Page 25 of Owned & Bred by the BRATVA

I didn’t give you away, Clara. I tried to save you the only way I could.

Come home. Just for a moment. We can talk. We can fix this. Don’t let them poison you against the most important thing – Family.

Love,

Dad

It’s worse than I thought.

No threats. No financial language at all. Just careful, curated regret wrapped in paternal concern and manipulation. The kind of letter that could convince a girl who still has a scar where a father’s love should have been that she might have misjudged him.

But I haven’t.

And when Clara sees this letter, I want her to be strong enough not to flinch. I want her to read this and finally see the man who caged her, not the father she wished he could be.

I fold the letter with care and slide it back into the envelope, sealing it with a strip of black tape before tucking it into my inside jacket pocket.

Later, when the time is right, I’ll show it to her. Not as evidence. Not as ammunition.

As a choice.

She deserves that much.

I sink into the chair and let my hand rest against the desk, fingertips tapping once, twice. I think about the feed. The footage her father sent over when he first approached me. It wasn’t the offer that hooked me. I wasn’t interested in buying agirl, not even one as pretty as the silhouette on that grainy file. Not even someone asuntouchedas she was.

It was the isolation.

The slow pacing. The way she sat with a book in her lap but didn’t turn the page. The way she looked out the window with a face that didn’t expect rescue. She wasn’t waiting. She was resigned. And I remember thinking: if I don’t take her, someone worse will.

Then the file zoomed in on her face.

And something inside me snapped like a goddamn bone.

I would have paid a thousand times more than the ten million her father asked. I still would. Every dollar, every drop of blood, every reputation I've ever crushed, it would all be worth it just to keep her from ever being that lonely again.

And now he wants more.

Twenty-five years ago, he was nobody special. Middle management at a mid-tier investment firm, handling pension funds and small portfolios. Clean record. Clean reputation. The kind of man who wore the same three suits on rotation and counted every dollar twice before spending it. Wife, and child at home in their little two bedroom house with the white picket fence.

Then Clara's mother died.

The medical bills came firs. Experimental treatments, private facilities, specialists who charged obscene fees to deliver false hope. I tracked his descent in the financial records like following breadcrumbs into hell. First the legitimate loans, maxed out credit cards, second mortgage on the house. All for a woman who was dying anyway.

But grief doesn't care about logic.

The transition was gradual. A favor here, a blind eye there. One of his firm's clients needed some creative accounting, nothing major, just some figures moved around to avoid taxes. Raymond was desperate, drowning in debt, and the extra fee was enough to keep the lights on for another month.

Just this once, he probably told himself.Just until I get back on my feet.

But there's no such thing as just once in this world.

Within six months, he was laundering money for mid-level dealers. Within a year, he'd left the legitimate firm entirely and set up his own consulting business, a front so obvious it's almost insulting. But he was useful to the right people, and usefulness buys protection.

The real shift came when Clara turned sixteen.

That's when he pulled her out of school. When he hired the private tutors, installed the first security system, built the walls that would keep her locked away for the next six years. He told himself it was protection, but I know better.

He'd learned something valuable: powerful men will pay extraordinary amounts for something truly rare. And nothing is rarer than genuine innocence in a world that chews it up and spits it out like cheap gum.

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