Page 21 of Bratva Daddy (Underworld Daddies #1)

She laughed, but it had edges. "Define proper. My father's chef made beautiful food. I just never had much appetite sitting across from him while he detailed his crimes."

The casual mention of her father's neglect made me want to hurt Viktor Petrov in new and creative ways. Instead, I pushed the honey closer to her. "Eat, davochka,"

"You're not my—" She stopped, color flooding her face as we both heard what she'd been about to say. Not my father. Or maybe, not my Daddy. Yet.

"Finish your breakfast," I commanded softly, and watched with satisfaction as she spread honey on the toast, taking a real bite.

I tried to work, tried to focus on contracts and territories and the million details that kept the Volkov empire running. But every hour, something would pull me from my office. She needed tea. She might be cold. She'd been too quiet for too long.

"You're hovering," she accused when I appeared for the fourth time, carrying sliced apples and peanut butter.

"I'm ensuring my asset remains in good condition." The lie came automatically, but we both knew better. I was checking on her because I needed to see her, needed to know she was still there, still safe, still mine even if I couldn't act on it.

The Russian lessons started by accident. She'd been reading Dostoevsky in translation, scowling at the page like it had personally offended her.

"What's wrong?" I asked, settling beside her on the couch, careful to maintain distance.

"This sentence is weird terrible. Feels like the word ‘soul’ doesn’t fit.”

I looked at the page.

“Very sharp,” I said. “It’s a poor translation. They turned 'dusha' into 'soul' but that's not quite right. It's more like the thing that makes you essentially yourself. Your spiritual essence, your emotional core, the part that exists beyond your body."

She turned to me with such delight I had to fight not to kiss her. "Teach me more! Teach me the words that don't translate."

So I did. Taught her toska—that aching spiritual longing for something you can't name. Taught her razluka—the pain of being separated from someone you love. Taught her all the words except the one that mattered most: moya—mine.

"How do you say 'fuck off' in Russian?" she asked one afternoon, curled in her corner of the couch with her knees drawn up.

"Otvali," I said, then watched her try to repeat it.

"Not blood?" she pronounced instead, mangling it so badly I actually laughed—a real laugh, not the controlled sounds I made in business meetings.

"No, little one. Blyad is fuck. Otvali is fuck off. Very different."

She tried again, failed again, and suddenly we were both laughing. Clara giggling until she couldn't breathe, me laughing at her terrible pronunciation and how oddly endearing it was. For a moment, we were just two people sharing a language lesson, not captor and captive, not pakhan and leverage.

The evenings were the hardest. We'd developed a routine—dinner at seven, then reading or watching something on TV, her in her corner of the couch, me in my chair, both of us pretending we weren't hyperaware of every movement the other made.

By nine-thirty, she'd start yawning, trying to hide it behind her hand.

"Bedtime, little one," I'd say, and she'd go without argument, padding down the hallway in her socked feet while I tried not to watch the way her hips moved.

But tonight was different. Tonight she'd fallen asleep on the couch, book open on her chest, head tilted at an angle that would hurt when she woke. I sat in my chair for twenty minutes, watching her breathe, telling myself to wake her, send her to bed properly.

Instead, by the time I found myself sliding my arms under her, lifting her against my chest. She weighed nothing, fit perfectly in my arms like she'd been designed for this exact purpose. Her head found my shoulder immediately, nuzzling into my neck with a soft sound that destroyed me.

"Alexei?" she mumbled, not really awake.

"Shh, go back to sleep," I murmured, carrying her down the hallway, trying not to notice how right this felt.

She buried her face in my chest, arms coming up to wrap around my neck, and I had to stop walking for a moment just to breathe through the sensation. This was what I wanted—Clara trusting me enough to stay asleep in my arms, letting me take care of her, letting me be the one who carried her to bed.

I laid her down carefully, pulling the covers up to her chin. She made a soft protest when I let go, reaching for me in her sleep, and I had to force myself to step back before I crawled into that bed with her.

"Sleep well, moya malenkaya," I whispered in Russian, knowing she wouldn't understand. My little one.

T he key had lived in my pocket for eleven days, burning against my thigh every time Clara smiled, every time she curled into her corner of the couch like she belonged there.

I'd catch myself touching it during meetings with my brothers, running my thumb over the worn metal while they discussed territories and payments, thinking about whether she was ready.

Whether I was ready to show her this piece of myself I'd never shared with anyone.

"You've been good this week," I said after lunch, watching her arrange the last bites of her sandwich into a perfect triangle.

She'd eaten everything without prompting, even asked for seconds on the soup.

The pride I felt was ridiculous—a grown woman eating lunch shouldn't make my chest tight with satisfaction, but here we were.

Clara looked up, suspicious. "Good" in our strange dynamic usually meant she hadn't thrown anything, hadn't refused meals, had gone to bed when told. But there was something else in her expression—hope maybe, or curiosity about what "being good" might earn her.

I produced the key, letting it catch the light from the windows. "I want to show you something."

She stood immediately, that eager curiosity that made her look years younger than twenty-three. "What is it?"

"Come," I said, leading her to what looked like a regular wall panel near my office. Her shoulder brushed mine as she leaned in to watch me press a hidden catch, revealing a narrow staircase that spiraled upward.

"Secret passages?" She sounded delighted. "This penthouse keeps getting more interesting. Are you secretly Batman? Is this your Batcave access?"

"Better," I said, guiding her up with a hand on her lower back that I told myself was for safety on the narrow steps.

The door at the top opened onto another world.

Clara's gasp was everything I'd imagined and more. She stepped out onto the rooftop garden with the wonder of a child seeing snow for the first time, turning in a slow circle to take it all in.

"Alexei," she breathed, and my name on her lips in that tone—soft awe mixed with something deeper—made the eleven days of waiting worth it.

The garden sprawled across the entire rooftop, contained by glass walls that protected it from wind while maintaining the view.

Dwarf fruit trees in massive planters—apple, pear, cherry—created small groves.

Raised beds overflowed with late season vegetables, squash vines trailing along the edges, arugula nestled between.

The roses were what I was proudest of—climbing varieties that had taken three years to establish, now heavy with blooms that perfumed the entire space.

But Clara went straight to the details that mattered, the ones that told the real story. Her fingers found the Russian sage first, then the Siberian irises I'd had smuggled in through customs, the lamb's ear that grew wild outside Moscow.

"My grandmother's garden in Moscow had these same plants," I said, the words coming easier than expected. "When I bought this building, I recreated what I could remember."

She stood slowly, really looking at me now. Not the pakhan who'd kidnapped her, not the man who made her follow rules and call him sir. Just Alexei, standing in a garden that was the closest thing to vulnerability I'd ever built.

"The greenhouse," I said, needing to move before she saw too much. "Come see."

Inside the small glass structure, herbal tea plants grew in careful rows, their glossy leaves catching the filtered light.

"She grew her own tea?" Clara asked, understanding immediately.

"Bergamot, chamomile, mint. She said store-bought tea had no soul, no story.

" I touched one of the plants, remembering gnarled hands teaching me to test the soil, to know by touch when they needed water.

"Every blend meant something. Chamomile for sleep, mint for clarity, bergamot for when the world felt too heavy. "

"What would she make for a kidnapped woman with Stockholm syndrome?" Clara asked, but her tone was gentle, teasing rather than accusatory.

"Probably her special blend of honey and consequences," I said, surprised by my own honesty. "She had no patience for self-pity but endless tolerance for genuine struggle."

We moved to the carved bench that faced west, Manhattan spreading before us like a glittering map of power and possibility.

Clara sat close enough that I could feel her warmth, far enough that we weren't quite touching.

The Cyrillic carved into the wood caught her attention—her fingers traced the letters with curiosity.

"What does it say?"

"'Power without honor is empty,'" I translated. "Something she used to tell me when I was young and angry, wanting to be feared more than respected."

"She sounds formidable."

"She was five feet tall and terrified grown men with a look." The memory made me smile. "She survived Stalin, survived the gulags, survived bringing her family to America with nothing but determination. When my father started drinking himself to death, she's the one who held us together."

Clara pulled her knees up, making herself comfortable on the bench in that way she had, like she could create her own space anywhere. "Tell me about her."