Page 48 of Nanny for the Bratva Daddies

He skids to a stop on the smooth floor and straightens up, panting.

“Sir! Vladimir Dunayevsky is here!”

18

NAOMI

Fyodor’s father is here?

The way Daniil tenses like a board is enough to tell me that this isn’t a good thing. I’ve never met him, but what little I’ve picked up about his bloody reign from Zasha—and the horror stories from my mother, including the deaths of my own family—is enough to bring a surge of worry pouring to the forefront of my mind.

“He’ll want to meet you,” Daniil says, pressing one hand to the small of my back as we hurry toward the study. “He always wants to meet everyone.”

“Why?”

“Fuck knows. Power trip. He’ll want to see Dariya too.”

Despite the hesitation in my chest, there’s worry in Daniil’s eyes which is enough to keep me from asking too many questions. Maybe he’s just a kindly grandfather looking to see how well his granddaughter is doing, and I have no intention of getting in the way of that. After all, even the cruelest people hold warmth in their hearts for their families, right?

“Dariya?” I call, hurrying into the study. She looks up from her books with a smile, and Daniil whisks the tutor away so fast that I don’t even get a chance to say hi.

“Naomi!” Dariya thrusts a sheet toward me, but I glimpse only a few scribbles before I set it down.

“Dariya, your grandfather is here so we have to go see him, okay?”

“Grandpa!” Her adorable face lights up immediately and the warmth brimming in her eyes is surprisingly soothing. If she’s excited to see him then he can’t be that bad, can he? Dariya pulls away from me and runs a short distance to where her favorite books are stored on the lower shelves, then returns with a small notebook in hand.

“What’s this?”

“Daddy wrote this.” She pries it open with her tongue sticking out. “He wrote some rules because Grandpa is old and we have to be careful.”

“Careful?” Peering over her shoulder, the pages are indeed filled with neat handwriting stating several rules about how to act. Mostly, it’s about being careful and patient with questions and giving Grandpa time to respond because he suffers from Parkinson’s disease, which affects his speech and movement.

The man certainly doesn’t seem much like a threat anymore.

“Do you need to read through these?” I ask.

Dariya chuckles and gives me the notebook. “No silly. I know the rules. You don’t.”

“Oh.” I huff out a small laugh. Dariya is too smart for her own good sometimes.

“Naomi?” Daniil comes running back into the room, and for the first time since we met, he looks visibly stressed. “Is she ready?”

“Yes. Is everything okay?” Running my eyes over him, he’s changed his outfit entirely and looks much smarter than he did when we left the gym.

“Vladimir acting like he runs the place so nothing new there,” Daniil scoffs under his breath. “Typical that he shows up when Fyodor isn’t here.”

“What about Zasha?” I ask.

“He’s hidden in the conservatory and no one will speak of him.”

No one? I glance down at Dariya, and she beams up at me. Then an idea strikes, and I crouch down to her level.

“Sweetie?”

She nods.

“We’re going to be playing a huge game of hide-and-seek, okay? To help your Grandpa have fun here and Zasha is hiding first, so you can’t tell anyone about him or where he is. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

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