Page 34 of Punish Me, Daddy (Boston Kings #8)

T he next day…

Sloane

I expected another quiet day locked in the penthouse.

More surveillance. Another carefully plated breakfast and another tall security guard watching every move I made while Nikolai did whatever Bratva kings did when they weren’t calling you baby girl and taking you apart piece by piece with their bare hands.

I didn’t expect him to toss a navy coat across the bed and say, “Put this on. We’re going out.”

I sat up slowly, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Where?”

He gave me a look.

“The Iron Wolf.”

I blinked. “As in your bar? Your Bratva base? Your testosterone-fueled criminal clubhouse?”

He smiled faintly. “You’ll be fine.”

Before I could argue, he was already out the door.

It took me twenty minutes to shower and throw on something understated: dark gray dress, high neckline, hem just above the knee, a pair of cute black combat boots.

We left together in the elevator and went thirty-two floors down to a private garage.

His car was sleek, matte black, like a shadow.

He opened the door for me. Didn’t say a word.

The drive was calm. Boston slid past the windows in a blur of late morning sunlight and wet pavement. No music. Just the low hum of the engine and the steady rhythm of my heartbeat in my ears.

When we pulled up to the Iron Wolf, he got the door for me like a perfect gentleman.

The outside was unmarked, just a black door, a brass handle, and a flickering light overhead.

Inside, it smelled like old whiskey. The lights were dim, barely illuminating the exposed brick walls and the long, polished bar that gleamed like it had seen blood and bourbon in equal measure.

There were booths along the far wall, all empty and a private back section behind frosted glass.

Nikolai’s hand was warm on the small of my back as he guided me forward to that back room. He didn’t shove, just used calm, steady pressure. At a table in the center of the room, there were four men waiting, all of them unmistakably Morozovs. They fell quiet when we approached.

The first man stood, tall, lean, and annoyingly handsome in a casual sort of way. He looked like the kind of guy who could talk you into selling your grandmother’s engagement ring and then turn around and thank him for the favor.

He smiled like he knew me.

“Welcome to the Iron Wolf,” he said smoothly. “I’m Aleksei.”

He extended his hand, and I took it, because what else was I supposed to do? His grip was warm, confident.

“Your reputation precedes you,” he added in a teasing tone.

Before I could respond, the man beside him spoke. This one didn’t stand. He was tall, yes, but quieter in his posture. Messy dark hair, thin glasses perched on his nose, a tablet in one hand. He glanced up once, offered the faintest nod.

“I’m Ivan,” he said. “I liked your odds manipulation strategy. Inefficient in execution, but solid in concept.”

My jaw ticked. “Thanks?”

“You used a three-year-old leak in a betting API to spike risk perception in real time.” He shrugged. “Smart.”

Aleksei leaned over. “Don’t mind him. He forgets normal people aren’t fluent in code.”

“Or compliments,” Ivan muttered.

The third man stood now. He was taller than the rest, broad shoulders, cropped salt-and-pepper hair, green eyes that pinned me in place like I was some threat he’d already clocked six ways to kill.

“Sergei.”

That was all he said, but it was enough. He didn’t smile, didn’t offer a hand. He just looked at me for a long second, then gave a curt nod and sat back down, arms folded across his chest.

The final man was already watching me. He stayed seated. Fingers laced in front of him on the table. He unfolded his hands, leaned forward just enough to command the moment, and offered me a nod that felt more like a final verdict than a heartfelt greeting.

“Maxim Morozov,” he said.

No theatrics. No warmth. Just a name weighted with something that felt an awful lot like legacy.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Sloane,” Maxim observed.

I sat up a little straighter. “Wish I could say the same.”

His mouth curved. Not in a smile really. Something infinitely more dangerous than that.

“I like sharp girls,” he said. “But sharp things still get put out of reach when they cut too deep.”

A warning. Delivered calmly. Almost kindly even.

I swallowed back the instinct to smart off again. This wasn’t a man you poked. This was the man the others deferred to, even Nikolai, who sat beside me like none of this was unexpected.

Maxim’s eyes raked over me, not in a way that felt lecherous, no. In a way that felt like he was figuring me out. Like he’d already decided who I was and how I fit into this whole charade, and he was just waiting to see if I’d prove him wrong.

He gestured to the drink in front of me.

“Welcome to the table.”

I nodded, fingers curling around the chilled glass of vodka that had somehow appeared beside me. The moment settled. He leaned back, and just like that, the room exhaled again.

Glasses clinked. A few words in Russian slipped between the brothers, too fast for me to catch, but the tone shifted. More focused and way more serious.

As I sat back, the door swung open, and my father walked in.

He stepped into the back room of the Iron Wolf like he owned it, which, of course, he didn’t. Not here. Not in this room. Here, it was the Morozov name that mattered. The brothers’ presence was so thick in the air it might as well have been painted onto the walls.

Still, my father held himself like a man who’d forgotten he’d lost control a long time ago.

His suit was perfect. Dark gray, crisp white shirt, the mayoral pin on his lapel like a silent challenge to everyone else in the room.

But there was a certain tension in his shoulders.

He nodded once toward Nikolai and the rest of the brothers.

“Thanks for letting me come.”

Maxim gave a grunt of acknowledgment from the far side of the table. Sergei didn’t even lift his eyes from his drink. Ivan glanced up from his tablet, his pale blue eyes assessing. Aleksei just smirked. Nikolai rose slightly when he entered.

No one introduced him. They didn’t need to. He was the other king in Boston.

Dad’s eyes skimmed around the table—Nikolai, Aleksei, Ivan, Sergei, and then Maxim—before landing on me. His brow furrowed as his mouth constricted into a thin line. He walked to the empty seat across from Nikolai and sat down like the weight of the entire goddamn city had followed him in.

“I assume you know why I’m here,” my father said.

Nikolai leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “Let me guess. Stillwell?”

Dad nodded once. “Word is he’s going public with everything he knows, sooner than we expected.”

I straightened in my seat, the weight of the moment pressing down. “Which is what, exactly?”

“That you manipulated the odds on a high-profile underground fight,” he said flatly.

I looked at Nikolai, then at Maxim, then back at my father. “So?”

“So,” Dad snapped, “he’s threatening to drag your name through the mud. Mine. Nikolai’s. All of us.”

Nikolai’s jaw ticked. “I knew he was going to be a problem from the moment you called me.”

Dad didn’t flinch. “Listen, I would step down if it would help smooth things over, but then Stillwell wins the office. If I stay in, he threatens the family. And if he goes public with this, the cops come for her. ”

He turned toward me then, his stare hard, jaw clenched tight. “If you hadn’t done this?—”

“I know ,” I cut in, my voice sharper than I meant it to be. “I know I caused this.”

I met his gaze and held it.

“But if you say one more word about how this is all my fault,” I seethed, “I will lose my shit.”

The room went still.

Not just quiet—still.

That did not stop me.

“One more thing. If you step down, that’d be a little bitch move. You’re the fucking mayor. Act like it.”

A beat of stunned silence passed as everyone absorbed the fact that I’d just raised my voice to the mayor of Boston in a room full of Morozovs.

Dad sighed, like I’d personally disappointed the entire city. He rubbed a hand down his face and muttered, “How are you going to deal with that?”

Nikolai didn’t miss a beat. He lifted his glass, took a slow sip of vodka, and said with the sort of calmness that made my eyes drop to his belt, “Very thoroughly.”

He caught the direction of my gaze, and he smirked.

That was it.

I stood.

“I’m right here,” I snapped, voice rising now. “You two want to trade jabs like I’m not in the fucking room, go ahead. But I’m the one they’re coming after. Not you. Not your press team. Me.”

His brows pulled together. “Sloane?—”

I turned to my father fully then, fury fueling every word.

“No. You don’t get to play protective dad now. You gave me to him .” I flicked my hand toward Nikolai. “Like I was chattel, a chess piece you could trade to stabilize your campaign. A thing no longer worth keeping around. What did you get for me, Dad ? How much was I worth?”

“You needed someone to keep you in line,” he snapped back.

I laughed. It was short, bitter, cutting.

“And that someone just happened to be Nikolai Morozov? You didn’t think I might have an opinion about being handed off to the Bratva like a spoiled liability you didn’t know what else to do with?”

“You needed structure. Safety.”

“I needed a father.” I slammed my hands down on the table, chest heaving.

No one interrupted. Not even Nikolai. This wasn’t about politics anymore. This was about me. This was the one moment I’d get to stand up, say my piece and everyone in the room was going to hear it.

“I was never going to be quiet,” I continued, voice shaking with rage. “You raised me to be loud. To fight. To outsmart everyone at the table. Then the second I became inconvenient, you signed me over to someone who could control me.”

I glanced at Nikolai then.

“Maybe he can control me. Maybe he will. Just don’t act like you didn’t light the match that started the fire.”