Page 10 of Bratva Daddy (Underworld Daddies #1)

Alexei

R ain streaked the floor-to-ceiling windows of my penthouse, turning Manhattan into an impressionist painting of blurred lights and shadowed towers.

I stood with my back to the private elevator, vodka warming my throat, watching the city distort through the water running down the glass.

Twenty stories below, people scurried through the October storm like ants fleeing a flood.

Up here, insulated by steel and bulletproof glass, I waited for my prize to arrive.

My prize. The words tasted wrong even in my thoughts. Clara Albright wasn't a prize—she was leverage, a message written in her father's weakness, a debt collection with interest compounding by the hour.

The vodka burned away the lie before it could settle.

I'd spent three hours preparing the spare bedroom on this floor, my private sanctuary that even my brothers rarely entered.

The industrial space with its exposed brick and steel beams now held a bed dressed in Egyptian cotton sheets, a fully stocked ensuite bathroom with French toiletries, and a closet filled with designer clothes in size four.

Every piece selected with her in mind—conservative enough to make her comfortable, expensive enough to remind her she was owned.

I'd told myself the preparation was strategic.

A comfortable prisoner was a cooperative prisoner.

A cooperative prisoner was useful leverage.

But my hand had lingered on a black cocktail dress, imagining how the silk would cling to her curves, how the neckline would frame her throat.

I'd ordered it added to the collection before I could stop myself.

After the pickup, the boys had taken her briefly to a safehouse for check in. She’d been examined for bugs, registered onto our systems, the full works. They were due here any moment.

The phone vibrated against the window where I'd set it. Mikhail's text: "Five minutes out. She fought the whole way."

Of course she had. The woman who'd scratched my lieutenant's face and screamed for help on Fifth Avenue wouldn't go quietly into captivity.

My body responded to the thought—blood heating, muscles tensing with anticipation that had nothing to do with business.

I crushed the reaction with another swallow of vodka.

She was Viktor Petrov's daughter. A means to an end. Nothing more.

But I didn't turn from the window when the elevator's private access chimed.

Didn't move as expensive shoes clicked across my marble floor, followed by the heavier tread of Mikhail's boots.

I made them wait, made her wonder, while I finished my vodka with deliberate slowness.

Control was everything now. Control over the situation, over her, over myself.

"She’s hard work," Mikhail reported, his voice carrying the particular exhaustion that came from wrestling with someone who wouldn't accept defeat. "Tried to jump from the car at a red light. Nearly broke her hand pounding on the windows. Kept punching the wall at the safe house."

I heard her sharp intake of breath as she took in the space—my space, where I'd brought her to learn what betrayal cost. The clink of crystal as I set down my empty glass echoed through the room.

"Any injuries?" I asked, still facing the window.

"Bruised wrists from the restraints she made necessary. Nothing permanent."

Restraints. My jaw tightened at the image—her delicate wrists marked by struggle, skin marred because she couldn't accept the inevitable. When I finally turned, the sight of her hit me like a physical blow.

She stood in the center of my living room like a hurricane's aftermath.

The midnight blue dress that had been elegant hours ago now hung torn at one shoulder.

Her left foot bare, toes curled against the cold marble.

Mascara smudged beneath eyes that burned with fury despite the fear I could smell on her.

Her chin raised in defiance that should have looked ridiculous given her circumstances but instead made my pulse race.

She was magnificent in her destruction.

I forced my expression into cold assessment, the same look I used when examining a building before demolition. Just an object to be evaluated, cataloged, controlled.

"Welcome to your new home, Miss Albright," I said, noting the tiny twitch of emotion when I used her chosen name instead of Petrov.

Her hands clenched at her sides, knuckles white with the effort of not attacking me.

I could see her calculating distances—to the elevator, to the windows, to the kitchen where knives might wait.

Let her calculate. Every exit required my biometric signature.

Every window was reinforced with bulletproof glass.

She could explore every inch of this space and find no escape that didn't go through me.

"Mikhail," I said without looking away from her face. "You can go."

"Pakhan." He hesitated, and I knew what he was thinking.

Leaving me alone with a woman who'd already proven she'd fight was a security risk.

But Mikhail had worked for me long enough to recognize dismissal in my tone.

The elevator doors whispered shut, and the biometric lock engaged with a soft click that might as well have been a gunshot for how Clara flinched.

We stood in perfect stillness, predator and prey finally alone in the den.

Except she didn’t look like prey. She should have been terrified—a twenty-three-year-old society girl trapped in a bratva pakhan's private domain.

Instead, she studied me like I was a problem to be solved, those hazel eyes cataloging every detail with intelligence that her father had been too stupid to recognize.

"Your room is through there," I said, nodding toward the hallway. "Everything you need has been provided."

"Everything except freedom."

"Freedom must be paid for, Miss Albright. Your father stole three million dollars from my organization. Until that debt is settled—with significant interest I might add—you belong to me. The sooner you accept that, the easier this becomes."

Her laugh was bitter as winter wind. "Like I'm property."

"Exactly like that," I agreed, keeping my voice emotionless even as something twisted in my chest at the defeat that flashed across her face. "Go to your room. I’ll be through soon to explain some things to you."

I turned back to the window, dismissing her with my body language.

In the reflection, I watched her stand there for a long moment, shoulders straight despite everything she'd endured tonight.

Then she walked toward the hallway with as much dignity as someone could manage with one shoe and a torn dress.

She paused at the threshold, and I waited for some final defiance, some last word to maintain her illusion of control.

"My name is Clara," she said quietly. "Not 'Miss Albright.' Not 'Petrov's daughter.' Just Clara. If I'm going to be your prisoner, at least use my actual name."

Then she disappeared into the darkness of the hallway, leaving me alone with the rain and the ghost of her perfume and the uncomfortable realization that I wanted to say her name, wanted to taste how it would feel on my tongue. Clara. Soft and sharp simultaneously, like the woman herself.

I poured another vodka and told myself the tightness in my chest was anticipation for Viktor's suffering when he learned his daughter was beyond his reach.

It wasn't because of the way she'd stood in my space, demolished but unbroken.

It wasn't because she'd asked me to use her name.

It definitely wasn't because some part of me wanted her to belong to me in ways that had nothing to do with her father's debt.

I gave her twenty minutes to explore her cage while I sat in the leather chair that commanded the best view of the living space.

The security tablet on the side table showed her moving through the bedroom I'd prepared—touching the thousand-thread-count sheets like they might be poisoned, running her fingers along the window frames searching for latches that didn't exist, discovering the ensuite bathroom had no lock on the door.

Each small revelation played across her face in the grainy security feed.

Frustration. Fear. That stubborn tilt of her chin that meant she hadn't accepted defeat.

She’d been alone long enough. I walked through to join her as she moved to the windows, pressing her palms flat against the glass.

"Bulletproof," I said, making her jump. "Reinforced steel frame. Even if you managed to break it—which you won't—it's a twenty-story drop onto concrete."

Her hands stayed on the glass, fingers spread like she could push through by will alone. "Someone will notice I'm missing."

"Your father already knows. He received my message an hour ago."

That made her turn. "What message?"

"That his daughter is enjoying my hospitality until his debts are paid." I let my gaze travel over her slowly, cataloguing damage that was my responsibility now. "He has seventy-two hours to respond with a payment plan before interest begins compounding aggressively."

She moved to the elevator next, pressing the call button repeatedly though the biometric lock's red light never wavered. Her determination might have been admirable if it wasn't so futile. Like watching a bird throw itself against a window, beautiful and tragic and ultimately pointless.

"My thumbprint only," I informed her. "The stairs are through a door in my office, also biometric.”

“So I just need to chop your thumb off.”

I ignored this and continued. “The service elevator requires a key card that only I possess. You could set the building on fire and you'd still need me to leave."

"Then I'll set the building on fire," she said, but the threat lacked conviction. She was testing boundaries, not making plans. Not yet.