Page 3 of Bratva Daddy (Underworld Daddies #1)

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."

T he 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.