Page 66 of Forced By the Bratva

She was on the floor. The third man stood over her, rifle aimed at her chest.

I squeezed the trigger immediately, but my gun clicked empty. I tossed it aside and drove into him shoulder-first before he could fire.

We hit the floor in a tangle, his weapon skidding away. I climbed on top of him and struggled against his strength for a moment.

He was strong.

But I was stronger.

The first blow I hurled in his face dented the back of his skull into the marble floor. The second broke something in his nose. Blood sprayed across my knuckles and the floor. I kept hitting him. Mouth. Nose. Throat. Eyes. Anything that moved. The wet sound of it filled the room.

“Ilya!” Iris called out.

I was too busy dismantling the man’s face beyond recognition. He stopped moving soon after, but I kept hitting hard.

“Ilya—stop.” Her voice cut through finally.

I froze with my fist still raised when she held my hand mid-air.

“He’s dead.” She dropped beside me, her voice soft and tender. “You can stop now.”

The man under me wasn’t moving. His face was a mess of blood and broken bones. I looked at her, eyes scanning for any sign of injuries. “Are you hurt? Did he touch you?”

She shook her head, breathing hard, pale but steady. “I’m fine.”

I pushed off the body, wiped my hands on my pants, and hugged her tightly, still shaking from the fear of losing her. She threw her arms around me, her body trembling against mine.

The house was still full of noise—boots on stairs, short bursts of gunfire, men calling positions.

But the immediate threat in this room was finished.

I checked the body for any form of identification. There was none.

The gear was tactical, professional—the kind of equipment that didn’t come cheap and didn’t come from anyone who left a paper trail.

The rifle was suppressed. The clothing was nondescript. Even the boots were clean of anything that might track back to a specific region.

These weren’t Bratva operatives as I had thought. They were foreigners that someone had paid for silence and competence.

Who were they? Who had hired them? And most importantly, why were they after my wife?

I turned to her, and almost asked if she recognized the dead man. But at the last second, I decided now wasn’t the best time to have that conversation.

“Stay close,” I said, taking her hand and leading us out of the room.

The hall was clear now, and the shooting had stopped. Quietly, we moved downstairs, with me in front and her behind.

The kitchen was a mess of broken glass and spent casings. The couches in the living room had bullet holes in them; some were even flipped upside down.

One of the younger guards had taken a graze across the arm. Nothing serious. He was already being bandaged.

Iris left me to go attend to some of the wounded maids, helping to stitch their injuries.

Boris met me near the main hall, face set, radio still crackling with updates.

“The east wing is clear. South gardens clear. We’re checking the outer wall now. Two more bodies near the service entrance. Both foreign. No IDs.”

I let out a quiet exhale. “How many casualties did we record?”