Hey, Daddy (Semyonov Bratva Book 2)

Didn’t mean to be rude, but it’s just the cold and my personality.noveldrama

—Nastya to Haze

NASTYA

The lawyer had already figured out what it was Shasha did.

“After the Viveka and Gabriel situation, they’ve decided that we’re going to be their primary focus. They put Detective Haze on the project because they think he’s about to quit, and they need him,” my brother replied.

The Gabriel and Viveka situation was something that’d happened a couple of months before Shasha met his now-wife, Brecken.

See, a woman had dropped off a baby at Shasha’s gate, and had been run over in a hit-and-run as she tried to get away.

My brother had saved the baby and had her adopted into his housekeeper’s family.

Faina and Cassius were great caretakers to their adoptive daughter, Catya. But, as far as the world knew, Faina had given birth to Catya herself and that would stay that way forever.

The woman that’d been run over, Viveka, had died at the scene, and later it’d been confirmed that her husband, a hot-shit criminal defense lawyer, had done it.

Though I hadn’t confirmed it fully, I knew my brother had some part in his disappearance.

We’d all been questioned—even me—as to his whereabouts.

And since my brother tried to keep the full details from us for deniability purposes, I could accurately say that I had no idea.

I didn’t get that feeling, though.

“No,” I said. “I think this was just a routine questioning. And it should be. I mean, there was a dead body hacked up to pieces in my car.”

“This won’t be the end of it,” Shasha grumbled.

“What won’t?” Shasha’s wife, Brecken, came into the room.

Their daughter, Vivi, was hot on her heels.

She came running into the room, a powerhouse of a three-year-old, and went straight to her father.

Only, last second, she diverted her path and came right at me.

Unprepared for her assault, I fell back onto my ass onto the floor, laughing as I did.

“Aunt Nasty!”

I sighed.

I’d long since decided that I would never get to be called anything else.

My brothers called me that no matter how many times I threatened their lives, neither one of them cared because they knew I wouldn’t do a damn thing.

Now, even my niece had started calling me that.

“Hey, Vivi.” I pried some of her crazy hair off of her face. “Why are you covered in chocolate?”

“Because Mommy and I decided to make chocolate frosted brownies.” She paused. “And Mommy said that I could lick the beaters, but she told me not to tell Aunt Milena.”

I laughed.

Milena was a baker.

She loved baking and always had.

But she never cheated and ate any of her creations before they’d been cooked because she said it was “dangerous.”

Personally, I couldn’t care less. I ate raw cookie dough and brownie batter, despite knowing that there was a possibility that I’d catch some disease from it.

Nothing should taste that good if it was bad for you…

“Good idea,” I said. “Aunt Milena doesn’t like it when we eat raw stuff.”

“That’s because she’s a party pooper.” Shasha came over and plucked his daughter off of me, giving her a ton of kisses as she squealed in delight. “Why didn’t I get a hug first, you monster?”

While Shasha was busy giving his attention to his child, I explained to Brecken what was going on.

“Do they think you did it?” she asked.

“God, I hope not,” I grumbled. “Because that would fucking suck.”

“It would,” she agreed, her eyes narrowing. “What’s that?”

She pointed at my neck, and my cheeks immediately flamed. “Oh, nothing.”

She rolled her eyes, but we both knew what it was.

A hickey.

I’m not sure when I’d gotten it, but I definitely knew it was there now. There was no way you could hide something that big.

Even my brother probably noticed it, but he was wise enough not to ask about his sister’s sex life.

He’d learned that particular lesson when I’d lost my virginity to one of his friends in high school, and I’d given him every single detail and more. I’d then told him about our two-and-a-half-month-long relationship every single time I saw him so he’d know what kind of sex I was having.

I’d even asked him to give his friend advice on how to please me.

That’d been the last time he’d ever asked, mostly because he knew that I’d make his life a living hell if he did.

I was wise enough not to tell him that I’d slept with a cop who’d wanted to investigate him, though.

“We need to talk about the next steps.” Elianora crossed her legs to get comfortable. “Don’t ever talk to them…”

She went on to explain how the next several days would go. How I shouldn’t talk to the cops without her present. How I needed to be careful, because why would someone specifically give me a box with a dead body in it. How a lot of this could be related to Shasha and his business practices—i.e., the Russian Bratva that he now ran with an iron fist.

Blah, blah, blah.

“I think you should stay with us for a few days.” Shasha paused. “Or, perhaps, the perfectly good house that I built you.”

I winced.

Shasha had finished the houses—or more accurately, his wife’s brothers’ company had finished it—two years ago, and I’d yet to move into mine.

Dima’s was also sitting empty, even though it was empty because he was in the military and actually not even in the country.

Milena didn’t have any issues with staying in a suffocating jail cell—though she had her reasons that she didn’t exactly share with the rest of us.

“Um, no,” I said. “I will not change a single thing about anything that I’m doing. I’m literally running my business out of my apartment right now. If I move to your house, all of my stuff won’t just follow me over there.”

“We can…”

“No, Shasha,” I said. “This is a hard limit for me. No. I don’t want this. If you suffocate me, I’ll push back.”

They’d tried that when I was younger, and it’d only pushed me away.

He knew I’d leave and not come back, too.

And it would kill him.

He loved his family.

I knew he did.

But I would not go through that again.

I’d done it throughout my childhood, and it wasn’t healthy.

When Shasha’s daughter, Vivi, had been born, I’d had to have a long talk with Brecken about Shasha’s pension for suffocation.

And not in the “kill you,” way but in the “I’ll protect you until you want to run away” way.

I had done that, too.

Run away.

It’d been a last-ditch effort to keep myself sane.

And it’d caused my parents to go nuclear and Dima and Shasha to outright flip the fuck out.

Needless to say, the only way they’d gotten me back was to promise they’d let me live my life.

Which I would be doing, even now.

I just hoped in this process he didn’t find out where I was living.

He’d seriously lose his shit, and I’d never hear the end of it.

He looked fucking pissed, but I noted that he didn’t push anymore.

“So what am I supposed to do? Hope that you don’t get chopped up into little pieces like that young woman did?” he asked. “Just take a leap of faith?”

I gritted my teeth. “When I knew I was in trouble, I called you first, Shasha.”

He deflated.

He knew I was right.

“You’ll promise to always call me first?” He leaned forward then, eyes intense.

I stood up and patted him on the head. “Yes, Shasha.”

He grumbled under his breath and reached for me, pulling me into his lap and squeezing the shit out of me. “Don’t fucking get into a mess, Nastya. This is bad.”

“I know,” I returned. “I’m going to try my hardest.”

My phone buzzed, the alarm going off for my blood sugar this time.

I groaned when he said, “Get it taken care of, Nastya.”

I grumbled something under my breath and he pinched me. “This isn’t a game. This is not something that I’ll allow you to fuck around with.”

I rolled my eyes.

When I was fourteen, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

I’d tried really hard to act normal, but with the stupid diagnosis came even more suffocation.

I fucking hated my diagnosis.

Sometimes, I’d thought about how easy it would be to just do what I wanted and damn the consequences.

It was hard to live in a world where your body was against you one hundred percent of the time.

It was even harder to find out that you weren’t whole and would in fact spend the rest of your life catering to your disease.

I knew it was a bad mindset.

But with my parents literally dictating—and eventually Shasha, too—my personal life, and my health dictating my physical body, my whole entire soul had been tired.

My soul was still tired, and I’d known about my type 1 diagnosis for going on ten years now.

So no, my response to my health wasn’t what it should be.

This was something I could live with. I knew it.

I just didn’t fucking want to.

Was that so fucking bad?

I was allowed to have a bad attitude, dammit!

“Yes, Shasha,” I lied.

I’d keep up with it…today.

Maybe I’d address it if I started to feel bad. Maybe I’d have to go to the damn hospital.

Who knew?

My only saving grace was that none of my family was on my medical records. They didn’t know that I had a fake ID and I used it religiously. Or that I didn’t have any of them listed as my medical emergency contacts so that if I did find myself in the hospital, they wouldn’t know.

It was a pretty sucky thing to do but…yeah. I was living life how I wanted to live it.

I checked my numbers and rolled my eyes. Now it was high.

Of course it was.

Because my body was a dick bag.

I shot myself up with some insulin—I refused to have a freakin’ machine connected to me that gave me the doses because I was a self-harmer—and gathered my things.

“Sure you won’t take a guard?” Brecken whispered.

“Very,” I said.

“Call us if you need anything.” She patted my hand.

I blew her a kiss, then came to a stop at the front door when I realized I didn’t have a vehicle anymore.

I grimaced and said, “Do you care if I use your old car?”

She smiled. “I knew that I forced him to let me keep it for a reason.”

She hurried to the kitchen and disappeared around a corner.

She came back moments later with a set of keys.

I had to laugh because it’d been a hot minute since I’d had to use an actual key.

“Do you think that I could take the doors off?” I teased.

“Absolutely.” Her eyes sparkled. “But you have to watch the weather.”

“It’s also freezing cold,” my brother’s dark voice grumbled from behind me.

I flashed Brecken a grin and hauled ass to her Jeep.

She’d loved it, but upon marrying my brother, Brecken had gotten an upgrade in the form of an armored Yukon that looked like a tank.

Hurrying to the Jeep, I got inside and used the key to start it.

I had to giggle as I pulled out of the driveway and headed home.