Bratva Daddy, page 18
"Clara," I murmured, voice soft but insistent. "Little one, time to wake up."
She made a small sound of protest, burrowing deeper into the pillows. Her fingers tightened on the wolf, and for a moment, I wanted to let her stay here—safe in sleep where her father's betrayals couldn't reach.
But the world wouldn't wait for us to be ready.
"Baby girl," I tried again, hand still moving through her hair. "Daddy needs you to wake up and be big Clara today."
Her eyes fluttered open, hazy with sleep. For a moment, she just blinked at me, caught between dreams and waking. Then focus sharpened, and she was back—not the little girl who needed chocolate milk and Disney movies, but the woman who'd helped run a charity, who'd survived twenty-three years of Viktor Petrov's particular brand of neglect.
"What's wrong?" she asked immediately, because of course she could read the tension in my shoulders, the careful control in my voice. "What happened?"
"Your father happened," I said, helping her sit up, making sure she was fully present before continuing. "He held a press conference. Ivan's on his way up with the full footage."
The last traces of sleep vanished from her eyes, replaced by something harder, sharper. "What did he do?"
"What he does best," I said, standing to give her space to process what was coming. "Protecting himself by destroying you."
Ivan arrived seven minutes later, and the fact that my ice-cold brother's jaw was clenched tight enough to crack teeth told me everything about how bad this would be.
He didn't bother with greetings, just set his laptop on my desk with movements too sharp for his usual precision. Clara had dressed quickly—jeans and one of my shirts she'd claimed, her hair pulled back in a messy bun that made her look younger than her twenty-three years. She curled into my office chair, knees drawn up, coffee mug clutched between her hands like armor. Little Alex was nowhere to be seen, but I'd noticed the slight bulge behind the throw pillow—hidden but within reach if needed.
"Your father held a press conference an hour ago," Ivan said without preamble, his voice carrying an edge I rarely heard. "Every major news outlet carried it live."
He turned the laptop toward us, and Viktor Petrov's face filled the screen again. This time I forced myself to watch, to catalog every lie for future retribution. Clara went still beside me, that particular stillness that preceded either explosion or collapse.
"Thank you all for coming," Viktor began, his expression a masterpiece of practiced concern. "I've called this conference to address concerns about my daughter Clara's recent disappearance and to ask for the public's help in ensuring her safety."
Clara's knuckles went white around her mug, but she said nothing.
"What many don't know," Viktor continued, "is that our family has struggled with a history of mental illness. Clara's mother—my late wife—suffered from severe psychological issues before her tragic death. She experienced paranoid episodes, violent outbursts, inappropriate attachments to men she barely knew. We sought help, of course, but the disease had progressed too far."
"Liar," Clara whispered, so quiet I almost missed it. "She had postpartum depression. She was in therapy. She was getting better until the cancer—"
She stopped, jaw clenched, as Viktor kept talking.
"Recently, Clara has shown similar signs of instability. Colleagues at her charity have reported erratic behavior—missing meetings, paranoid accusations about being followed, claims that people were 'out to get her.' She became fixated on the idea that I was somehow her enemy, that I wanted to harm her. Classic paranoid delusions, exactly like her mother experienced."
The casualness of it, the way he threw his dead wife under the bus to save himself, made my vision edge red. But this wasn't my rage to own. This was Clara's, and she needed to feel it fully.
"Two weeks ago, Clara disappeared. We believe she may have left with someone taking advantage of her vulnerable state—perhaps someone she met online or at one of her charity events who recognized her fragility and exploited it. She's likely being manipulated, controlled, fed lies that reinforce her delusions about me."
Viktor paused, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief, the gesture so obviously rehearsed it was insulting.
"If anyone has information about Clara's whereabouts, please understand—she's not well. She needs professional help, not enablement of her fantasies. I've been in contact with several excellent psychiatric facilities that specialize in hereditary mental illness. Once we find her, she'll receive the best care money can buy."
The threat was clear—if Clara surfaced, she'd be institutionalized. Anything she said would be dismissed as delusion. Viktor had just painted her as too crazy to be believed, too sick to be trusted with her own narrative.
"Additionally," Viktor continued, and his tone shifted to something more businesslike, "despite my personal troubles, I remain committed to this city's development. I'm pleased to announce a new partnership with the Kozlov Foundation for urban renewal. Together, we'll be redeveloping several key areas of Brooklyn and Queens, bringing jobs and prosperity to neighborhoods that desperately need investment."
I felt the moment Clara understood. Her entire body went rigid, coffee sloshing dangerously close to the mug's rim. The Kozlovs—our enemies, the family who'd been trying to destroy us for a decade. Her father had just publicly aligned himself with them, using his daughter's disappearance as cover for the betrayal.
"Furthermore," Viktor added, like an afterthought, "due to Clara's absence and uncertain mental state, I've had to make changes to our upcoming charity gala. My assistant, Melissa Crawford, will be taking over Clara's responsibilities. She's young but capable, and I'm confident she'll represent our family values admirably."
The screen showed a brief clip of Viktor with a young woman—early twenties, blonde, wearing a dress was carefully calculated to be just revealing enough. She stood too close to Viktor, her hand on his arm with casual intimacy that screamed they were fucking.
Ivan closed the laptop with a decisive click.
The silence stretched, taut as piano wire. Clara set her mug down with deliberate care, her movements so controlled they looked robotic.
"He's inoculating himself," Ivan said, adjusting his glasses in that way that meant he was processing data. "If Clara comes forward now, anything she says will be dismissed as mental illness. Any accusations about his corruption, his connections to organized crime—all delusions. He's also aligned with the Kozlovs publicly, making any move against them look like Volkov aggression rather than justified retaliation."
"It's actually brilliant," Clara said, her voice so calm it raised the hair on my neck. "He's finally found a use for me. Twenty-three years of being furniture, and now I get to be his scapegoat."
The mug left her hand before I could register the movement, coffee exploding against my office wall in a shower of ceramic and caffeine. The sound it made—sharp, final—seemed to break something loose in Clara's chest.
"Troubled," she said her voice suddenly louder. "Fragile." Her voice climbed with each word. "Mental illness."
She grabbed a paperweight from my desk—a heavy crystal thing Dmitry had given me for Christmas—and launched it at the wall. It left a dent in the plaster before thudding to the floor.
"Twenty-three years," she said, moving to my bookshelf with purpose that made Ivan step strategically backward. "Twenty-three fucking years of being invisible, of being nothing, of sitting at his table like a decorative vase while he planned his crimes."
A first edition Tolstoy went flying. Then Dostoyevsky. Then the entire Russian literature section I'd carefully collected over fifteen years.
"And now—NOW—suddenly I'm the family embarrassment he can't stop talking about?" She grabbed a vase, one of the few decorative pieces I actually owned, and held it like she was considering its weight. "Now I'm important enough to hold press conferences about?"
The vase shattered against the wall, and I had to admire her aim—she was creating a very specific destruction path that avoided anything truly valuable. Even in rage, she was calculating.
"My mother," she said, voice breaking on the word, "had postpartum depression. Post. Partum. Depression. One in seven women get it. She went to therapy, took medication, did everything the doctors said. She was getting better—I remember her getting better."
Another book flew, pages fluttering like dying birds.
"She used to read to me," Clara continued, tears streaming down her face now but her aim staying true. "Every night, even when the chemo made her so tired she could barely keep her eyes open. She'd prop herself up in bed and read until I fell asleep. That's not mental illness—that's love. That's being a mother despite everything trying to kill you."
A leather-bound journal joined the casualties. Ivan dodged it with minimal movement, his expression showing something I rarely saw—respect. My brother appreciated fighters, and Clara was fighting with everything she had.
"The cancer killed her," she screamed, another book launching from her hands. "The fucking cancer that ate her from the inside while my father complained about medical bills. Not mental illness, not delusions, not inappropriate attachments to strange men. Cancer. But that doesn't fit his narrative, does it?"
She spun to face us, chest heaving, and even tear-stained and furious, she was magnificent.
"You know what the worst part is?" she asked, voice dropping to something more dangerous than screams. "I gave him everything. My compliance, my silence, my perfect behavior. I was the daughter he wanted—pretty, quiet, useful when needed, invisible when not."
She laughed, but it had edges that could cut glass.
"I sat at those dinners for years. Years. Listening to him discuss bribes and territory deals and which judges he owned. I know about the commissioner he pays monthly. I know about the construction companies he strong-arms for kickbacks. I know about the safety violations he overlooks for the right price."
Another book, but halfhearted now, the rage starting to exhaust itself.
"I have enough information to bury him ten times over," she said, voice hollow. "Names, dates, amounts, recorded conversations I wasn't supposed to hear. I could have destroyed him whenever I wanted. But I didn't, because despite everything, he was my father."
She picked up another paperweight, then set it down with shaking hands.
"And his repayment? Calling me crazy on live television and replacing me with someone who's barely out of college." Her laugh turned bitter. "Melissa Crawford. I looked her up once, curious why he'd hired her. Graduated from Fordham last year, no relevant experience, but she photographs well and knows how to smile while powerful men talk."
The last book dropped from her hands rather than flew.
"He's replaced me at the gala," she said, quieter now. "The event I've organized for three years, where I've cultivated every donor, negotiated every sponsorship. She'll stand where I stood, charm the people I charmed, and everyone will pretend they don't notice she's fucking him."
She turned to face us fully, and the emptiness in her eyes was worse than the rage.
"I was never his daughter. I was a prop, an asset, something to display at appropriate times. And now that I'm gone, he found a better model."
The words hung in the air like smoke from a fired gun.
I crossed to her before she could throw anything else or collapse entirely. My arms went around her, pulling her against my chest, and she resisted for exactly two seconds before sagging into me.
"We're going to destroy him," I promised, speaking into her hair. "Not with violence—that's too quick, too merciful. We're going to dismantle his life piece by piece, legally and publicly, until he wishes I'd just put a bullet in his head."
She shuddered against me, hands fisting in my shirt.
"But we do it smart," I continued, feeling Ivan's approving gaze. "Clean. Using the legal system he's corrupted, turning his own weapons against him. Every bribe he's paid, every deal he's made, every law he's broken—we're going to document it all and deliver it wrapped in a bow to the FBI."
"The FBI won't care," she mumbled against my chest. "He owns too many people."
"The Southern District of New York doesn't play games," Ivan said from behind us, voice carrying that particular tone that meant he was already planning. "They took down Gotti. They'll salivate over a corrupt deputy mayor with ties to both the bratva and the Kozlovs."
Clara pulled back enough to look at me, mascara streaking down her cheeks in black rivers.
"I want him to suffer," she said quietly. "Not physically. I want him to lose everything that matters to him—his position, his reputation, his freedom. I want him to know what it feels like to be powerless."
I wiped a tear from her cheek with my thumb, gentle despite the violence we were discussing.
"Then that's what you'll have," I promised. "But we do it my way. Strategic. Calculated. Devastating."
She nodded, then looked at the destruction she'd wrought on my office. Books scattered everywhere, coffee dripping down the wall, crystal fragments catching the light like fallen stars.
"I'll clean this up," she offered weakly.
"No," I said firmly. "You needed to break things. Sometimes rage needs outlet, and better my office than keeping it poisoned inside you. Every rule has an exception."
Ivan moved closer, stepping carefully over the book massacre. "You said you have information. Records of conversations?"
Clara nodded, steadier now that we were talking strategy instead of emotion. "Everything. I might have been invisible, but I listened to everything. Remembered everything."
"Good," Ivan said, and coming from him, it was high praise. "We'll need it all. Every detail, every conversation, every crime you witnessed."
"I can do that," she said, and there was steel in her voice now, forged in the fire of betrayal. "I can bury him."
"We," I corrected, tilting her chin up. "We bury him. You're not alone in this anymore."
The shower started running down the hall—Clara needing to wash off the rage and tears—while Ivan and I retreated to what remained of my office. Books lay scattered like casualties, coffee still dripped down the wall, and crystal fragments crunched under our feet. Ivan studied the destruction pattern with the same intensity he brought to financial spreadsheets.
"Dmitry needs to hear this," I said, pulling out my phone.
Our middle brother answered on the second ring, engine noise in the background telling me he was at the warehouse. "Tell me someone's dead," he said by way of greeting. "I'm bored, and the Kozlov shipment isn't until Thursday."
"Viktor Petrov held a press conference," I said, putting him on speaker. "Called Clara mentally ill, aligned publicly with the Kozlovs."
The engine noise cut off abruptly. "He did what?"
Ivan pulled up the video on his laptop, and we could hear Dmitry watching, his breathing getting heavier with each of Viktor's lies. When it ended, the silence stretched for three seconds.
"Let me kill him," Dmitry said immediately, voice carrying that particular edge that meant he was already planning methods. "One shot, back of the head, make it look like suicide. Guilty conscience over betraying his daughter. Clean, simple, satisfying."
"No," I said, stepping over the Tolstoy casualty. "Clara deserves better revenge than blood."
"Better than blood?" Dmitry's laugh was sharp. "Brother, have you forgotten who we are? Blood is our currency."
"Not this time." I picked up a miraculously unbroken paperweight, turning it over in my hands. "She wants him to suffer legally, publicly. Wants him to lose everything that matters—position, power, reputation."
There was a pause, then: "You've changed, brother. The girl's made you soft."
Before I could respond, Ivan spoke—unusual enough that both Dmitry and I went silent.
"The girl's made him complete," Ivan said quietly, adjusting his glasses in that way that meant he was about to dissect something. "Not soft. Complete."
"Complete?" Dmitry repeated, skepticism dripping from the word.
"I ran a psychological profile," Ivan continued, ignoring our surprise. "Professional curiosity."
"You profiled my—" I started, then stopped, unsure what to call Clara. My captive? My submissive? My little girl?
"Your mate," Ivan supplied simply. "That's what she is on a psychological level. Your matching pathology."
Dmitry made a sound of disgust. "Pathology? Jesus, Ivan, they're not lab rats."
"Aren't they?" Ivan pulled up something on his laptop, though we couldn't see it through the phone. "Alexei shows classic signs of protective dominance rooted in childhood trauma—the need to control stems from the chaos leading up to our father's death. Clara displays complementary submission patterns, also trauma-based—a need for structure and boundaries stemming from emotional neglect."
"You're saying we're both damaged," I said flatly.
"I'm saying you're both damaged in ways that fit together perfectly." Ivan's voice carried an unusual warmth. "She needs exactly what you need to give—structure, protection, controlled environment. You need exactly what she needs to give—trust, submission, someone to protect who won't betray you like Father did by dying."
The casual mention of our father's death should have angered me. Instead, I found myself considering Ivan's words with uncomfortable clarity.
"She's dangerous for him," Dmitry argued through the phone. "A weakness enemies could exploit. The Kozlovs already know about her—Viktor just giftwrapped that information."
"She's perfect for him," Ivan countered, and the conviction in his voice surprised me. Ivan never had convictions about emotional matters.
"It started wrong, Ivan," I said quietly. "Kidnapping, coercion—"
"Roses that bloom in the harshest soil grow the strongest roots," Ivan interrupted. "You think normal courtship would have worked? She'd have been too guarded, you'd have been too controlled. You needed the crucible."
