Page 18 of Bratva Daddy
I reached past her to the cabinet where cleaning supplies waited—spray bottles and cloths and everything needed to undo her rebellion. She tensed as my arm brushed hers, and I feltthe heat of her through the torn silk. Such a small contact, barely anything, but it shot through me like vodka on an empty stomach.
"Clean," I ordered, setting the supplies on the one clean section of counter. "Every surface. Properly. I'll inspect your work when you're done."
"And if I refuse?"
I turned to face her fully, letting her see the promise in my eyes. "Then I'll hold you down and dress you myself. And Clara?" I leaned closer, close enough that my breath moved the hair near her ear. "I won't be gentle about it."
She shuddered—fear or something else, I couldn't tell and didn't want to examine. Her hands clenched at her sides, nails digging into her palms hard enough to leave marks. For a moment, I thought she'd fight, throw the cleaning supplies at my head and make this into the kind of physical confrontation that would end with her pinned beneath me.
Instead, she reached for the spray bottle with movements sharp enough to cut glass.
"I hate you," she said quietly, beginning to spray the counter with vicious efficiency.
"Good," I replied, though the word tasted like lies. "Hate is convenient."
I left her to her cleaning, retreating to my office where I could watch her on the security monitor. She attacked the mess she'd made with fury that belonged on a battlefield. But she cleaned. She obeyed, even if every second of it killed her to do so.
When she finished an hour later, the kitchen gleamed like it had never seen destruction. She stood in the center of the spotless space, still in that damned dress, looking at the hallway that led to the closet full of clothes she didn't want to wear.
I waited to see what she'd choose—my clothes or no clothes at all.
She chose my clothes, disappearing into the bedroom with shoulders set in defeat.
When she emerged twenty minutes later in black slacks and a turtleneck that covered everything but still showed every curve, I told myself the satisfaction I felt was about establishing dominance, nothing more.
Turnsout,workingwithClara in the penthouse was difficult. The construction contracts on my desk might as well have been written in ancient Sumerian for all the attention I could give them. Twenty million dollars in legitimate business waiting for my signature, and all I could focus on was the security monitor in my peripheral vision showing Clara's room.
She'd been reading for the past two hours. After the kitchen confrontation, after changing into the clothes I'd mandated, she'd retreated to the bedroom and pulled a book from the shelf I'd stocked. Wuthering Heights—not what I'd expected from a society princess. She sat cross-legged on the bed, absorbed in the story like she could disappear into it and escape this penthouse through Victorian England.
I forced my attention back to the Greenpoint project specifications. Forty workers needed by Monday. Steel delivery scheduled for Wednesday. Permits that Viktor Petrov wouldn't be able to delay anymore now that I held his daughter. Every signature I scratched across the contracts was a small victory against the man who'd betrayed us, but the satisfaction felt hollow with Clara silent in the next room.
My pen stuttered across a signature line when I heard it—soft at first, barely audible through the monitor's speakers.
Crying.
Not the dramatic sobs of manipulation or the wild tears of fresh grief. This was quiet, broken, the sound of someone trying desperately not to be heard. Through the monitor, I watched her shoulders begin to shake. She pressed the book against her chest like armor that couldn't protect her from whatever was breaking inside.
I stood without thinking, the leather chair rolling backward from the force of my movement. Three steps toward the door before I caught myself, hand on the doorknob, body coiled to go to her.
Go to her and do what? Hold her? Comfort her? Tell her everything would be okay when we both knew it wouldn't? She was crying because I'd taken her freedom, locked her in this penthouse, stripped away her autonomy piece by piece until she had nothing left but the clothes I'd chosen and the books I'd provided.
But my hand wouldn't release the doorknob.
Through the monitor, she curled onto her side, pulling a pillow against her face to muffle the sounds. Even in her breakdown, she was trying to maintain some dignity, some private space I couldn't invade. The sight of it—Clara Albright trying to hide her tears from cameras she knew were watching—twisted something in my chest that had been frozen since my father's death.
She looked so young. Not the defiant woman who'd destroyed my kitchen or the sophisticated charity organizer who'd raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just a twenty-three-year-old girl who'd been ripped from her life because her father was too stupid to honor his debts.
My hand clenched on the doorknob hard enough to hurt. This was exactly why keeping distance was essential. She was leverage, a business transaction, a message to her father. The moment I started seeing her as a person—as Clara rather than Petrov's daughter—the entire structure would collapse.
But I couldn't look away from the monitor.
Her crying intensified, shoulders shaking harder despite the pillow muffling her face. The book had fallen to the floor, pages splayed open like wings. She pulled her knees to her chest, making herself smaller, trying to disappear into her own body.
Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. She cried like someone who'd been holding it in for years, not just since last night. This wasn't just about being kidnapped—this was about everything. Every moment of being invisible to her father, every time she'd smiled when she wanted to scream, every day of being valued only as a decorative object. I'd just given her a new cage, but she'd been imprisoned long before I took her.
When she finally stopped, the silence felt heavier than her tears. She lay still for a moment, then pushed herself up with movements that belonged to someone decades older. She walked to the bathroom—no lock on the door, I'd made sure of that—and I heard water running.
The bathroom camera showed her at the sink, splashing cold water on her face with mechanical repetition. When she looked up at the mirror, I saw her real face for the first time. Not the practiced society smile or the defiant chin lift or even the tears. Just exhaustion so profound it had carved itself into her bones. She looked hollow, emptied out, like crying had drained whatever fight she'd been running on.
