Page 82 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
He swallowed once. He nodded.
Behind him, Mikhail snorted.
"Look at him," Mikhail said, pointing at his older brother's head and grinning wide enough to split his face. "Adorable. Soft. Edible. I want to put him in a stroller."
Sienna picked up another hat off the table, walked over to her husband, and put it on him without asking. The elastic snapped under Mikhail's chin and he froze, mouth still open mid-grin.
"Your brother shouldn't be cute alone," Sienna said sweetly, smoothing the elastic.
He stared at her. Then he started to laugh, helpless, and reached up to feel the cone on his own head.
"Devious," Mikhail said, still feeling for the cone on his own head. "Beautiful. I have been outflanked by my own wife."
"Mm," Sienna said.
We all turned, in slow unison, to look at Alek.
Alek had clearly decided to wear a neutral face. His mouth had assumed a polite shape. His good eye had assumed a polite expression. The neutrality was working visibly, which is the precise moment neutrality stops being neutral.
Lily was already moving. She crossed the room with a hat held in front of her like an offering. She did not ask either. She rose up onto her toes, the way only a ballerina does, and settled the cone on her husband's head, ribbon under his chin. She patted his chest once.
Alek did not speak. He accepted it. His mouth twitched, exactly once, at the corner. Lily saw it. Her grin widened.
Then there was Ivan.
Ivan turned on his heel and started for the door.
"Try to leave," Jade said calmly from her chair, not even looking up from her nails, "and you sleep on the couch. Try to run, and I sell your refrigerator."
Ivan stopped.
He stood very still. Then he turned back around, the face of a man marched to a guillotine he had personally built.
"Just give me the fucking hat," Ivan said.
Jade laughed, the bright real laugh that always made him soften at the edges, walked over, set the hat on his head with care, and rose up and kissed him on the cheek. The line of his shoulders dropped half an inch.
Rhea chose that moment to step forward, pastels in her fist.
"Hey," Rhea said, planting her hands on her hips like a tiny foreman. "Let's complete the look. What design do you want?"
The brothers complained in unison. Mikhail groaned with his whole chest like a felled tree. Ivan said "no" with the finality of a verdict. Alek said, in his measured Pakhan voice, "Rhea, perhaps another day."
Rhea's lower lip went out. Her eyes filled. Her chin trembled in a way so technically perfect that I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from clapping. Beom-Beom was clutched in her free hand and seemed to also be sad.
In ten seconds, a girl in two braids brought four bratva men to their knees.
Mikhail sat first. He dropped into a dining chair and tilted his face up like he was being knighted. "Make me terrifying," he ordered.
"Tigers are scary," Rhea informed him, already painting.
She drew one bold orange-and-black stripe across his cheekbone with the focus of a tattoo artist. Mikhail held very still. When she finished, he turned to Sienna and growled. Sienna did not react. She had been raising Mikhail like ahouseplant for years and had learned not to water the dramatic ones.
Daniil sat next. Rhea climbed up on the chair beside him. Whatever she had been about to paint, he stopped her with a hand lifted, almost shy, and tapped his own cheekbone.
"A heart," he said. "Here."
Rhea looked at him for a long moment. Then she said, very softly, "Okay, Uncle Dan." She painted a small red heart on his cheek with so much care that I had to look at the ceiling to keep my face together.
