Page 72 of Bratva Daddy
"I can't process this," I said, pressing my palms against my eyes. "It's too much. The violation and the care, the obsession and the attention. You took away my agency but gave me structure. You kidnapped me but saved me. Everything about this is wrong, but it's the first thing in my life that's felt right."
I dropped my hands, met his eyes across the space between us.
"Matryoshka."
The safeword hung between us like a blade. I watched his face change—not surprise but something deeper. Resignation maybe, or acceptance. His shoulders straightened slightly, every muscle going still in that way that meant he was exerting absolute control over himself.
"You need space," he said. Not a question, just recognition of what the safeword meant. "I'll sleep in my office. Take as long as you need. Tomorrow, the next day, next year—I don’t care—take however you need."
He stood slowly, carefully, like sudden movements might shatter something irreparable between us. I could see him forcibly not reaching for me, keeping his hands at his sides when every line of his body screamed to close the distance between us.
"I don't know how to process this," I admitted, voice small.
"I know," he said simply. "It was wrong. Is wrong. The whole thing is built on a fundamental violation of your privacy and autonomy. I won't insult you by trying to justify it."
"But you won't apologize for it either."
"I'll apologize for the method," he said, taking a single step toward the door. "For the violation of privacy, for taking away your choice, for the power imbalance. But I won't apologize for the result. Not when you're finally alive instead of performing life. Not when you're angry instead of empty. Not when you're here, real and present, instead of fading away in your father's penthouse."
He moved to the doorway, paused without turning back.
"The operation on the 24th," he started.
"Still happening?" I asked.
"If you want it to. Nothing happens without your word now. You can walk away from all of this—from me, from the operation, from this life. I'll have Ivan create documents, set youup with money, a new identity if you want. You can disappear, properly this time, on your own terms."
The offer sat between us, genuine and terrible. Freedom, finally. The ability to walk away from both my father and Alexei, to start fresh somewhere where no one knew my name or my history. It should have been tempting. Instead, it felt like another kind of death.
" I don't want to run and be invisible somewhere else."
"Then what do you want?"
"Time," I said. "I need time to think. To process. To figure out how to live with this."
"You'll have it," he said from the doorway.
Then he was gone, footsteps fading toward his office, leaving me alone with three years of surveillance photos and no idea what to do with the twisted gratitude and violation warring in my chest.
Ihadn'tslept.Thefolderlay open on the coffee table, and I'd spent the night studying three years of surveillance like they were tea leaves that could tell me my future. Or maybe my past. At 3 AM, I'd heard Alexei in his office, speaking Russian on the phone—probably about the upcoming operation, finalizing details for my father's destruction. But he'd kept his promise, hadn't come to check on me, hadn't pushed.
The photos told a different story in the dark hours before dawn. Without the initial shock of violation, I could see what lived beneath his obsession. Every margin note documented not just surveillance but genuine concern. "She didn't eat lunch again." "Third day in the same dress—laundry broken or depression?"
It was deeply wrong. Invasive. Creepy by any rational standard. The violation of it should have sent me running. The healthy response would be to take his offer—new identity, clean start, far away from both my father and this beautiful monster who'd appointed himself my savior. That's what the therapist I'd seen secretly would say. What any rational person would advise.
But I'd never been rational. And maybe that's why Alexei and I fit—two broken people whose damage aligned perfectly, whose darkness recognized each other across a crowded fundraiser three years ago.
At 7 AM, I stood outside his office door. He was at his desk, still in yesterday's clothes, looking exhausted in a way that made him seem more human. Vulnerable, even, though he'd kill me for thinking it.
"You didn't sleep," I observed from the doorway.
"Neither did you," he responded carefully, like I was a wild animal that might bolt. His eyes tracked over me, cataloguing signs of my emotional state the way he'd been doing for three years.
"I'm still angry," I said, entering the room but maintaining distance. "You had no right to watch me like that. To document my life without consent. To know me so completely before I knew you existed."
"I know." Simple acceptance, no justification.
"But I'm also . . ." I struggled for words that could capture the complexity. "No one's ever paid that much attention to me. My father doesn't know my coffee order after twenty-three years. You knew it after watching me for a week."
