Page 13 of Bratva Daddy (Underworld Daddies #1)

She took the chair at the opposite end of the table without being told, maximizing the distance between us. It felt as though this was something she’d done a million times before.

The lamb my housekeeper had prepared sat on her plate like a picture—perfectly pink, garnished with rosemary. She picked up her fork with mechanical movements, cutting tiny pieces she moved around the plate without eating.

The hollow look from the bathroom mirror had settled into her features. Not the fierce woman who'd destroyed my kitchen or the terrified girl who'd been dragged into my penthouse. This was something else—resignation maybe, or just exhaustion so complete that even defiance took too much energy.

We ate in silence for a few minutes. Or rather, I ate while she performed an elaborate theater of eating that involved no actual consumption. Cut, move, arrange, repeat. Building tiny pyramids of lamb and vegetables like a child playing with food they'd been ordered to finish.

"How did you know about the Kozlov deal?" The question escaped before I could stop it, genuine curiosity overriding my determination to maintain distance.

She looked up, surprised by the break in silence. Those hazel eyes studied me like she was trying to determine if this was a trap, another power play in our unwilling game.

“Do I have to answer? Is that one of the rules?”

“It is.”

"Well. I know because my father is an idiot," she said finally, setting down her fork with a soft click against the china.

The bitter laugh that followed contained years of frustration.

"He monologues about his corruption over dinner while I sit there like furniture. I’m just a sounding board for his criminal confessions. "

My eyes narrowed.

“He talks at you?”

"He just . . . talks," she continued, staring at her untouched lamb.

"About bribes and construction contracts and which Russians are paying him this week.

Like I'm too stupid to understand or too irrelevant to matter if I did.

Two weeks ago, he spent an entire dinner explaining how he was going to destroy your permits while taking Kozlov money.

Drank a bottle of wine and detailed every aspect of his betrayal while I sat there eating salmon and pretending not to exist."

"You could have gone to the authorities," I observed, though even as I said it, I knew how naive it sounded.

Her laugh this time was sharp enough to cut glass.

"With what proof? My word against the deputy mayor's?

And even if they believed me, then what?

Destroy my own life in the process? End up testifying in court about my father's crimes while the media painted me as either a traitor or too stupid to know what was happening in my own home? "

She met my eyes directly, and I saw intelligence there that Viktor had been too blind to recognize. His daughter had been cataloguing his crimes for years, storing information she could never use, watching him betray everyone who'd ever trusted him.

"Besides," she added, voice dropping to barely above a whisper, "who would I turn to?

The FBI who take bribes from men like you?

The NYPD who are on three different payrolls?

The judges my father has dinner with every Sunday?

There's no clean authority in this city.

Just different levels of corruption wearing different uniforms."

She was right, of course. The system was rotten from foundation to penthouse. Men like me and Viktor Petrov had made sure of that, buying loyalty and silence in equal measure. There was no white knight to save her, no higher authority that wasn't already compromised.

"So you said nothing," I said.

"I said nothing." She picked up her fork again, stabbed a piece of lamb with unnecessary force.

"I smiled and shopped and went to charity galas and pretended my father wasn't a monster selling the city to whoever paid best. At least in his house, I could pretend to have a future.

Save money, plan events, imagine that someday I'd escape to something better. "

She gestured around my penthouse with her fork, encompassing the luxury prison I'd created for her.

“Looks like I hit the jackpot.”

“We live in our fathers’ shadows,” I said, before I knew why.

"Fathers’s shadows?" she asked, thinking about my words.

Then, she seemed to gather courage. "All I am is a pawn in another man's game. Moved around the board according to someone else’s strategy, valued only for how I affect their bottom line.

You and my father, you're the same. You both see me as currency, not a person. "

Each comparison between me and Viktor Petrov felt like an insult to everything I'd built, everything that separated the Volkov organization from common criminals. We had honor, codes, principles that meant something. We weren't like Viktor, selling loyalty to the highest bidder.

But looking at Clara across the table—forced to wear clothes I'd chosen, eat meals I'd provided, follow rules I'd established—the distinction blurred uncomfortably.

"You're right," I said, and her eyes widened slightly at the admission. "You are a pawn. Nothing more."

Something flickered across her face—hurt maybe, though she tried to hide it. Had she expected something different? Some acknowledgment that she was more than leverage?

"Don't mistake my civility for interest in your feelings," I continued, needing to establish distance, to rebuild walls her tears had cracked. "You're here because your father stole from me. When he pays, you leave. Until then, you're property to be maintained, nothing more."

"At least you're honest about it."

The resignation in her voice bothered me more than defiance would have.

Like she'd expected nothing better, had already accepted that she'd never be more than an object to be traded between powerful men.

Twenty-three years old and already convinced she didn't matter except as currency in someone else's transaction.

I stood abruptly, unable to sit across from her any longer. Unable to maintain the fiction that she was just leverage when every word she spoke revealed a woman who'd been trapped long before I'd taken her. The lamb turned to ash in my mouth, the wine tasted like blood.

"Finish your dinner," I ordered, though she hadn't eaten more than two bites.

"I'm not hungry."

"I don't care. Eat."

We stared at each other across the table, two people trapped in roles neither of us had chosen.

“You’re going to treat me like a child, huh?” she said, fire in her mouth.

“If that’s what it takes.”

She stared at me, then spoke, voice laced with sarcasm. “Okay, Daddy. Yes, Daddy, I’ll do whatever you say, Daddy.”

Even as I tried not to let the words get to me, I felt heat in my chest and my pulse started to race. Those words on her perfect lips, the way her big eyes sparkled as she spoke, it made me weak in a way I’d never experienced again.

It would be so easy to growl a demand at her, to tell her to call me Daddy again, with feeling. To slip that sensible top off and capture her soft breast with my mouth.

But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.

“Be careful the way you speak to me. Don’t say something you’ll regret.”

“Anything you say, Daddy.”

She raised a chunk of lamb to her lips, then carefully ran her tongue over the bloody meat, before slipping it into her mouth.

I couldn’t stand it, so without a word, I rose and left.

Rules. This Little Girl needed rules.

Through the monitor, I watched her sit at the table for another twenty minutes, moving food around her plate without eating. When she finally stood, she carefully arranged her napkin beside the plate, pushed in her chair with precise movements.

She disappeared into her room, and I heard the door close softly.

I poured myself vodka and stood at the window, looking out at the city I controlled. Somewhere out there, Viktor Petrov was probably drinking his own expensive alcohol, calculating whether his daughter was worth three million dollars plus interest.

Thing is, I already knew.

She was worth much more than that. And I was going to prove it to her.