Page 83 of Nanny for the Bratva Daddies

“My son is blinded but I am here to open his eyes. You, Zasha, will die here and your name will fade into nothing. I had suspected the rumors of your death were an exaggeration, but now I can make them real. I will consume everything you once had.”

“I?” My eyes narrow. “You mean Fyodor, right? This family is not yours, old man. You are nothing but a relic so past your prime that you deserve to be in a museum, not leading the most powerful family in the entire Bratva.”

The guard to my left reacts before I finish speaking and smashes the butt of his rifle into the side of my head with a powerful blow. Sharp pain lances like a blade through my temple, and the word spins for a moment. My chest constricts while nausea churns hot in my gut, but I only allow myself to grunt slightly in pain.

When I lift my head once more, warmth trickles down the side of my face and the corners of my vision fuzz lightly.

“Did I touch a sore spot?”

“You will become nothing,” Vladimir snarls. “Too many families like yours have scraped their way up from nothing, taking what should never have been yours. It’s about time someone cleaned up those that can’t fall into line. So yes, I will be the one to do it, and when I kill every single man involved in the attack on my granddaughter, I will let them know they were correct.”

I narrow my eyes.

“I will tell them that yes, we had you and now you are dead. Then I will send them to join you.”

“You don’t even like Dariya,” I remark coldly, shaking my head slightly as the fuzziness grows. “I know the stories. You hold no love for anyone or anything. You are a statue that only seeks power. There is no familial warmth in you.”

To my surprise, Vladimir laughs. It’s a breathy sound like the drag of air through a tunnel. “True, but it is about principle.”

Of course it is. I won’t live to hear the tale Vladimir will spin about this night.

“Besides, if Fio is to listen to me then I must pretend to care about what he cares about. In truth, I care little about what is really going on here between all of you. I will not let some used whore and her old vengeance unseat my family name from the throne I placed it on. If anything, it shows how weak my son has become.

“Fyodor is the one who placed your family on that throne,” I snap. “Even I can see that. You were nothing but a tyrant, but Fyodor? Fyodor is a leader.”

“And right now he is malleable like beaten metal. I know how to break a man just right to get what I want.”

My brow lifts. What the hell does he mean? How can he speak so callously about his own child?

Behind us, a single gunshot slices through the quiet night air and my heart stops. My blood runs cold, and I can’t breathe. The fuzziness around my vision increases.

That gunshot. Daniil? Naomi?

He wouldn’t. He didn’t.

Did he?

Oh, Naomi.

“You won’t be remembered,” Vladimir says, and the two guards beside me raise their rifles, pulling my attention right back to my own predicament.

Before they can take their shot, Daniil melts out of the darkness on my left side. We make eye contact for a second, then he lifts his pistol and opens fire.

White-hot pain explodes through my shoulder, and the noise of agony tears past my lips. I topple backward into the deathly cold embrace of the pool.

Water closes over me like a frozen blanket and my limbs become a deadweight as I sink down, down, down…

Death takes me, and part of me welcomes it as my word turns empty and dark.

“Come on, breathe!”

Solid pressure impacts my ribs so painfully that it drags me right back to the world of the living. My gut convulsed. Bile floods up my throat. Hands help me roll over, and I’m coughing desperately, choking on the water and bile that exit my throat and lungs.

“Oh thank God,” comes a strained, faraway voice.

I hurt everywhere. Fire ignites in my shoulder and spreads down my upper arm, and a deep ache throbs across my chest, pulsing in time to my sluggish heartbeat. Groaning, I roll off my blazing shoulder and slump back onto the ground.

Above me, Daniil’s face suddenly swims into view. He kneels beside me, wiping his face as water drips steadily from his soaked hair. His clothes are just as drenched as the rest of him, and his face is drawn and pale.

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