. She doesn’t realize silence betrays as much as sound.
I let the moment stretch, heavy as smoke, before I break it with one word. “Rest.”
It’s not an invitation, but an order.
I stand over her a beat longer, watching her stiff shoulders, her fists clenching tighter around the fabric, the tremor in her body she can’t control. She sits like prey caught in a hunter’s snare, too afraid to move, too proud to collapse.
Satisfied, I step back, but the air between us still burns with the echo of what I didn’t do. I leave her with that—the weight of my presence, the sting of my absence, and the knowledge that comfort will never exist in my world.
The silence of the room stretches until it feels like velvet pulled tight across steel.
She sits perched on the edge of the bed, small and stiff, eyes downcast but shoulders braced as if the weight of the estate itself presses on her.
I let it hang for a moment longer, let the cold settle heavy in her chest before I speak.
My voice cuts through, flat, commanding, deliberate. “Do not expect affection from me. This isn’t that kind of union. You are here because appearances demand it. A puppet, nothing more. Don’t mistake your position for anything greater.”
The words are stripped bare, not a thread of warmth in them. They’re meant to crush whatever hope she’s foolish enough to carry, to bury it before it can take root. Better she knows now than cling to illusions.
Her head snaps up. She rolls her eyes, sharp and scornful, and the sound she makes is closer to a laugh than I expect. Her muttered words slip out like a knife’s edge. “Thank God. I don’t wanna do anything with you.”
The sarcasm slices the air, sharp enough that even the heavy drapes seem to shiver.
The moment freezes. My chest stills.
I study her face, waiting for the inevitable collapse, for the tears that should follow, the trembling apologies, the submission that always comes when someone dares to spit at me and realizes the cost. There are no tears. Her jaw is set, her gaze steady despite the faint tremor in her hands.
Instead of breaking, she burns.
A stubborn fire glows beneath her defiance, brittle but real. I feel the heat of it across the space between us, see it spark in her eyes where fear should have drowned everything.
It unsettles me. It irritates me. It draws me in.
For a long moment neither of us moves. The silence thickens, stretching taut, a battlefield without weapons. Pride and scorn clash in the air, two blades grinding sparks. She doesn’t shrink back. She lifts her chin, straightens her spine, a trembling soldier daring to face the firing line.
I find myself holding the stare longer than I mean to. Her lips are tight, her breathing uneven, but she doesn’t look away.
For the first time since dragging her into my world, I admit something I hadn’t allowed myself before: she is not fragile. She is not compliant. And she is not the pawn I assumed she’d become.
The thought is both irritating and… dangerous.
Her chin is lifted, her eyes daring me even as her hands tremble against the silk sheets. I let the moment stretch until it thrums like a live wire between us, then I make my decision.
I step back The weight of my gaze lingers on her, but I don’t touch her, don’t order her further. Instead, I turn and move toward the door, each stride unhurried. She expects violence, expects fury. What she doesn’t expect is what I give her: absence.
I leave her in my room. My choice is calculated, every angle sharpened.
She wears my ring, yet she is still a stranger in my domain, a trespasser seated stiffly on my bed.
Letting her remain there while I walk away is its own form of control.
A reminder that even in solitude, she breathes inside walls that belong to me.
The door closes behind me with a soft click.
Inside, she is left with velvet curtains, polished wood, the weight of chandeliers throwing fractured light across silk sheets.
Luxury, but luxury that smothers. A prison dressed in wealth.
I know she won’t rest. I know she will lie awake, staring at the carvings in the mahogany frame, her body curled tense against sheets that carry my scent.
That unease is as useful as shackles.
For me, the night stretches differently. Alone in my study, I pour vodka but don’t drink it. I let the silence work on me instead, let the memory of her words replay in my head. That flick of sarcasm. That fire sparking in her eyes when she should have bowed.
I’d intended to break her quickly. That was the plan; snap her spirit, bend her to obedience, turn her into a tool no different from any other weapon in my arsenal. But in that clash, in her refusal to yield, I saw something else.
A challenge.
Dangerous, yes. A longer war than I wanted, but also… compelling.
It gnaws at me, the way she sat straighter in the face of my dismissal. The way her defiance made her seem taller even as she trembled. Most people cower. She smolders.
I find my lips curling, though there’s no warmth to it. A long game is harder, but it is also sweeter.
The night deepens, shadows lengthening across the estate, wrapping stone and velvet in silence.
Somewhere down the hall, she lies awake, restless, clutching herself against a bed too rich and too suffocating to ever feel safe.
I imagine her staring at the ceiling, whispering rebellion to the dark, her pulse thrumming with the same stubborn beat I saw in her eyes.
To me, she is already wife by law. Bound, branded, named. That ring on her hand is proof. To her, she is captive, fire still alive in her chest. She believes she can keep it burning.
That is where the truth lies. Not in the papers, not in the signatures, but in the silent war drawn between us.
The marriage may be sealed, but the battle has only begun.