Page 37 of Bratva Daddy
"What is it about then?"
"It's about being cherished," I said, the word coming out like a prayer. "Protected. Guided. It's about someone caring enough to provide structure when you need it, softness when you need that. It's about knowing that someone sees all of you—the bratty parts, the scared parts, the parts you hide from everyone else—and wants to take care of all of it."
Clara made a small sound, almost a whimper, and when I looked at her, there were tears on her cheeks catching the garden lights.
"What if I need both?" she asked, voice breaking slightly. "Structure and softness? Rules and comfort? Someone to punish me when I'm bad but hold me after?"
"Then you need a Daddy," I said simply, unable to pretend otherwise. "Someone who understands that discipline and care aren't opposites but two sides of the same coin. Someone who can spank you for breaking rules then rub lotion on the marks. Who can make you follow a bedtime but read you to sleep. Who can be strict and gentle, demanding and giving, controlled and completely devoted to your wellbeing."
"Someone like you," she whispered, and it wasn't a question.
I turned to look at her fully, finding her watching me with those hazel eyes that saw too much. The city lights reflected in them like stars, and she looked young and ancient simultaneously, vulnerable and strong, afraid and ready.
I almost kissed her. I was so close. But I held back.
“Come,” I said, “we should head inside.”
“I-I,”
“Clara, if you’re serious about this, if you really feel as though you could be with someone like me . . . we can talk inside.”
“We can.”
“Let me show you something.”
Chapter 8
Clara
Alexeihadledmeto his dining table—not the casual kitchen island where we usually ate, but the formal table where he probably planned murders over imported vodka. The city lights threw shadows across his face that made him look older, more dangerous, more like the pakhan who'd kidnapped me than the man who'd just shown me his grandmother's garden.
He put a folder down on the table in front of me.
"Before you open that," he said, voice dropping to that register that made my spine straighten automatically, "you need to understand who I am. Not the man who brings you tea and teaches you Russian. The real me."
His hands rested on the table between us, and for the first time, I really looked at them. Not the manicured nails or the expensive watch, but the scars across his knuckles, the slight crookedness of his ring finger like it had been broken and reset wrong, the calluses that didn't come from construction work.
"I need you to understand what you're considering tying yourself to," he continued, gray eyes flat as winter ice. "The man you think you know is a fraction of who I am."
My mouth went dry. Part of me wanted to run back to my room, pretend this conversation wasn't happening. But the larger part—the part that had been craving something real my entire life—stayed seated, waiting.
"I've killed seventeen men," he said, each word deliberate as a blade between ribs. "Not at a distance, not with a gun from across a room. With these hands." He flexed his fingers slightly, those scarred knuckles catching the light. "I remember each one. The first was when I was nineteen—a rival who'd threatened Dmitry. I beat him until his face wasn't a face anymore, until my hands were so swollen I couldn't make a fist for a week."
The words should have made me run. Should have sent me scrambling for the door, for safety, for a world where the man who'd massaged my jaw after punishment wasn't casually discussing murder. Instead, I found myself leaning forward, studying his face for signs of remorse, regret, anything human.
There was nothing. Just cold recitation of facts.
"I've ordered the deaths of dozens more," he continued. "Men who betrayed us, who threatened our operations, who simply knew too much. I've burned down businesses that wouldn't pay protection—watched families lose everything because the owner thought he could refuse the Volkov bratva."
My stomach clenched, but not entirely from horror. There was something else—a sick fascination with this darkness he was showing me, this truth beneath the tailored suits and careful control.
"I've had men's families threatened to ensure loyalty," he said, and now his eyes were studying me, cataloging my reactions like evidence. "Not harmed—I have rules about women and children—but threatened. Made them understand that defying me meant consequences for everyone they loved."
"Why are you telling me this?" My voice came out steadier than expected.
"Because you need to know exactly what you're choosing." He leaned forward, and I could smell his cologne mixed with something darker—gun oil maybe?. "Three months ago, I personally broke a man's fingers, one by one, because he sold information about our shipments. He screamed after the third one, begged after the fifth, passed out at the seventh. I finished the job anyway."
The image should have disgusted me. Should have made me see him as a monster. But all I could think about was how those same hands had been so gentle with me, how they'd brought me ice cream and massaged my sore jaw and tucked me into bed with a tenderness that didn't match these confessions.
