Page 5 of Bratva Daddy
He paused at the doorway, finally looking directly at me. The contempt in his eyes was so pure it could have been bottled and sold as concentrated disappointment.
"Clean yourself up," he said, though I hadn't spilled anything on myself. "And try not to destroy anything else tonight. If you can manage that."
Thelockclickedintoplace with the finality of a prison door, except I was locking the world out rather than myself in. My bedroom door was solid mahogany, thick enough to muffle sound, strong enough to keep even Viktor's disapproval at bay. For the next few hours, I could stop being his daughter, his prop, his perfectly dressed disappointment.
I leaned against the door, letting my spine rest. The mask I'd worn all day—through charity lunches and careful smiles and violent wine spills—finally cracked and fell away. My face in the mirror across the room looked naked without it, younger, more desperate than I wanted to admit.
The room around me hadn't changed since I was sixteen. Soft pastels that suggested innocence, a four-poster bed with eyeletlace, furniture chosen by an interior designer who'd been told to create "something appropriate for a young lady." Even my rebellion was relegated to childish spaces.
I stripped out of the blue silk blouse first, hanging it carefully in the closet despite wanting to burn it. The pencil skirt followed, then the expensive lingerie that served as one more layer of armor between me and the world. Each piece of clothing removed felt like shedding someone else's expectations until I stood naked in my pastel prison, just Clara without the Albright or the Petrov.
The cotton nightgown I pulled on was soft, worn from too many washes, one of the few things in this room that actually felt like mine. It had been my mother's once, before the cancer took her when I was three. Sometimes I thought I could still smell her perfume in the fabric, though that was probably just desperate imagination.
I sat on my bed, knees drawn up, the events of dinner replaying in an endless loop. My father's casual cruelty about destroying the Volkovs. His complete indifference to my presence until I'd spilled the wine. Then that familiar rage, those cutting words that shouldn't still have the power to wound but did.
Stupid girl.
The worst part was how practiced it all felt. We'd performed this dance so many times—him dismissive, me invisible, both of us pretending this was a family rather than a business arrangement where I was the product being stored until sale.
That’s how the fantasy started. It’s how italwaysstarted.
It was something hungry, something demanding.
I wanted to be claimed.
I wanted someone to grab my wrist and own me. To pin me against a wall and tell me exactly what he was going to do. Tocare enough about my existence to be possessive, controlling, even angry.
My hand drifted to my thigh without conscious thought, fingernails dragging against skin that rarely saw sunlight. I thought about hands that weren't manicured like the weak men at charity galas. Rough hands. Working hands. Hands that would span my entire throat if they wrapped around it.
Would he be older? Definitely. Someone who'd look at my father's casual cruelty and laugh at what a weak man he really was. Someone who wouldn't ask permission or apologize or treat me like spun glass that might shatter. Someone who'd see through every practiced smile and designer dress to the furious, desperate woman underneath.
My fingers found the heat between my legs, already wet from thoughts I'd never dare voice aloud. I imagined meeting his eyes across a room—dark eyes, probably. He'd know immediately what I was. Not a stupid girl or a political asset, but a woman who'd been locked in a gilded cage so long she'd forgotten how to fly.
"Mine," he'd say, and mean it. This man would claim me with his hands, his mouth, his entire body. He'd teach me what it meant to belong to someone who actually wanted what they owned.
I slipped two fingers inside myself, biting my lip to keep from making noise even though the walls were soundproof. Old habits. Good girls stayed quiet. But I didn't want to be good anymore. I wanted to be bad enough that someone would need to punish me. To bend me over their knee and spank me until I cried, then hold me after and tell me I was forgiven, that I was theirs, that I mattered enough to discipline.
The fantasy evolved as my fingers moved faster. He'd come home to find me touching myself without permission, like I wasdoing now. His face would darken with the kind of possessive anger that meant consequences.
"Did I say you could touch what's mine?" he'd growl, pulling my hand away, replacing my fingers with his own. Thicker, longer, stretching me while I squirmed and apologized and secretly hoped he'd never stop.
"Please," I whispered to my empty room, to the phantom lover who existed only in my desperate imagination. "Please, Daddy."
The word shocked me even as it sent lightning through my core. Daddy. Someone who'd take care of me by taking control of me. Who'd feed me when I forgot to eat, dress me in clothes he chose, fuck me until I couldn't remember my own name, then hold me while I slept.
My other hand found my breast, pinching my nipple hard enough to hurt because I needed the edge of pain to make it feel real. In my mind, it was his hand, his mouth, his teeth marking me as property that was actually valued. Not hidden away in a penthouse but displayed, claimed, owned so thoroughly that everyone would know exactly who I belonged to.
"Such a needy little girl," he'd say, and I'd nod because I was. So fucking needy for something real, something raw, something that wasn't wrapped in silk and suffocating under the weight of appearances. "My needy little girl."
My. Mine. Ownership that meant something.
I came with a soundless scream, my body arching off the bed as waves of pleasure crashed through me. For a moment, I felt it—that sense of belonging, of mattering, of existing as more than just an expensive ghost. Then reality crashed back, and I was alone in my pastel bedroom with soaked fingers and an ache that no amount of self-touch could satisfy.
The tears came then, silent and automatic as everything else in my life. I curled on my side, pulling my mother's nightgowndown to cover myself, feeling more naked than when I'd actually been undressed.
I pulled the covers over myself, expensive sheets that felt like restraints, and stared at the ceiling. Tomorrow would be another performance. Another day of invisible Clara in her designer costumes, smiling at charity events and staying silent at dinners.
Tonight, thought, I let myself dream of being owned by someone who'd actually want what they claimed.
