Page 63 of Bratva Daddy
"Almost doesn't count," Alexei replied, then looked directly at the monitor—at me. He knew I was watching. Had known the whole time.
Blood ran from his lip, his knuckles were split, someone else's blood painted his white shirt in abstract patterns. He should have looked like a nightmare. Instead, he looked like mine. Like home. Like safety wrapped in violence, love expressed through blood.
"Clear?" Ivan's voice came through someone's phone, tinny but audible.
"Six down here," Alexei reported, his eyes still on the camera, on me. "You?"
"Three in the garage. Mikhail got two on the stairs. That's eleven total."
"One got away," Dmitry added, prodding a body with his foot to make sure it stayed dead. "Saw him exit the garage, heading east. Want me to pursue?"
"No," Alexei decided. "Let him run. Let him tell the Kozlovs what happens when they come for what's mine."
What's mine. Despite the fear, despite the death, I felt the thrill of being claimed.
On the monitors, I watched Ivan emerge from the stairwell, pristine despite the violence, already on his phone arranging cleanup. Dmitry was directing his men, bodies being wrapped in plastic with practiced efficiency. This was routine for them, just another Tuesday in the Volkov bratva.
Alexei walked toward the panic room, and I watched him on each monitor as he passed—bedroom, hallway, office. His stride never faltered despite what had to be bruised ribs. He'd killed six men in ten minutes and looked ready to do it again if necessary.
The panic room door opened, and there he stood. Painted in violence, eyes still hot with adrenaline, looking at me like I was the only thing in the world worth all this blood.
"You're hurt," I said, the words inadequate for the moment.
"Not mine," he said about most of the blood, then caught my wrist as I reached for his split lip. "You're not afraid."
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway.
"Should I be?" I met his eyes, letting him see the truth. "You killed them to protect me. To protect us. My father would have let them take me if it saved himself. You walked into death for me."
Something shifted in his expression—surprise maybe, or recognition. Like he'd been waiting his whole life for someone to see him completely and not flinch.
I lifted his split knuckles to my lips, kissed each one slowly, tasting copper and salt and him.
"I'm not afraid of your violence, Alexei," I said against his skin. "I'm grateful for it."
Something broke in his expression at my words—not shattered but cracked open, letting me see what lived beneath all that control. His hand tangled in my hair, grip just shy of painful, andhe pulled me against him hard enough that I tasted his blood on my lips.
"Mine," he growled, and it wasn't a question or even a statement. It was a fundamental truth, like gravity or the need for oxygen.
"Yours," I agreed, then bit his lip hard enough to reopen the split, needing to mark him too. "Prove it."
The bathroom was ten feet away but felt like miles. He pressed me against every surface between here and there—the doorframe, the wall, the vanity—like he needed to claim every inch of space where I existed. His hands were everywhere, bloody fingerprints painting ownership on my skin through the thin fabric of the cashmere sweater he'd chosen this morning. Back when the world was safe. Back when we were playing at normal.
I pulled at his ruined shirt, buttons scattering across marble with tiny clicks. The fabric peeled away wet and sticky, revealing bruises already blooming across his ribs in purple-black constellations. Someone's blood had soaked through, painting his chest in rusty abstract art that I didn't flinch from.
"You're hurt worse than you said," I observed, running fingers over a particularly dark bruise.
"I've had worse," he replied, then groaned when I pressed against it deliberately.
"Sit," I commanded, pointing at the bathroom counter, and something flickered in his eyes—surprise that I was giving orders, interest in where this would go.
He lifted himself onto the counter with controlled movements that didn't quite hide the pain. Like this, we were almost eye level, and I could see everything—the exhaustion beneath the adrenaline, the pain under the power, the man beneath the monster.
I ran hot water in the sink, found washcloths in the cabinet where I'd learned he kept them. The expensive hand soap that smelled like his cologne. Everything organized, everything in its place.
The first pass of the cloth over his chest made him hiss—not pain but sensitivity, nerve endings firing after violence. I cleaned him methodically, starting at his throat where someone else's blood had sprayed, working down across shoulders that carried so much weight. The water in the sink turned pink, then red, then darker as I rinsed and repeated.
"Most women would run," he said, and there was something vulnerable in it, like he'd been waiting for me to.
