Page 59 of Bratva Daddy
"Did money change hands?" I asked.
"Two days later. Messenger service to Ricci's legitimate business—a restaurant supply company in Queens. I know because I had to sign for the 'catering contract' when Father's secretary was at lunch."
Three hours passed like minutes, Clara's voice never wavering as she laid out crime after crime. Her memory was extraordinary—not just dates and names but details that would make prosecution airtight. The color of ties, the specific restaurants, the exact words used to dance around explicit bribery while making intent clear. She'd been a recording device in a pretty dress, and her father had been too arrogant to notice.
"The secretary," Clara said suddenly, breaking from her chronological recitation. "Melissa Crawford. That's our smoking gun for embezzlement."
Ivan looked up, interested. "Explain."
"Father always buys his mistresses jewelry from Cartier on Fifth Avenue. Always. He has an account there, likes thediscretion. But here's the thing—" She leaned forward, eyes bright with the thrill of the hunt. "He expensed his last purchase to the city as 'diplomatic gifts for visiting dignitaries.'"
"You're certain?" Ivan asked, fingers already flying across keys.
"I processed the expense report," Clara said with grim satisfaction. "Sixty thousand dollars in 'diplomatic gifts' purchased three days after Melissa started working for him. The same week the Brazilian trade delegation canceled their visit due to COVID concerns."
“Why the fuck did this idiot not pay the three million?” Ivan said, a grim smile on his face. “This davochka is gonna cost him everything.”
"There's more," Clara said, and something in her voice made both of us focus completely. "He has a safe in his home office. Behind the portrait of my mother—sick irony, using her image to hide his crimes."
She stood, pacing now, energy crackling through her movements.
"The combination is her death date—month, day, year. Zero-seven, one-five, two-zero-zero-eight. July fifteenth, 2008. The day she died, and he couldn't even pretend to mourn before he was already planning how to use her life insurance."
The bitterness in her voice could have etched glass.
"Inside that safe are the real books. Everything. Not just the bribes but the actual ledgers—who paid what, when, for which favor. He keeps them as insurance, leverage against everyone who's ever paid him." She turned to face us fully. "He showed me once, drunk on his own power, explaining how he owned half of Manhattan through those records."
"He showed you?" I couldn't hide my surprise.
"I was invisible, remember?" Her smile was sharp as winter. "Who was I going to tell? His broken, mentally ill daughter who no one would believe anyway?"
She moved back to the table, hands flat on the surface, looking every inch the prosecutor she could have been in another life.
"But here's what he never realized—I wasn't broken. I was waiting. Every dinner where he ignored me, I listened. Every meeting where I was decoration, I memorized. Every crime he committed while I sat silent, I filed away." Her voice dropped, deadly quiet. "I have seventeen years' worth of his crimes catalogued in my head, waiting for someone to believe me."
"We believe you," Ivan said simply, and coming from him, it was an oath.
"I know the route his driver takes to the office," Clara continued. "I know which judges golf with him on Saturdays. I know where he hides the burner phone he uses for Kozlov communications—bottom drawer of his desk, behind tax returns from 2012."
She straightened, and in that moment, she wasn't the little girl who needed protection or the submissive who called me Daddy. She was vengeance in human form, twenty-three years of dismissed potential finally given purpose.
"Your father's right about one thing," I said, standing to face her. "You're not the same Clara who disappeared two weeks ago."
"No," she agreed, and her smile was beautiful and terrible. "That Clara was invisible. This one?" She gestured to the laptops, the notes, the carefully documented crimes. "This one is going to be his nightmare."
Chapter 12
Clara
Thekettlewhistled,sharpand insistent, and I turned it off with practiced ease. It had been a full three weeks since I'd been taken. And two days since my father had called me crazy on live television. Two days since I'd given Ivan everything—every crime, every bribe, every dirty secret I'd stored in my head for seventeen years.
The tea bag—English Breakfast, because Alexei kept it stocked just for me—released its color into the hot water in slow, spreading clouds. I watched it darken. This morning had been good. Better than good. I'd spent an hour in "little space," coloring Disney princesses while he worked, my legs tucked under me on his office floor. He'd played with my hair absently while on conference calls, and I'd felt that rare, perfect safety that came from being completely his.
Strange how quickly I'd learned to differentiate between the different types of mornings. Business mornings meant suits and distance, Alexei already half-gone into his bratva world beforehis second cup of coffee. Tender mornings meant he'd wake me with kisses, choose soft clothes, bring me breakfast in bed. Little mornings—those were the best. Those meant juice boxes hidden in the fridge and cartoons on the big TV and calling him Daddy without any shame.
Ivan had been here since the press conference. But he kept himself to himself, sleeping in a spare room and working online virtually 24/7. It was nice to see him whenever he emerged from his digital cave. He was like Alexei in some ways—he had the same certainty, the same confidence. but he was also very different. More measured, consistently thoughtful.
Each time he’d come out, he had questions—so specific I knew he was building something airtight. "The Morrison payment—was it cash or check?" "The date you signed for the Ricci documents—was it the third or fourth?" "Your father's burner phone—Nokia or Samsung?" This morning, he'd shown me forensic accounting that traced every dollar, every transaction, every crime in neat digital lines that would destroy Viktor Petrov more thoroughly than any bullet.
