Page 1 of The Bratva Bosses' Nanny

Chapter 1: A Debt in Blood

Dmitri

Fucking hell. Aleksandr slams the dossier on the table, photos scattering like confetti, except this ain’t a fucking party. Nikolai pours another glass of vodka, face stonier than I’ve ever seen. I stare at the pictures of the traitor. Our traitor. His daughter, this innocent pawn, stares back from a photograph, blissfully ignorant.

“Can’t believe Sergey did this,” Aleksandr mutters, running his fingers through his hair. “Betrayed by our own.”

“Question is, what do we do with her?” Nikolai waves at the photo of the little girl. “Can’t just throw her back in the sea.”

“I say we keep her.” My words hang heavy in the air, like the fog of gun smoke. “She’s a symbol. A constant reminder of what happens when someone fucks with us.”

Nikolai downs his vodka, sets down the glass with a clink and snorts. “Keep the fucking three-year-old? Do you even know anything about kids?”

I take a deep breath, fists clenching. “All I know is that this bastard, this actual one, is partly our doing. It’s our fucking fault Sergey went off the rails.”

Aleksandr cuts in. “Fault? You’re saying we drove him to betray us? That’s bullshit.”

“Is it?” I shoot back. “We knew he was unstable, emotionally compromised. We kept him close because he was useful.”

Nikolai leans in, fierce. “So, what, Dmitri? You want a gold star for admitting we fucked up?”

“No,” I snap. “I want us to fix it, starting with her. She’s innocent in all this chaos. We owe her that much.”

Aleksandr, usually an ice fortress, suddenly erupts. “Fine, do whatever the fuck you want. I’m out of here. A traitor’s bastard is not my responsibility.”

He stands abruptly, knocking his chair back, and storms out of the room. The door slams behind him with a bang that lingers.

I stare at the empty space he left, then at Nikolai. “Well, shit. Looks like it’s just you and me now.”

Nikolai refills his glass, looks at it, then decides against it and puts it back down. “Aleksandr will come around. He’s just... He’s Aleksandr. But that doesn’t solve our immediate problem. What do we do now?”

We both turn our heads toward the little girl, who’s been bawling for what feels like an eternity. She’s quieter now, entranced by some cartoon on the TV we set up for her.

Nikolai, his face all stern angles and stormy skies, rises from his chair. Even in this clusterfuck, the man looks like he stepped out of a goddamn GQ magazine—tailored suit, sharp jawline.

He approaches the child, kneels down, but keeps a respectful distance.

The kid recoils, maybe from the lingering smell of cigarette smoke that clings to him or perhaps the scar which streaks across his cheek like a battle flag.

“Look at me, kid. Do you have any relatives? A... babushka?” His voice is softer than I’ve ever heard, but still edged with steel.

She shakes her head ‘no,’ tiny hand clutching a juice box. Her nose is running, and for the first time, the weight of this situation really hits me.

I watch Nikolai’s eyes, usually so hard, flicker with something I can’t place. Is it regret? Doubt? Whatever it is, it’s gone in an instant, buried under layers of hardened resolve.

“She’s really alone, then,” Nikolai mutters, standing up and returning to the table. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

“Yeah,” I agree, locking my phone and setting it down. “We definitely do.”

Just as Nikolai’s about to sit, his phone buzzes. A notification. Odd, considering the guy almost never looks at his phone during our meetings. Must be urgent. Or a woman. With Nikolai, his list of conquests is as long as his rap sheet.

“Listen, Dmitri,” he finally says after glancing at his phone and silencing it. “She’s staying, at least until we figure out if she has any living relatives. Except or her mother.”

“What about child services? You think they’re just going to ignore a suddenly orphaned kid?” I challenge.

“Fuck child services. They’re not going to find anyone with the surname Kuznetsov anyway,” he retorts. “Besides, we should probably focus on finding info about her mom first. Maybe there’s family on that side.”

He’s got a point. For better or worse, this kid’s stuck with us for now.

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