Page 80 of Bratva Daddy
She pulled the immunity agreement toward her, reading Ivan's carefully crafted language. It was bulletproof—immunity contingent on delivery, identities sealed and protected, Clara's psychiatric hold vacated by federal order for witness protection.
"This meeting never happened," she said, uncapping her pen.
"What meeting?" I agreed. “Far as Petrov is concerned—and this is important—I’m locked up. Unable to co-ordinate anything.”
“Understood.”
“So? Do we have a deal?”
She signed with quick, decisive strokes. I added my signature—Alexei Volkov, the name I'd be leaving behind in forty-eight hours. The countdown had officially begun.
"The 24th," she said, standing, gathering her files. "If you don't deliver—"
"I'll deliver. Just make sure your teams are ready. The Kozlovs won't go down easy."
She paused at the door, looking back. "Why her? Why risk everything for Clara Albright?"
I thought of Clara throwing books at my wall, calling me Daddy, trusting me even after learning about three years of surveillance. "Because she's the first person who ever saw me as more than a monster. That's worth any risk."
Reeves nodded once, sharp and professional, then left me alone in the proffer room. The deal was struck. In forty-eighthours, Viktor Petrov's empire would fall, the Kozlovs would be finished, and Clara would be free.
All I had to do was survive until then.
Chapter 17
Clara
Thehospitalgownhungoff my shoulders, thin cotton that might as well have been tissue paper for all the dignity it provided. They'd positioned me at the end of the conference table like a specimen for examination.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, washing everything in that particular shade of institutional green that made healthy people look sick and sick people look dead. I kept my hands folded in my lap, hiding the slight tremor that had started two days ago—not from the medications they thought I was taking, but from the effort of pretending to be medicated while my mind stayed sharp as broken glass.
Three psychiatrists sat across from me, their white coats and careful expressions forming a wall of professional judgment. Dr. Harrison, the lead, had kind eyes that had fooled me the first day before I realized kindness here meant compliance, meant agreeing that love was sickness and truth was delusion. Behind them, my father occupied a leather chair someone had broughtin special—because even in a psychiatric facility, Viktor Petrov got the comfortable seat.
He'd dressed for the performance, of course. The concerned father in a two-thousand-dollar suit, his face arranged in an expression of paternal worry that would have been convincing if I hadn't seen him practice it in mirrors before important meetings. He kept glancing at me with this perfectly calibrated mixture of love and disappointment, like I was breaking his heart by being mentally ill.
Beside my father, for some reason, his lawyer, Mr. Brennan. His presence was setting off alarm bells.
"Clara has been compliant with medication for three days," Dr. Harrison announced to the panel, flipping through my chart with manicured fingers. "She's taking her pills without resistance, attending group therapy, engaging with staff appropriately."
Compliant.
Ha.
I'd palmed every damn pill they'd given me, tucking them behind my tongue until I could spit them into my palm during bathroom breaks. Forty-three pills hidden behind a loose tile near the toilet, my own personal pharmacy of sedatives and antipsychotics I refused to let destroy my mind. But I'd played the part perfectly—slightly sluggish movements, occasional confusion, the flat affect they expected from someone properly medicated.
"However," Dr. Harrison continued, and that single word made my stomach clench, "we recommend escalating to electroconvulsive therapy to address the persistent delusions about her relationship with her kidnapper."
ECT. Electroconvulsive therapy. They wanted to run electricity through my brain until I forgot Alexei's face, his voice, the wayhe'd seen through twenty-three years of invisibility and decided I was worth saving.
"I don't consent," I said immediately, my voice cutting through the clinical atmosphere like a scalpel.
The words hung there for a moment before Viktor's lawyer slid a manila folder across the table with practiced precision.
"Ms. Petrov's mental state prevents informed consent," Brennan said in that smooth courtroom voice that made lies sound like gospel. "We're filing for immediate conservatorship based on psychiatric recommendation. Her father would make medical decisions in her best interest."
"It's Albright," I said, but even to my own ears, my voice sounded thin, exhausted. Three days of constant vigilance, of Viktor's gaslighting, of being told every true thing I knew was actually a symptom—it was eroding me from the inside out.
"She still can't even remember her legal name," Viktor told the panel, his voice heavy with perfectly performed sorrow. "My daughter—my precious Clara—she's lost in these fantasies. She genuinely believes she loves the man who kidnapped her, who held her prisoner for weeks."
