Bratva Daddy, page 2
My stomach turned. He was discussing destroying a legitimate business—one that employed hundreds of people—with the same detachment he'd use to order office supplies. Those weren't just numbers on his screen. They were construction workers with families, suppliers with contracts, an entire ecosystem that would crumble because Dmitri Kozlov had offered a better bribe.
Viktor finally looked up from his tablet, not at me but through me, toward the window overlooking Central Park. "The beauty of municipal authority," he said, lips curving in what might have been a smile on someone capable of actual emotion, "is that everything can be legal if you file the right paperwork. Volkov Construction will lose their contracts due to entirely legitimate regulatory concerns. The fact that Kozlov Industries happens to be positioned to take over those contracts? Pure coincidence."
He returned to his tablet, to his fish, to his wine. I might as well have been one of the chairs for all the attention he paid me. This was how our dinners always went—him monologuing about his schemes while I served as a silent audience, a prop to maintain the image of a family man.
"Alexei Volkov won't take this quietly," he added, almost as an afterthought. "But that's what the police department contribution fund is for. Any retaliation from his organization will be met with sudden intense scrutiny from law enforcement. Amazing how efficient the NYPD becomes when properly motivated."
Alexei Volkov. I'd heard the name whispered at various political functions, always with a mixture of fear and respect. The kind of man who controlled half of Brooklyn's construction industry through a combination of legitimate business and less legitimate enforcement. The kind of man who didn't forgive betrayal.
And here was my father, planning to destroy him over salmon and Château Margaux.
"Excellent salmon tonight," he said to the air, maybe to Mrs. Brown if she was listening from the kitchen, maybe to no one at all.
I watched him eat, this stranger who shared my DNA but nothing else.
I had to do something. Even if it changed nothing. I had to show, somehow, that I wasn’t complicit in this.
My hand moved toward the wine glass with calculated uncertainty, fingers trembling just enough to sell the performance. The Margaux swirled dark as blood against the crystal, and for a moment I let myself imagine it was exactly that—blood on my hands for what I was about to do.
"But Father," I said, my voice pitched to that perfect note of vapid innocence I'd perfected over years of playing the empty-headed daughter, "haven't those Russian businessmen been very generous to us?"
I lifted the glass, letting my grip stay deliberately loose, watching the wine tilt dangerously. "The flowers, the caviar, all those donations to your campaign fund?"
Viktor's pale blue eyes finally found me, narrowing with the particular disdain he reserved for when I dared speak about his business. The same look he'd given me at thirteen when I'd asked why the police commissioner left envelopes of cash in our foyer. The same look that said I was too stupid, too female, too irrelevant to understand the complexities of his world.
"You don’t understand municipal politics, Clara." His tone could have frosted the windows. "Regardless of how many times I try to explain. Perhaps you should focus on more suitable concerns."
More suitable concerns.
Shopping.
Smiling.
Silence.
The holy trinity of Viktor Petrov's ideal daughter. He turned back to his tablet, dismissing me as effectively as if he'd waved his hand. Just another ornament that had briefly made noise, now expected to return to decorative silence.
The fury that lived in my chest, that constant ember I'd banked for twenty-three years, suddenly flared white-hot. My hand moved—not entirely unconsciously but not entirely deliberate either. That space between accident and intention where plausible deniability lived.
The wine glass tipped.
Time slowed as $500-per-bottle Margaux cascaded across the table in a burgundy wave. It hit his documents first—those precious permits and contracts, the physical manifestation of his corruption. The wine spread across city letterhead, soaking through watermarks and official seals, turning typed numbers into bleeding ink.
"Clumsy girl!" Viktor's snarl came out primal, stripped of his usual measured control. He stood, strode towards me and lunged for the papers, hands grasping desperately at documents that were already ruined, wine seeping through layers of contractual betrayal.
I watched him try to separate soaked pages that tore at his touch, watched his face flush from pale to mottled red, watched the mask of respectable city official crack to reveal the cruel man beneath.
"This is exactly why I can't trust you with anything important." His voice rose to a volume I rarely heard, echoing off the dining room's high ceiling. "You're a stupid girl who should stick to shopping and charity galas."
Stupid girl.
Maybe I was stupid. But I wasn’t harmless.
"Look what you've done!" He held up a construction permit, the ink running like mascara in rain, Volkov Construction's name barely legible through the burgundy stain. "Do you have any idea what these documents represent?"
Yes. I knew exactly what they represented. Betrayal worth millions. Lives destroyed for percentages. The casual cruelty of powerful men who treated the city like their personal chessboard.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, making my voice small, tremulous. "I didn't mean—my hand slipped—"
"Your hand slipped." He repeated it with such venom that I actually stepped back. "Everything about you is slippery, Clara. Can't hold a thought, can't hold a conversation, can't even hold a wine glass properly."
Mrs. Brown materialized from the kitchen like a guardian angel in a starched uniform, armed with kitchen towels and the kind of diplomatic silence that came from years of navigating Viktor Petrov's temper. She moved between us without seeming to, creating a buffer as she began soaking up the wine.
"So sorry, Mr. Petrov," she murmured, though we all knew she had nothing to apologize for. "I'll take care of this immediately."
Viktor stood abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor with a sound like fingernails on glass. He gathered what documents he could salvage, holding them away from his body like contaminated evidence. Which, I supposed, they were.
"Useless," he spat, not looking at me, maybe talking to the ruined papers or the universe in general. "Absolutely useless. Twenty-three years old and still can't manage basic motor functions."
The words should have hurt more than they did. Maybe I'd built up an immunity through repeated exposure, like those kings who consumed small amounts of poison daily to prevent assassination. Or maybe I was just too focused on the wine-soaked contract in his left hand, the one where Alexei Volkov's name bled into illegibility, to feel the sting of familiar insults.
"I'll have to have these recreated," he muttered, already walking toward his study. "The entire Kozlov timeline could be compromised because you can't control your hands."
He paused at the doorway, finally looking directly at me. The contempt in his eyes was so pure it could have been bottled and sold as concentrated disappointment.
"Clean yourself up," he said, though I hadn't spilled anything on myself. "And try not to destroy anything else tonight. If you can manage that."
The lock clicked into place with the finality of a prison door, except I was locking the world out rather than myself in. My bedroom door was solid mahogany, thick enough to muffle sound, strong enough to keep even Viktor's disapproval at bay. For the next few hours, I could stop being his daughter, his prop, his perfectly dressed disappointment.
I leaned against the door, letting my spine rest. The mask I'd worn all day—through charity lunches and careful smiles and violent wine spills—finally cracked and fell away. My face in the mirror across the room looked naked without it, younger, more desperate than I wanted to admit.
The room around me hadn't changed since I was sixteen. Soft pastels that suggested innocence, a four-poster bed with eyelet lace, furniture chosen by an interior designer who'd been told to create "something appropriate for a young lady." Even my rebellion was relegated to childish spaces.
I stripped out of the blue silk blouse first, hanging it carefully in the closet despite wanting to burn it. The pencil skirt followed, then the expensive lingerie that served as one more layer of armor between me and the world. Each piece of clothing removed felt like shedding someone else's expectations until I stood naked in my pastel prison, just Clara without the Albright or the Petrov.
The cotton nightgown I pulled on was soft, worn from too many washes, one of the few things in this room that actually felt like mine. It had been my mother's once, before the cancer took her when I was three. Sometimes I thought I could still smell her perfume in the fabric, though that was probably just desperate imagination.
I sat on my bed, knees drawn up, the events of dinner replaying in an endless loop. My father's casual cruelty about destroying the Volkovs. His complete indifference to my presence until I'd spilled the wine. Then that familiar rage, those cutting words that shouldn't still have the power to wound but did.
Stupid girl.
The worst part was how practiced it all felt. We'd performed this dance so many times—him dismissive, me invisible, both of us pretending this was a family rather than a business arrangement where I was the product being stored until sale.
That’s how the fantasy started. It’s how it always started.
It was something hungry, something demanding.
I wanted to be claimed.
I wanted someone to grab my wrist and own me. To pin me against a wall and tell me exactly what he was going to do. To care enough about my existence to be possessive, controlling, even angry.
My hand drifted to my thigh without conscious thought, fingernails dragging against skin that rarely saw sunlight. I thought about hands that weren't manicured like the weak men at charity galas. Rough hands. Working hands. Hands that would span my entire throat if they wrapped around it.
Would he be older? Definitely. Someone who'd look at my father's casual cruelty and laugh at what a weak man he really was. Someone who wouldn't ask permission or apologize or treat me like spun glass that might shatter. Someone who'd see through every practiced smile and designer dress to the furious, desperate woman underneath.
My fingers found the heat between my legs, already wet from thoughts I'd never dare voice aloud. I imagined meeting his eyes across a room—dark eyes, probably. He'd know immediately what I was. Not a stupid girl or a political asset, but a woman who'd been locked in a gilded cage so long she'd forgotten how to fly.
"Mine," he'd say, and mean it. This man would claim me with his hands, his mouth, his entire body. He'd teach me what it meant to belong to someone who actually wanted what they owned.
I slipped two fingers inside myself, biting my lip to keep from making noise even though the walls were soundproof. Old habits. Good girls stayed quiet. But I didn't want to be good anymore. I wanted to be bad enough that someone would need to punish me. To bend me over their knee and spank me until I cried, then hold me after and tell me I was forgiven, that I was theirs, that I mattered enough to discipline.
The fantasy evolved as my fingers moved faster. He'd come home to find me touching myself without permission, like I was doing now. His face would darken with the kind of possessive anger that meant consequences.
"Did I say you could touch what's mine?" he'd growl, pulling my hand away, replacing my fingers with his own. Thicker, longer, stretching me while I squirmed and apologized and secretly hoped he'd never stop.
"Please," I whispered to my empty room, to the phantom lover who existed only in my desperate imagination. "Please, Daddy."
The word shocked me even as it sent lightning through my core. Daddy. Someone who'd take care of me by taking control of me. Who'd feed me when I forgot to eat, dress me in clothes he chose, fuck me until I couldn't remember my own name, then hold me while I slept.
My other hand found my breast, pinching my nipple hard enough to hurt because I needed the edge of pain to make it feel real. In my mind, it was his hand, his mouth, his teeth marking me as property that was actually valued. Not hidden away in a penthouse but displayed, claimed, owned so thoroughly that everyone would know exactly who I belonged to.
"Such a needy little girl," he'd say, and I'd nod because I was. So fucking needy for something real, something raw, something that wasn't wrapped in silk and suffocating under the weight of appearances. "My needy little girl."
My. Mine. Ownership that meant something.
I came with a soundless scream, my body arching off the bed as waves of pleasure crashed through me. For a moment, I felt it—that sense of belonging, of mattering, of existing as more than just an expensive ghost. Then reality crashed back, and I was alone in my pastel bedroom with soaked fingers and an ache that no amount of self-touch could satisfy.
The tears came then, silent and automatic as everything else in my life. I curled on my side, pulling my mother's nightgown down to cover myself, feeling more naked than when I'd actually been undressed.
I pulled the covers over myself, expensive sheets that felt like restraints, and stared at the ceiling. Tomorrow would be another performance. Another day of invisible Clara in her designer costumes, smiling at charity events and staying silent at dinners.
Tonight, thought, I let myself dream of being owned by someone who'd actually want what they claimed.
Chapter 2
Alexei
The mahogany desk reflected the lights bleeding through my office windows, the city's pulse steady as a heartbeat below. I sat alone with just a manila folder for company.
The Volkov Construction offices occupied the top floor of our Brooklyn warehouse—legitimate enough for city inspectors, private enough for family business. Up here, insulated by steel and concrete, I could think without the noise of the shop floor or the weight of my brothers' expectations.
I'd sent everyone home hours ago. Even Mikhail, my most loyal lieutenant, who'd raised an eyebrow at being dismissed but knew better than to question. This was personal research. Strategic assessment. At least, that's what I told myself as I opened the folder my security team had compiled over the past month.
Viktor Petrov's daughter stared up at me from glossy surveillance photos, unaware she'd been watched, catalogued, evaluated for so long it would shock her.
She went by Clara Albright. I didn’t know exactrly why she didn’t take her father’s surname, but I had a fairly good idea. Maybe a lack of respect? Maybe to distance herself from his politics?
The first shots were routine—Clara leaving her father's penthouse building at 9 AM sharp, done up like a doll, dressed in designer clothes. Clara at a charity luncheon, that practiced smile plastered across her face while she made small talk with women twice her age. Clara shopping on Fifth Avenue, bags accumulating like armor against whatever she was really feeling.
What was she really feeling?
Professional interest. That's all this was. When you planned to destroy a man, you studied his weaknesses. And Viktor Petrov's weakness walked around in Prada heels and a smile that never reached her eyes.
I spread the photos across my desk, each one a window into a life that shouldn't have fascinated me. My violence-rough fingers traced the edges, careful not to smudge the images. Here she was entering a bookstore—not the trendy ones in SoHo but a dusty used shop in the Village where she'd spent three hours. My man had noted she'd left with a paper bag, no designer logos, just books she'd chosen for herself. Another photo showed her in Central Park, kneeling beside a homeless woman, pressing something into weathered hands. Money, the report said. Always cash, always generous, always when she thought no one was watching.
But it was the photo from three days ago that made my chest tighten.
The Neue Galerie entrance framed her like she belonged in one of its paintings. She'd been leaving with friends—society girls whose names I'd memorized but didn't care about. Someone must have said something funny, caught her mid-laugh, and for once—for one perfect moment—Clara Petrov looked alive. Her head was thrown back, hazel eyes bright with genuine amusement, that defiant tilt to her chin that suggested so much more than the empty shell she pretended to be. The autumn light caught the gold threads in her hair, turned her skin luminous.
She looked like trouble.
My body responded before my mind could stop it. Heat spread through my chest, pooled lower. I shifted in my leather chair, annoyed at my lack of control. She was twenty-three. Barely out of college. Sheltered, spoiled, soft. Everything I didn't need complicating an already delicate situation.
But when I looked at that photo, I didn't see Viktor Petrov's daughter. I saw a brat who'd never met a man who wouldn't let her have her way. A little girl playing dress-up in designer clothes, desperate for someone to see through her act. Someone to grab those delicate wrists and tell her exactly how things were going to be.
"Blyad," I muttered, the Russian curse harsh in the empty office. I pushed the photo away, then immediately pulled it back. Like a fucking teenager mooning over a pretty girl. Pathetic.
I was thirty-five years old. Pakhan of the Volkov bratva since I was twenty-eight. I controlled construction contracts worth millions, commanded men who'd kill or die on my word, maintained order in a world that ran on controlled violence. I didn't get distracted by privileged girls with daddy issues.
Except I kept staring at her smile. At the way her throat curved when she laughed. At the shadow between her breasts where her silk blouse gaped slightly. She probably tasted like fucking champagne. Like expensive perfume and the tears she'd cry when someone finally called her on her bratty behavior.
My hand clenched on the photo's edge. This was about leverage. About teaching Viktor Petrov the price of betrayal. His daughter was a chess piece—valuable enough to hurt him, innocent enough to avoid federal attention. Taking her would be clean, strategic, controlled. Everything the Volkov organization represented versus Kozlov's messy brutality.
