Page 4 of Bratva Daddy
I watched him eat, this stranger who shared my DNA but nothing else.
I had to do something. Even if it changed nothing. I had to show, somehow, that I wasn’t complicit in this.
My hand moved toward the wine glass with calculated uncertainty, fingers trembling just enough to sell the performance. The Margaux swirled dark as blood against the crystal, and for a moment I let myself imagine it was exactly that—blood on my hands for what I was about to do.
"But Father," I said, my voice pitched to that perfect note of vapid innocence I'd perfected over years of playing the empty-headed daughter, "haven't those Russian businessmen been very generous to us?"
I lifted the glass, letting my grip stay deliberately loose, watching the wine tilt dangerously. "The flowers, the caviar, all those donations to your campaign fund?"
Viktor's pale blue eyes finally found me, narrowing with the particular disdain he reserved for when I dared speak about his business. The same look he'd given me at thirteen when I'd asked why the police commissioner left envelopes of cash in our foyer. The same look that said I was too stupid, too female, too irrelevant to understand the complexities of his world.
"You don’t understand municipal politics, Clara." His tone could have frosted the windows. "Regardless of how many times I try to explain. Perhaps you should focus on more suitable concerns."
More suitable concerns.
Shopping.
Smiling.
Silence.
The holy trinity of Viktor Petrov's ideal daughter. He turned back to his tablet, dismissing me as effectively as if he'd waved his hand. Just another ornament that had briefly made noise, now expected to return to decorative silence.
The fury that lived in my chest, that constant ember I'd banked for twenty-three years, suddenly flared white-hot. My hand moved—not entirely unconsciously but not entirely deliberate either. That space between accident and intention where plausible deniability lived.
The wine glass tipped.
Time slowed as $500-per-bottle Margaux cascaded across the table in a burgundy wave. It hit his documents first—those precious permits and contracts, the physical manifestation of his corruption. The wine spread across city letterhead, soaking through watermarks and official seals, turning typed numbers into bleeding ink.
"Clumsy girl!" Viktor's snarl came out primal, stripped of his usual measured control. He stood, strode towards me and lunged for the papers, hands grasping desperately at documents that were already ruined, wine seeping through layers of contractual betrayal.
I watched him try to separate soaked pages that tore at his touch, watched his face flush from pale to mottled red, watched the mask of respectable city official crack to reveal the cruel man beneath.
"This is exactly why I can't trust you with anything important." His voice rose to a volume I rarely heard, echoing off the dining room's high ceiling. "You're a stupid girl who should stick to shopping and charity galas."
Stupid girl.
Maybe I was stupid. But I wasn’t harmless.
"Look what you've done!" He held up a construction permit, the ink running like mascara in rain, Volkov Construction's name barely legible through the burgundy stain. "Do you have any idea what these documents represent?"
Yes. I knew exactly what they represented. Betrayal worth millions. Lives destroyed for percentages. The casual cruelty of powerful men who treated the city like their personal chessboard.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, making my voice small, tremulous. "I didn't mean—my hand slipped—"
"Your hand slipped." He repeated it with such venom that I actually stepped back. "Everything about you is slippery, Clara. Can't hold a thought, can't hold a conversation, can't even hold a wine glass properly."
Mrs. Brown materialized from the kitchen like a guardian angel in a starched uniform, armed with kitchen towels and the kind of diplomatic silence that came from years of navigating Viktor Petrov's temper. She moved between us without seeming to, creating a buffer as she began soaking up the wine.
"So sorry, Mr. Petrov," she murmured, though we all knew she had nothing to apologize for. "I'll take care of this immediately."
Viktor stood abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor with a sound like fingernails on glass. He gathered what documents he could salvage, holding them away from his body like contaminated evidence. Which, I supposed, they were.
"Useless," he spat, not looking at me, maybe talking to the ruined papers or the universe in general. "Absolutely useless.Twenty-three years old and still can't manage basic motor functions."
The words should have hurt more than they did. Maybe I'd built up an immunity through repeated exposure, like those kings who consumed small amounts of poison daily to prevent assassination. Or maybe I was just too focused on the wine-soaked contract in his left hand, the one where Alexei Volkov's name bled into illegibility, to feel the sting of familiar insults.
"I'll have to have these recreated," he muttered, already walking toward his study. "The entire Kozlov timeline could be compromised because you can't control your hands."
