Page 77 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
"Be my girlfriend."
It came out the way he said serious things, low and flat and certain, like a man stating a fact he had already lived with for a while.
"I want you mine alone."
I smiled into his shoulder.
"I'm already yours," I said. "You know that."
He went quiet. He did not answer with words. He turned his head and kissed my temple, slow, and stayed there with his mouth against my skin for one extra second the way he did when something was hitting him harder than he wanted to show.
"I want to hear you say it," he said, into my hair. "As long as you will let me."
I tipped my face up. His mouth was right there. The lamp glow caught the small scar at his temple and the gray-green of his eyes that were not black anymore, only soft.
"Then you better get used to it," I said. "I am yours, Daniil Sorokin. Officially. On the record. In writing if you want."
He laughed. Quiet. Surprised. His chest moved against mine.
"In writing."
"I will sign it."
"I will frame it."
I felt his fingers find the inside of my wrist under the blanket and trace, light, along the faint pink line the silk had left. He went up and back, slow, like he was reading something. His thumb stopped at the small bone. He pressed there once and let go.
Then he pulled the blanket higher over my shoulder, tucked it under my chin, and put his hand back at the base of my neck like he was making sure I was still attached to him.
I had been called a lot of things in my life. Daughter. Sister. Friend. Nanny. Honey, by people who did not know my name. Trouble, by people who did. But no one in any of those rooms, in any of those years, had ever made the word mine sound like a promise the way the man under my cheek had just made it sound. I closed my eyes against his shoulder and let myself believe him.
21
DANIIL
The memories have been coming back the way a tide does. Not all at once. In pieces. Yesterday it was the smell of black bread my mother used to slice on a wooden board, the crust torn off and handed to me because I liked it best. The day before, a winter when I was maybe six and Alek was thirteen and we crossed a frozen lot in boots two sizes too big, his hand keeping mine warm inside his coat pocket because I had lost a glove. Small things. The kind of memory that does not change the world but reminds me that the world existed before I broke it.
This morning a new one surfaced while I was shaving. The exact pitch of my father's laugh when something genuinely caught him off guard. Not the political one he used at table. The real laugh. Low, three short bursts, then a sigh. I stood at the sink a long time with the razor in my hand and listened to it inside my head until the water went cold.
A knock comes at the door, sharper and more measured than the small set of taps I am hoping for. I know that rhythm. It belongs to the family doctor, a man my father kept on retainersince I was a boy and who I have known almost as long as I have known my own brothers.
"Come."
He lets himself in with the same black leather bag I remember from when I was twelve and had broken two fingers refusing to admit I had broken anything. His hair has gone fully white at the temples since I last saw him in clean light. He nods once at Chloe in the chair by the bed, then turns his attention to me.
"Sit up if you can."
I sit up. He takes my wrist, presses two fingers to the inside of it, watches his own watch. He looks at my eyes. He checks the inside of my mouth. He touches the cut at my brow and runs a thumb along the line of healing without pressing, just measuring. He slides a thermometer under my tongue and waits.
"You are healing well," he says when he reads it. "The fever is your body finishing the work. Stay in bed two more days."
"Understood."
"Fluids. Sleep. No stairs for forty-eight hours."
I will.
He nods, snaps his bag shut, gives Chloe a small professional smile that holds more warmth in it than he would ever admit to, and shows himself out. The latch clicks. Chloe gets up and pushes the door the rest of the way closed with her hip, and when she turns around her shoulders drop a little, and I see how long she has been sitting in that chair without a word of complaint.
