Hey, Daddy (Semyonov Bratva Book 2)

I wouldn’t pass a vibe check.

—Nastya’s secret thoughts

NASTYA

John.

John was dead.

Haze’s partner.

He’d died in front of my eyes.

It took me twenty rotations of the second hand around the clock before I worked up the courage.

“Two masked men came into my apartment,” I rasped. “One was wearing dark clothing, but there was a badge hooked to his belt. A Fort Worth Police Department badge.”

Haze’s gaze met mine and held.

The intensity in them made my heart literally stall inside of my chest.

The strange flip-flop of the organ beneath my hand took a stutter step, then resumed beating like normal.

Out of the corner of my eye I watched Shasha glance at the monitor where my heart rate was being displayed.

I ripped the monitor from my finger and heard the alarming beep follow.

Dima stepped right up to it and turned it off with a few quick taps of his fingers, and I idly wondered how he knew how to do that.

He had zero medical experience at all.

He…

I realized then that I was stalling and forced myself to get back on track.

“Daniil and I were in the hallway that led to my room. He’d already done the walkthrough that cleared the apartment when the doorbell rang.” I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat. “Daniil went to the door. And you know how stinkin’ shitty the peepholes are. Daniil was only able to see the officer that came from the chest down. He asked for the badge to be held up to the door so he could see it, and only when he called in the badge number did he let what he thought was only the officer inside.”

I watched Haze’s chest.

Watched the cords in his neck tense as I was talking.

“Do you remember the badge number?” he asked carefully.

I swallowed hard. “I’ll try…”

He nodded and said, “Please, Mama. Continue.”

Milena came up to my side, fed up with the distance, sat on the edge of the bed and threw her arms around me.

I leaned into my sister’s touch for a long moment before continuing.

Maven moved in, still hesitant around me, but I held out my free hand and waited for her to take it before continuing.

“The door barely made it all the way open before the second guy pushed through. Daniil sensed the danger immediately and told me to run. I did, and that’s the last I remember before waking up,” I said. “When I woke up, it was to find Daniil dead beside me, blood everywhere, and my body…stiff.”

“Do you feel like you fought?” Dima asked.

I shrugged. “I feel like I’ve run a marathon.”

I was being for real, too.

I’d run several, and every last one of them I’d felt like death afterward.

“Nastya’s run three or four now,” Milena supplied helpfully to everyone in the room. “She was barely able to move after each one.”

“Was the uniformed officer that came in John?” Auden asked what likely everyone was thinking.

“No,” Haze disagreed vehemently. “John isn’t ever in uniform anymore. To be completely truthful, I’m not even sure that he has a uniform that fits anymore. He’d have had to go buy all new clothes to make that happen, and though you think it might be easy, John had to special order all of his uniforms because he was so bulky.”

“I’ll call Lev, have him meet us at the house,” Shasha said. “Maybe we can use the street cameras to piece together what happened.”

“That’s a little bit illegal,” my lawyer said as she gathered her sweater and bag. “I’m going to exit stage left. If you need me, call.” She leveled me with a look. “You will not go to jail for killing an officer of the law and seriously injuring your bodyguard.”

“Seriously injuring?” I croaked.

Elianora smiled and said, “I’ll let them catch you up.”

She left, leaving Shasha, Dima, my sisters, Auden and Haze in the room with me.

“Daniil is alive?” I asked no one in particular.

It was Shasha that answered, though.

“Hanging on by a thread,” Shasha answered honestly.

I wasn’t sure how.

There would be no way on earth that I thought a man could live through what Daniil had. But I’d known Daniil for a very long time. If anyone would live through sheer stubbornness, it would be him.

Haze’s eyes had never left mine since I’d started talking, and I felt like he’d wrapped me up in a warm blanket and held me tight with each prolonged second.

I loved my sisters, but I really wanted him holding me…

As if he sensed it, he asked, “Do you all mind giving us a moment? Could you go check on whether she can be discharged? Maybe call in and check on the kids…”

Shasha looked from me to Haze and back before saying, “I got an update from Brecken five minutes ago that Desi was playing Candy Land with Vivi, but I’m going to give her a heads up that we’re gonna have a full house in a bit.”

One by one they left until Haze was alone.

The moment the last of my family filed out, he walked around the bed and straight to me.

He didn’t bother taking a seat on the side of the bed.

Instead, he hauled me into his arms, then sat where I’d once been sitting, before wrapping me up so tight that I finally felt warm.

I buried my face into his neck and said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“We will figure out how this happened,” he promised. “They made a mistake this time. They left you behind, and we’ll piece together everything that happened. We’ll catch him.”

His assurance was enough to finally make me relax.

That was, until the doctor came in and reminded me how unsafe life was.

I wasn’t listening at first.noveldrama

It took my brain a second to finally come back to the living, and when I did, I heard him say, “…it’s a benzodiazepine used to treat severe insomnia. It’s better known name is Rohypnol.”

“So he roofied her?” Dima asked.

I left my head in Haze’s neck and listened, more alarmed every second.

“Yes, and a very high amount, too. I’m honestly surprised that she’s able to sit here and hold a conversation with you all at all. Even the IV fluids we were able to pump into her wouldn’t have been enough to counteract that amount.”

He kept talking, but I let my mind wander again.

I wished I could go back to Christmas.

I loved looking at all of the trees.

Or Halloween.

Halloween was my second favorite holiday now that Maven was back with us. I loved going with her family to all the trunk o’ treats and trick o’ treating through the neighborhoods. I loved watching them get excited when they spotted some of their favorite characters outside with them.

“Mama.”

I blinked, then pulled away to see Haze staring at me with those beautiful gray eyes.

“Yeah?” I asked, mesmerized.

“You ready to go home?” he asked.

“Yes.”

So that’s what we did.

I was discharged.

I was put into Shasha’s armored tank of a vehicle, which Haze slid into beside me.

We drove to Shasha’s place, which was apparently where all the kids were dropped off for safekeeping.

When we got inside it was to see a very intense game of Go Fish going on between Desi, Brecken, and Vivi.

Vivi asked, very loudly, if her mother had any blue hippos.

I could clearly see that she hadn’t a single blue hippo in her hand.

She did, however, have a red horse.

So the next time, when Desi asked Brecken if she had a red horse, a devious smile landed on Vivi’s cherubic face.

“Your kid already has your shrewd brain,” Milena murmured under her breath to our brother.

Shasha’s grin was proud when he said, “Taught her everything I know.”