Page 32 of Bratva Daddy (Underworld Daddies #1)

Alexei

T he security monitor cast blue light across my desk, showing Clara curled in my bed like she belonged there.

Little Alex—the wolf she'd named after me—was crushed against her chest, and even in sleep, her fingers worked through his gray fur in self-soothing strokes that made my chest tight with something I refused to name.

I'd been watching her for twenty minutes, pretending to review construction contracts while really studying the way she breathed, how her face had lost all its careful guards in sleep.

Yesterday kept replaying—finding her on my living room floor, thumb in her mouth, tears streaming down her face as she apologized for problems that weren't hers to solve.

The trust required to let herself become that small, that vulnerable, in front of me—a man who'd kidnapped her, who'd laid out rules like prison bars—defied every logical explanation.

My phone sat heavy in my pocket, containing the message thread with Ivan from three days after Clara arrived. "Need items for age regression," I'd typed, no explanation offered. Ivan never asked for one.

Ivan was a good man. He understood me. Didn’t ask questions, didn’t judge. I had thoughts about him, wondered if he was a Daddy Dom, too. We’d never discussed it, of course.

Within six hours, he'd sourced everything—the wolf from an estate sale in Connecticut, handmade by someone's grandmother forty years ago.

The blanket from a specialty shop that understood the weight and texture littles needed.

The coloring books and crayons, the juice boxes, even the specific brand of chocolate milk I'd remembered her mentioning once.

Some instinct had told me she'd need them.

The same instinct that had me checking on her every hour, bringing her tea she didn't ask for, choosing her clothes each morning like a ritual of care.

Twenty-three years old, but something in her eyes looked ancient and infant simultaneously—someone who'd been forced to grow up too fast and never got to be small when it mattered.

I turned from the monitor to the window, Manhattan spreading below in the early morning light.

Somewhere out there, men I'd had killed were buried in concrete foundations.

Their faces visited me sometimes—not in guilt but in inventory.

Seventeen by my own hands, dozens more by my orders.

The Kozlov lieutenant who'd threatened Dmitry. The accountant who'd stolen from us.

Their blood was on my hands. The same hands that had held Clara yesterday while she colored princesses with purple hair. The same hands that had cut the crusts off her sandwich, arranged goldfish crackers by color, tucked her and a stuffed wolf into bed for a nap.

The contradiction should have bothered me.

The pakhan of the Volkov bratva didn't make peanut butter sandwiches or keep juice boxes in his penthouse.

He didn't spend three hours researching age regression psychology or order custom furniture for a little space room that would arrive next week.

He didn't feel his heart crack open when a twenty-three-year-old woman called him Daddy with complete trust.

But maybe that was the point. Maybe the violence and the tenderness weren't opposites but the same impulse expressed differently—the need to control, to affect, to matter.

With my enemies, that meant fear and death.

With Clara, it meant safety and care. Both were power, just wielded with different intentions.

My phone buzzed—Ivan's ringtone, the one reserved for urgent family business.

"Coming up. We have a problem. Check Channel 4 now."

Ivan never panicked. In the fifteen years of my leadership, I'd seen him upset exactly twice—when our father died and when he'd discovered someone skimming from our accounts. If he was texting warnings, something had gone catastrophically wrong.

I grabbed the remote, clicked to Channel 4, and Viktor Petrov's face filled my office television.

He stood at a podium wearing a charcoal suit that probably cost more than most people's cars, his expression arranged in practiced sorrow.

Even from here, I could see the calculation in his eyes—this was performance, not pain.

"—deeply concerned for my daughter's wellbeing," he was saying, hands clasped in front of him like a grieving father rather than the piece of shit who'd sold her childhood for political favors. "Clara has always been fragile, taking after her dear mother in unfortunate ways."

My hand clenched around the remote hard enough that plastic creaked. On screen, Viktor produced a handkerchief, dabbed at eyes that were definitely dry.

"What many don't know is that Clara's mother suffered from severe mental illness before her tragic death. We kept this private to protect my dear wife’s memory, but recent events have forced my hand.

Clara has shown signs of similar instability—paranoid delusions, violent outbursts, inappropriate attachments to older men who might take advantage of her vulnerable state. "

The words were surgical in their precision. Clearly, he was worried that Clara might let slip some of his secrets. He was moving to preemptively discredit her.

I turned off the television before I threw something through it. Thirty seconds of Viktor Petrov's voice was enough to make me want to paint walls with his blood. But this required strategy, not violence. At least not yet.

Clara needed to wake up properly, needed to be big enough to handle this betrayal. I couldn't have her slipping back into little space when she learned her father had just publicly destroyed her reputation to save his own ass.

I moved through the penthouse on silent feet, a skill learned long before I became pakhan.

The bedroom door opened without sound, and there she was—still curled around Little Alex, hair spread across my black pillows like spun gold.

In sleep, she looked impossibly young, impossibly trusting, impossibly mine.

I sat on the edge of the bed carefully, not wanting to startle her. My hand found her hair, stroking gently, the way that always soothed her.

"Clara," I murmured, voice soft but insistent. "Little one, time to wake up."

She made a small sound of protest, burrowing deeper into the pillows. Her fingers tightened on the wolf, and for a moment, I wanted to let her stay here—safe in sleep where her father's betrayals couldn't reach.

But the world wouldn't wait for us to be ready.

"Baby girl," I tried again, hand still moving through her hair. "Daddy needs you to wake up and be big Clara today."

Her eyes fluttered open, hazy with sleep.

For a moment, she just blinked at me, caught between dreams and waking.

Then focus sharpened, and she was back—not the little girl who needed chocolate milk and Disney movies, but the woman who'd helped run a charity, who'd survived twenty-three years of Viktor Petrov's particular brand of neglect.

"What's wrong?" she asked immediately, because of course she could read the tension in my shoulders, the careful control in my voice. "What happened?"

"Your father happened," I said, helping her sit up, making sure she was fully present before continuing. "He held a press conference. Ivan's on his way up with the full footage."

The last traces of sleep vanished from her eyes, replaced by something harder, sharper. "What did he do?"

"What he does best," I said, standing to give her space to process what was coming. "Protecting himself by destroying you."

I van arrived seven minutes later, and the fact that my ice-cold brother's jaw was clenched tight enough to crack teeth told me everything about how bad this would be.

He didn't bother with greetings, just set his laptop on my desk with movements too sharp for his usual precision.

Clara had dressed quickly—jeans and one of my shirts she'd claimed, her hair pulled back in a messy bun that made her look younger than her twenty-three years.

She curled into my office chair, knees drawn up, coffee mug clutched between her hands like armor.

Little Alex was nowhere to be seen, but I'd noticed the slight bulge behind the throw pillow—hidden but within reach if needed.

"Your father held a press conference an hour ago," Ivan said without preamble, his voice carrying an edge I rarely heard. "Every major news outlet carried it live."

He turned the laptop toward us, and Viktor Petrov's face filled the screen again. This time I forced myself to watch, to catalog every lie for future retribution. Clara went still beside me, that particular stillness that preceded either explosion or collapse.

"Thank you all for coming," Viktor began, his expression a masterpiece of practiced concern. "I've called this conference to address concerns about my daughter Clara's recent disappearance and to ask for the public's help in ensuring her safety."

Clara's knuckles went white around her mug, but she said nothing.

"What many don't know," Viktor continued, "is that our family has struggled with a history of mental illness.

Clara's mother—my late wife—suffered from severe psychological issues before her tragic death.

She experienced paranoid episodes, violent outbursts, inappropriate attachments to men she barely knew.

We sought help, of course, but the disease had progressed too far. "

"Liar," Clara whispered, so quiet I almost missed it. "She had postpartum depression. She was in therapy. She was getting better until the cancer—"

She stopped, jaw clenched, as Viktor kept talking.