Page 70 of Bratva Daddy
One box was already partially open, tape curling at the edges like it had been revisited. I could leave it alone. Could go back to the living room, drink my tea, pretend I'd never noticed. But my name was visible on a folder tab, my last name—not Petrov but Albright, my mother's name that I'd taken—written in Alexei's precise handwriting.
My hands weren't quite steady as I pulled the folder free. It was thick, organized with colored tabs, heavier than any single person's file should be. The cover bore only my name and a date from three years ago.
Three years. Before any of this. Before my father's betrayal, before the Kozlov connection, before any justification for surveillance.
I opened it, and my breath stopped.
The first photo stopped my breathing entirely. Me at college graduation, cap tilted, laughing with friends whose names I'd almost forgotten. The kind of genuine joy I hadn't felt in years, captured from maybe fifty feet away. The date stamp in the corner read three years ago. Three years. Before my father's deals with the Kozlovs. Before any reason to watch me except interest.
My hands shook as I flipped to the next photo. My twenty-first birthday at that Italian place in SoHo, the one my father hadn't attended because of a "scheduling conflict." I was smiling at the waiter bringing out a cake my friends had secretly ordered. Shot through the window, angle suggesting he'd been in a car across the street.
More photos followed, a catalog of my life I hadn't known was being documented. Weekly visits to my mother's grave, always alone, always with pink roses. I'd thought that was private, sacred, mine. But there I was in glossy surveillance photos, kneeling at her headstone, lips moving in one-sided conversations I'd believed no one else would hear.
The margins held notes in Russian. I pulled out my phone, fumbling with a translation app. The Cyrillic resolved into English that made my chest tight: "She looks hollow." Next to a charity gala photo where I'm smiling my donor smile: "The smile doesn't reach her eyes." By a shot of me leaving another society function early: "Someone should save her from this life."
He'd been watching, analyzing, seeing the emptiness I'd worked so hard to hide. Part of me wanted to be furious at the invasion. Part of me wanted to cry that someone had finally noticed.
More intimate surveillance followed. Me entering Dr. Martinez's office, the therapist I'd paid cash to see for six months so my father wouldn't find out through insurance records. Multiple shots over multiple weeks, documenting my secret attempts to deal with depression I couldn't admit to anyone. One note read: "Therapy Tuesdays, 3 PM. She always stops for tea after. Always looks lighter."
A photo from Central Park stopped me cold. Four months after my father had been particularly cruel at dinner, telling his poker buddies I was "pretty enough but not much going on upstairs." I'd gone to the park to cry where no one would see. Except someone had seen. The photo showed me on a bench, face in my hands, shoulders shaking. The note: "Viktor destroyed something in her tonight. I wanted to kill him."
My hands trembled harder as I found receipts. Coffee from my favorite shop, timestamped and annotated with my order. Book purchases from the local store where I'd hide when home became unbearable. Even a receipt from the pharmacy, with a note indicating he'd identified my birth control prescription. The violation of it should have made me run. Instead, I kept reading, unable to stop.
One photo from four months ago made my blood freeze. Me in my bedroom window at my father's penthouse, wearing just a nightgown, staring out at the city. The angle meant he'd been in a building across the street, high enough to see into the twentieth floor. High enough to watch me in what I'd thought was privacy.
The note beneath it, translated: "She looks like a princess in a tower, waiting for rescue."
Another folder contained detailed reports, typed and methodical. My coffee preferences broken down by weather—hot latte when it was cold, iced vanilla when warm, black during my period. My college transcripts, somehow obtained, with handwritten notes about my perfect GPA that my father had never acknowledged. Even my childhood medical records, annotated with observations about treatment for anxiety after my mother's death.
He knew about my mother's postpartum depression before my father weaponized it on television. The medical records showed he'd known the truth—that she'd sought help, gotten better, that the cancer had killed her, not mental illness. He'd known and had still let me tell him, let me reveal it like it was new information.
A section labeled "Behavioral Patterns" made me sit down hard on his desk chair. He'd documented everything. How I bit my lip when nervous. How I played with my mother's wedding ring on a chain around my neck when I missed her. How I automatically smiled when men spoke to me, even when they were being cruel. "Conditioned response," he'd written. "Survival mechanism."
The final section was photographs from the auction—the night everything changed. Me in that blue dress my father had chosen, the one that had made me feel like merchandise. But Alexei's notes were different here, angrier: "He's displaying her like property." "She's worth more than this." "Decision made—I'm taking her."
The last photo was me leaving the auction, and his final note: "Three years of watching ends tonight. Time to act."
I set the folder down with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. Three years. Three years of surveillance, of obsession, of documenting my life in details I'd forgotten myself. He'd known everything before he'd taken me. Known my favorite tea, mymother's real story, my secret therapy, my hidden tears. He'd studied me like I was a doctoral thesis, learned me like a language, memorized me like poetry.
The violation of it was breathtaking. But so was the care. Every note showed someone seeing my pain, my emptiness, my slow drowning in a life that was killing me. He'd watched my father destroy me piece by piece and had finally decided to stop it the only way he knew how—by taking me.
I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to reconcile the creeping horror of being watched with the desperate gratitude of being seen. No one had ever paid this much attention to me. My father didn't know my coffee order after twenty-three years. Alexei had known it after a week. My father had never noticed my depression. Alexei had documented every sign, every cry for help I hadn't even known I was sending.
The front door opened—three locks turning in sequence. Alexei was back. I heard his footsteps, measured and careful, probably checking each room the way he always did. Safety first, then finding me. Always finding me, like he'd been doing for three years without my knowledge.
I spread the folder across the coffee table, evidence laid out like accusations. Or love letters. I couldn't decide which.
When his footsteps reached the office door, I looked up, meeting his eyes with the weight of three years of surveillance between us.
"We need to talk," I said, surprised at how steady my voice sounded when everything inside me was earthquake.
He stopped in the doorway, taking in the scene—me, eerily calm, surrounded by proof of his obsession.
No surprise crossed his face. Just resignation, like he'd always known this moment would come. Maybe he'd wanted it to.
"You've been watching me for three years," I said, voice level in a way that would have made him proud in differentcircumstances. The same tone I'd used with his lieutenants, controlled despite the chaos underneath. "Three years, Alexei. Before any of this with my father."
"Yes," he said simply. No deflection, no excuse. He moved into the room but kept distance between us, respecting the danger radiating from my stillness.
