Page 42 of Bratva Daddy (Underworld Daddies #1)

Clara

T he safe house kitchen had all the wrong shadows.

Three days in this Queens bunker, and I still reached for light switches that weren't there, still expected the coffee maker to be on the left instead of the right.

Alexei had left two hours ago to handle what he called "internal discipline"—one of his construction crews had gotten creative with the books, and now they needed reminding why that was inadvisable.

The kettle whistled, sharp enough to make me flinch.

Everything in this place was louder than the penthouse—the floors that creaked under my weight, the pipes that groaned when I ran water, the refrigerator that hummed like it was plotting something.

But Alexei had already made it mine in small ways.

My favorite English Breakfast sat in the cabinet exactly where I'd have put it.

The honey I preferred over sugar. My favorite brand of oat milk.

I watched the tea darken in slow, spreading clouds and tried to name what I felt. Anticipation, yes. Satisfaction at the thought of Viktor's shock when the FBI showed up. But underneath that, something messier. Something that tasted like guilt.

"He's still my father," I said to the empty kitchen, hating how weak it sounded.

The man who'd never loved me, never saw me, who'd called me crazy on live television.

But also the man who'd taught me to tie my shoes when I was five, who'd carried me on his shoulders at the Central Park Zoo, who'd held my hand at my mother's funeral even while he calculated her life insurance payout.

I wanted him to pay. God, I wanted him to suffer for every year of invisibility, for every dinner where I'd been furniture, for using my mother's memory as a weapon.

But I didn't want him dead. The thought of Dmitry putting a bullet in Viktor's head, of identifying his body at some morgue, made my stomach turn.

"Prison," I reminded myself, carrying my tea to the living room. "Disgrace. Poverty. Not death."

Alexei had promised, and Alexei kept his promises. Even the dark ones. Especially those.

The living room was sparse—functional furniture, heavy curtains, a bookshelf half-filled with volumes in Russian and English.

Everything chosen for utility rather than beauty, the opposite of the penthouse's carefully curated elegance.

But there were touches of care here too.

A cashmere throw draped over the couch. Fresh roses on the coffee table, pink and beautiful.

I needed distraction from the circular thoughts, from the image of my father in handcuffs that kept playing behind my eyelids. Alexei had given me permission to explore, to "make yourself at home," though we both knew this would never be home.

His office door stood partially open, and I pushed through without hesitation. If he hadn't wanted me here, it would have been locked. Alexei was too careful for accidental access.

The room smelled like him immediately—that cologne that meant safety now, leather from the chair, smoke.

Darker than his penthouse office, more confined, but organized with the same obsessive precision.

Books lined one wall, spines in alternating Russian and English, arranged by some system I couldn't decode.

His desk was clear except for a laptop, closed and probably encrypted six ways from Sunday.

Ivan had been working in here earlier, leaving behind the ghost of cigarette smoke and a legal pad covered in numbers that might as well have been hieroglyphics. Forensic accounting, probably. Following dirty money through shell companies and offshore accounts until it led back to my father's door.

I ran my fingers along book spines, recognizing some titles from the penthouse. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, of course, but also contemporary crime novels, books on psychology, a surprising amount of poetry. A complete collection of Pablo Neruda in translation, pages worn soft from reading.

The boxes caught my eye—stacked in the corner, still sealed with packing tape from the penthouse move.

Alexei's personal files, most likely. Things too sensitive to trust to movers, too important to leave behind.

I shouldn't look. The thought formed clear and definitive, which meant I was absolutely going to look.

One box was already partially open, tape curling at the edges like it had been revisited.

I could leave it alone. Could go back to the living room, drink my tea, pretend I'd never noticed.

But my name was visible on a folder tab, my last name—not Petrov but Albright, my mother's name that I'd taken—written in Alexei's precise handwriting.

My hands weren't quite steady as I pulled the folder free. It was thick, organized with colored tabs, heavier than any single person's file should be. The cover bore only my name and a date from three years ago.

Three years. Before any of this. Before my father's betrayal, before the Kozlov connection, before any justification for surveillance.

I opened it, and my breath stopped.

The first photo stopped my breathing entirely.

Me at college graduation, cap tilted, laughing with friends whose names I'd almost forgotten.

The kind of genuine joy I hadn't felt in years, captured from maybe fifty feet away.

The date stamp in the corner read three years ago.

Three years. Before my father's deals with the Kozlovs.

Before any reason to watch me except interest.

My hands shook as I flipped to the next photo.

My twenty-first birthday at that Italian place in SoHo, the one my father hadn't attended because of a "scheduling conflict.

" I was smiling at the waiter bringing out a cake my friends had secretly ordered.

Shot through the window, angle suggesting he'd been in a car across the street.

More photos followed, a catalog of my life I hadn't known was being documented.

Weekly visits to my mother's grave, always alone, always with pink roses.

I'd thought that was private, sacred, mine.

But there I was in glossy surveillance photos, kneeling at her headstone, lips moving in one-sided conversations I'd believed no one else would hear.

The margins held notes in Russian. I pulled out my phone, fumbling with a translation app.

The Cyrillic resolved into English that made my chest tight: "She looks hollow.

" Next to a charity gala photo where I'm smiling my donor smile: "The smile doesn't reach her eyes.

" By a shot of me leaving another society function early: "Someone should save her from this life. "

He'd been watching, analyzing, seeing the emptiness I'd worked so hard to hide. Part of me wanted to be furious at the invasion. Part of me wanted to cry that someone had finally noticed.

More intimate surveillance followed. Me entering Dr. Martinez's office, the therapist I'd paid cash to see for six months so my father wouldn't find out through insurance records.

Multiple shots over multiple weeks, documenting my secret attempts to deal with depression I couldn't admit to anyone.

One note read: "Therapy Tuesdays, 3 PM. She always stops for tea after. Always looks lighter."

A photo from Central Park stopped me cold.

Four months after my father had been particularly cruel at dinner, telling his poker buddies I was "pretty enough but not much going on upstairs.

" I'd gone to the park to cry where no one would see.

Except someone had seen. The photo showed me on a bench, face in my hands, shoulders shaking.

The note: "Viktor destroyed something in her tonight. I wanted to kill him."

My hands trembled harder as I found receipts.

Coffee from my favorite shop, timestamped and annotated with my order.

Book purchases from the local store where I'd hide when home became unbearable.

Even a receipt from the pharmacy, with a note indicating he'd identified my birth control prescription.

The violation of it should have made me run.

Instead, I kept reading, unable to stop.

One photo from four months ago made my blood freeze.

Me in my bedroom window at my father's penthouse, wearing just a nightgown, staring out at the city.

The angle meant he'd been in a building across the street, high enough to see into the twentieth floor.

High enough to watch me in what I'd thought was privacy.

The note beneath it, translated: "She looks like a princess in a tower, waiting for rescue."

Another folder contained detailed reports, typed and methodical.

My coffee preferences broken down by weather—hot latte when it was cold, iced vanilla when warm, black during my period.

My college transcripts, somehow obtained, with handwritten notes about my perfect GPA that my father had never acknowledged.

Even my childhood medical records, annotated with observations about treatment for anxiety after my mother's death.

He knew about my mother's postpartum depression before my father weaponized it on television.

The medical records showed he'd known the truth—that she'd sought help, gotten better, that the cancer had killed her, not mental illness.

He'd known and had still let me tell him, let me reveal it like it was new information.

A section labeled "Behavioral Patterns" made me sit down hard on his desk chair.

He'd documented everything. How I bit my lip when nervous.

How I played with my mother's wedding ring on a chain around my neck when I missed her.

How I automatically smiled when men spoke to me, even when they were being cruel.

"Conditioned response," he'd written. "Survival mechanism. "