Page 6 of Bratva Daddy
Chapter 2
Alexei
Themahoganydeskreflectedthe lights bleeding through my office windows, the city's pulse steady as a heartbeat below. I sat alone with just a manila folder for company.
The Volkov Construction offices occupied the top floor of our Brooklyn warehouse—legitimate enough for city inspectors, private enough for family business. Up here, insulated by steel and concrete, I could think without the noise of the shop floor or the weight of my brothers' expectations.
I'd sent everyone home hours ago. Even Mikhail, my most loyal lieutenant, who'd raised an eyebrow at being dismissed but knew better than to question. This was personal research. Strategic assessment. At least, that's what I told myself as I opened the folder my security team had compiled over the past month.
Viktor Petrov's daughter stared up at me from glossy surveillance photos, unaware she'd been watched, catalogued, evaluated for so long it would shock her.
She went by Clara Albright. I didn’t know exactrly why she didn’t take her father’s surname, but I had a fairly good idea. Maybe a lack of respect? Maybe to distance herself from his politics?
The first shots were routine—Clara leaving her father's penthouse building at 9 AM sharp, done up like a doll, dressed in designer clothes. Clara at a charity luncheon, that practiced smile plastered across her face while she made small talk with women twice her age. Clara shopping on Fifth Avenue, bags accumulating like armor against whatever she was really feeling.
What was she really feeling?
Professional interest. That's all this was. When you planned to destroy a man, you studied his weaknesses. And Viktor Petrov's weakness walked around in Prada heels and a smile that never reached her eyes.
I spread the photos across my desk, each one a window into a life that shouldn't have fascinated me. My violence-rough fingers traced the edges, careful not to smudge the images. Here she was entering a bookstore—not the trendy ones in SoHo but a dusty used shop in the Village where she'd spent three hours. My man had noted she'd left with a paper bag, no designer logos, just books she'd chosen for herself. Another photo showed her in Central Park, kneeling beside a homeless woman, pressing something into weathered hands. Money, the report said. Always cash, always generous, always when she thought no one was watching.
But it was the photo from three days ago that made my chest tighten.
The Neue Galerie entrance framed her like she belonged in one of its paintings. She'd been leaving with friends—society girls whose names I'd memorized but didn't care about. Someone must have said something funny, caught her mid-laugh, and for once—for one perfect moment—Clara Petrov looked alive. Her head was thrown back, hazel eyes bright with genuine amusement, that defiant tilt to her chin that suggested so much more than the empty shell she pretended to be. The autumn light caught the gold threads in her hair, turned her skin luminous.
She looked like trouble.
My body responded before my mind could stop it. Heat spread through my chest, pooled lower. I shifted in my leather chair, annoyed at my lack of control. She was twenty-three. Barely out of college. Sheltered, spoiled, soft. Everything I didn't need complicating an already delicate situation.
But when I looked at that photo, I didn't see Viktor Petrov's daughter. I saw a brat who'd never met a man who wouldn't let her have her way. A little girl playing dress-up in designer clothes, desperate for someone to see through her act. Someone to grab those delicate wrists and tell her exactly how things were going to be.
"Blyad," I muttered, the Russian curse harsh in the empty office. I pushed the photo away, then immediately pulled it back. Like a fucking teenager mooning over a pretty girl. Pathetic.
I was thirty-five years old. Pakhan of the Volkov bratva since I was twenty-eight. I controlled construction contracts worth millions, commanded men who'd kill or die on my word, maintained order in a world that ran on controlled violence. I didn't get distracted by privileged girls with daddy issues.
Except I kept staring at her smile. At the way her throat curved when she laughed. At the shadow between her breasts where her silk blouse gaped slightly. She probably tasted like fucking champagne. Like expensive perfume and the tears she'd cry when someone finally called her on her bratty behavior.
My hand clenched on the photo's edge. This was about leverage. About teaching Viktor Petrov the price of betrayal. His daughter was a chess piece—valuable enough to hurt him, innocent enough to avoid federal attention. Taking her would be clean, strategic, controlled. Everything the Volkov organization represented versus Kozlov's messy brutality.
But my thumb traced her photographed face, and for a moment, I wondered if I was lying to myself.
The metal stairs outside my office rang with footsteps—Dmitry's heavy tread making the whole structure vibrate, Ivan's lighter step barely audible beneath. I slid the manila folder into my desk drawer, the photos of Clara Petrov disappearing like a guilty secret. By the time my brothers entered, I was reviewing legitimate construction schedules, every inch the composed pakhan they expected.
Dmitry came through the door like a force of nature. Six-foot-four of pure muscle wrapped in a black wool coat that did nothing to civilize him. His shoulders filled the doorframe, and the office suddenly felt smaller. At thirty-two, my brother had spent the last decade perfecting the art of controlled violence. The scars on his knuckles caught the light—testimonials to problems solved with fists rather than words. He moved with the casual confidence of a man who'd never lost a fight and didn't expect to start now.
"Alexei." He nodded, shrugging off his coat to reveal a black henley stretched across his chest. Everything about Dmitry was overwhelming—his size, his presence, the way he owned space. That was his value to the family. When negotiations failed, when example needed to be made, Dmitry was the exclamation point at the end of our sentences.
Ivan followed, and the contrast was almost comical. Where Dmitry was all physical threat, Ivan was precise intelligence. Twenty-eight years old and dressed like a university professor—charcoal sweater, pressed slacks, wire-rimmed glasses that reflected the office lights. His laptop bag hung from one shoulder, probably containing enough digital evidence to destroy half of Manhattan's political structure. Ivan saw the world in patterns and probabilities, tracked money like blood trails, found weakness in firewalls and financial statements with equal ease.
"We have confirmation," Ivan said without preamble. No greeting, no small talk. That was Ivan—efficiency incarnate, emotions filed away with last year's tax returns. He moved to the conference table in the corner of my office, already pulling out his laptop. "Our contact at First National came through. Petrov's been moving money for six weeks."
The words landed like a punch. Six weeks of smiling to our faces while stabbing us in the back. Six weeks of accepting our gifts, our protection money, our good faith while selling us out to the Kozlovs. The manila folder in my desk drawer seemed to pulse with new meaning. Not just leverage anymore—justice.
Dmitry headed straight for the vodka cabinet, a tradition older than our father's death. Every family meeting started the same way—three fingers of vodka for the muscle, coffee for the brain, and whatever I chose for the authority. Tonight, I'd stay sharp. Tonight, we planned war.
"The sneaky little bureaucrat thought he was being clever," Dmitry said, pouring the vodka with surprising delicacy for such large hands. The crystal decanter had been our grandfather's, brought from Moscow in 1972. We'd buried enemies and toasted victories with that vodka. Tonight it would witness another betrayal added to our ledger. "Routing payments through three different shell companies before they hit Kozlov accounts."
He knocked back half the vodka in one swallow, his expression darkening with each word. Dmitry took betrayal personally—it offended his simple, brutal sense of honor. You were withthe family or against it. No middle ground, no gray areas, no excuses.
