Page 44 of Bratva Daddy (Underworld Daddies #1)

I dropped my hands, met his eyes across the space between us.

"Matryoshka."

The safeword hung between us like a blade. I watched his face change—not surprise but something deeper. Resignation maybe, or acceptance. His shoulders straightened slightly, every muscle going still in that way that meant he was exerting absolute control over himself.

"You need space," he said. Not a question, just recognition of what the safeword meant. "I'll sleep in my office. Take as long as you need. Tomorrow, the next day, next year—I don’t care—take however you need."

He stood slowly, carefully, like sudden movements might shatter something irreparable between us. I could see him forcibly not reaching for me, keeping his hands at his sides when every line of his body screamed to close the distance between us.

"I don't know how to process this," I admitted, voice small.

"I know," he said simply. "It was wrong. Is wrong. The whole thing is built on a fundamental violation of your privacy and autonomy. I won't insult you by trying to justify it."

"But you won't apologize for it either."

"I'll apologize for the method," he said, taking a single step toward the door.

"For the violation of privacy, for taking away your choice, for the power imbalance.

But I won't apologize for the result. Not when you're finally alive instead of performing life.

Not when you're angry instead of empty. Not when you're here, real and present, instead of fading away in your father's penthouse. "

He moved to the doorway, paused without turning back.

"The operation on the 24th," he started.

"Still happening?" I asked.

"If you want it to. Nothing happens without your word now. You can walk away from all of this—from me, from the operation, from this life. I'll have Ivan create documents, set you up with money, a new identity if you want. You can disappear, properly this time, on your own terms."

The offer sat between us, genuine and terrible. Freedom, finally. The ability to walk away from both my father and Alexei, to start fresh somewhere where no one knew my name or my history. It should have been tempting. Instead, it felt like another kind of death.

" I don't want to run and be invisible somewhere else."

"Then what do you want?"

"Time," I said. "I need time to think. To process. To figure out how to live with this."

"You'll have it," he said from the doorway.

Then he was gone, footsteps fading toward his office, leaving me alone with three years of surveillance photos and no idea what to do with the twisted gratitude and violation warring in my chest.

I hadn't slept. The folder lay open on the coffee table, and I'd spent the night studying three years of surveillance like they were tea leaves that could tell me my future.

Or maybe my past. At 3 AM, I'd heard Alexei in his office, speaking Russian on the phone—probably about the upcoming operation, finalizing details for my father's destruction.

But he'd kept his promise, hadn't come to check on me, hadn't pushed.

The photos told a different story in the dark hours before dawn.

Without the initial shock of violation, I could see what lived beneath his obsession.

Every margin note documented not just surveillance but genuine concern.

"She didn't eat lunch again." "Third day in the same dress—laundry broken or depression? "

It was deeply wrong. Invasive. Creepy by any rational standard.

The violation of it should have sent me running.

The healthy response would be to take his offer—new identity, clean start, far away from both my father and this beautiful monster who'd appointed himself my savior.

That's what the therapist I'd seen secretly would say. What any rational person would advise.

But I'd never been rational. And maybe that's why Alexei and I fit—two broken people whose damage aligned perfectly, whose darkness recognized each other across a crowded fundraiser three years ago.

At 7 AM, I stood outside his office door. He was at his desk, still in yesterday's clothes, looking exhausted in a way that made him seem more human. Vulnerable, even, though he'd kill me for thinking it.

"You didn't sleep," I observed from the doorway.

"Neither did you," he responded carefully, like I was a wild animal that might bolt. His eyes tracked over me, cataloguing signs of my emotional state the way he'd been doing for three years.

"I'm still angry," I said, entering the room but maintaining distance. "You had no right to watch me like that. To document my life without consent. To know me so completely before I knew you existed."

"I know." Simple acceptance, no justification.

"But I'm also . . ." I struggled for words that could capture the complexity. "No one's ever paid that much attention to me. My father doesn't know my coffee order after twenty-three years. You knew it after watching me for a week."

I moved closer, perching on the edge of his desk. Near but not touching, declaring space while acknowledging connection.

"It's fucked up, Alexei. This whole thing is so broken I don't even know where to start fixing it."

"Maybe we don't fix it," he suggested carefully. "Maybe we just accept that it's broken and build something anyway."

"On a foundation of stalking and kidnapping?"

"On a foundation of seeing and being seen. Everything else is just context."

I laughed, but it had edges. "Context. You watched me for three years and kidnapped me, but sure, context."

"You threw books at my wall and then called me Daddy while I fucked you against the bathroom counter after I killed six men," he countered. "We're past normal, Clara. We've been past normal since the moment you walked into my office wearing my shirt and demanded answers instead of cowering."

The truth of that settled between us. We weren't normal. Weren't healthy by any standard definition. But maybe that's what made us work—two people too damaged for normal love, finding something deeper in the darkness.

"My father. The operation. He needs to pay for what he's done. For Mom, for me, for everyone he's hurt. Prison, not death."

"Prison," Alexei confirmed. "Though Dmitry's disappointed."

"Dmitry's always disappointed when he doesn't get to kill someone."

"True." A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "So we move forward?"

"We move forward," I agreed, then added the harder truth. "With everything. The operation, us, this completely fucked up thing we're building."

"You're staying?" The hope in his voice nearly broke me.

"I already chose you," I said simply. "I chose you when I signed that contract, when I called you Daddy, when I let you see me in little space. Finding out about the surveillance doesn't change that choice. It just . . . adds context."

I slid off the desk, moved between his knees, let him pull me closer but kept my hands on his shoulders, maintaining some control.

"But no more secrets," I said firmly. "No more hidden folders or surveillance I don't know about. If you're obsessed with me, I get to know about it. All of it. Every thought, every plan, every moment you watch me when you think I'm not looking."

"Deal," he said immediately, hands settling on my waist with careful pressure.

"And I get to read everything," I continued. "Every note you've made, every photo you've taken. Three years of surveillance—I want to see it all."

"It might disturb you."

"I'm already disturbed," I countered. "Might as well know the full extent."

He studied my face, and I let him see everything—the anger that hadn't fully faded, the violation I still felt, but also the desperate gratitude for being seen, the relief of being known, the twisted recognition of finding someone whose darkness matched mine.

"I love you," he said suddenly, the words hanging between us like a confession at gunpoint.

"I know," I said, because I did. Three years of surveillance had been a love letter written in violation and care. "I love you too. God help me, but I do. You're mine. My stalker, my kidnapper, my Daddy, my savior. All the contradictions, all the darkness, all of it. Mine."

"Yours," he agreed, pulling me down for a kiss that tasted like exhaustion and promise.

"Breakfast?" he asked against my lips. "I know exactly how you like your eggs when you haven't slept."

I laughed, genuine this time. "Of course you do."