Hey, Daddy (Semyonov Bratva Book 2)

Cooking together is not romantic. Get out of my way.

—Nastya to Haze

HAZE

Four years later

“Whatcha got?” Shasha asked me.

I glanced at the papers on my console and said, “New district attorney in town has a hard-on for suave looking men that are more attractive than her. She’s put three people away in the last month for bullshit yet lets a man that raped his kid walk away with a slap on his wrist.”

“Is that right?” Shasha drawled.

This was how it went for us now.

I kept Shasha’s nose clean using my authority, and he took care of assholes that needed to stop breathing air, that the government wouldn’t take care of the ‘right’ way.

It was a great symbiotic relationship that Shasha and I had going for the last four years, and I imagined it would continue until I retired.

“Noted,” Shasha said. “Are y’all coming to dinner tonight?”

I looked at my watch. “Waiting on Desi to get home from class, then we’ll be there.”

“Okay, see you.” He hung up without saying goodbye, just like always.

I had just enough time to take a breath of air before my wife was staring at me with narrowed eyes.

“If you were in a room full of women, would you choose me?” She batted her eyelashes at me.

And, because I was who I was, I didn’t answer like she likely would’ve expected me to.

“Why am I in the room?” I asked instead of “of course.”

She frowned. “I don’t know. Why are you in the room?”noveldrama

I leveled her with a look, then returned my eyes to the road.

“You’re not going to win this one, bro,” Dima replied from the back seat.

Nastya whipped her head around and narrowed her eyes at him. “No comments from the peanut gallery.”

“I would assume I’m in the room because you told me to be there…” I paused, deliberating. “Am I choosing because I want to have sex with them? Or am I choosing them to protect my back?” I hesitated. “Or maybe I’m in a room full of women, and I have to choose one to sacrifice?”

Dima snorted out a laugh.

Nastya turned to survey me.

Today was my forty-fifth birthday.

Forty. Five.

“I now knew what ‘aging like fine wine’ means,” Nastya said after a while.

I turned to look at her. “What?”

“Why do you age so sexy, and I age like I’m a bag of potatoes?” she asked.

I grinned wickedly at her and said, “I don’t think that you can really count yourself as a sack of potatoes when you’ve been pregnant with my children for the last few years, Mama.”

“Gag,” Dima said. “Can we not talk about my sister being pregnant?”

“Dima,” Milena snorted. “For the love of God, grow up.”

Dima narrowed his eyes at Milena, then said, “I’m not talking to you!”

Dima was home, and Milena had been tasked with picking him up yesterday, but had forgotten.

I’d picked him up on the way home from work, and he’d complained non-stop about being left behind.

Dima hadn’t let Milena forget that she’d forgotten, either. He’d brought it up at least fifteen times now.

“Where are we going, anyway?” Dima asked.

“Grabbing our packages from the Amazon Locker,” Nastya answered. “I needed two strapping men to get it.”

“What is it?” Dima asked as we arrived at the Locker.

“You’ll see.” She smiled. “You got that pallet jack, honey?”

I got out, pulled the pallet jack out of the back of the truck, and rolled it to the back of the trailer.

The box didn’t even fit into one of the lockers.

One of the men manning the place had to direct us to grab it from the back. Which we did.

Once it was situated and on the trailer, I got back into the truck.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

“A small car, by the feel of it,” Dima joked. “Hey, what did they say about your ex?”

Nastya grinned but refused to tell me what it was until we were at home.

She did give the update on Julia.

“Apparently, she has feeling in her left foot now. She can sit up, but she still can’t use anything below her hips,” Nastya explained. “Oh, and Rich got moved to a more secure prison because he tried to escape. Strangled a guard to try to do it, too.”

Dima snorted. “Dummies.”

“You want to know the funniest part?” Nastya turned to look at Dima in the back.

“Sure,” Dima said.

“The man that moved him to a more secure prison is also the man that replaced that asshole senator that tried to kill Nastya,” Milena interjected before Nastya could.

“Seems like karmic justice, huh?” Dima supplied.

“Sure does.” Nastya turned. “Even better, it’s in the middle of nowhere, Texas, and they have no air conditioner.”

When we pulled into the driveway, Brecken came out carrying our youngest daughter, Rosie.

Rosie was two and a half months old and was the cutest thing you’d ever see.

Our son, who was now fifteen months old, came barreling out the door right behind her but was caught by my mom before he could run near us.

Once she saw that I was there, she let him go, and he pumped his little legs as fast and hard as he could, running right at me.

“Daddy!”

Daddy.

I’d never get over hearing that sound come from my children’s throats.

I’d dealt with a lot of shit in my work life, and it didn’t matter what I saw at work, if I heard that word come from my kid’s mouth, it was like all was right in the world.

Just as he was about to get to me, he veered hard right and then said, “Mama!”

My wife picked up her son, pulled him into her arms, and then kissed him all over his face.

“Eewwww!” Nathaniel groaned. “Gross!”

Just as Nathaniel said “gross,” my daughter pulled up in her brand-new car.

Her brand-new car that she’d paid for.

In the last four years, Nastya and she had gone into business, so to speak.

Nastya still did her blog, but my daughter had taken over the video side of the operation and had grown it into something so huge that she was making a fuckin’ killing.

At twenty years old, she was damn near a multi-millionaire.

Oh, and she had everything that she could ever want because people sent her all kinds of free stuff to try.

“Oh!” Desi came running toward us. “It’s here!”

“What is ‘it?’” I asked.

“It…” She came to a stop, her eyes gleaming. “Is…” She produced a box cutter out of her purse, then opened it to reveal…

“A mini excavator!” she cried. “And it was free! I just have to tell them what I think about the arm thingy or whatever.”

I shook my head.

We’d had to build onto our house to expand their operation.

Shasha had laughed his ass off until he’d had to add onto his own place because his wife kept going home with things that Desi and Nastya gave her.

Hell, even Milena had to add on.

There was literally so much fuckin’ shit everywhere that it was hard to navigate it sometimes.

“Well, hell,” Dima said as he stared at it. “Now, I gotta try it.”

He started it up and drove it backward off the trailer.

I walked to Brecken and snagged my little girl from her.

She winked and said, “I gotta get started on dinner. See y’all in a few.”

She started to walk down the road, disappearing from sight once she’d made it to her own gate.

She came down to visit a lot.

That was one thing that I liked about the compound that Shasha had built.

The family was close.

My own family was looking for their own places to build on the same lake, only a bit farther down the shore.

Eventually, we’d have them all close.

Speaking of close, my wife came up to me, her eyes on our daughter.

The moment she was near, I pulled her into the curve of my arm and said, “We have it all, Mama.”

She leaned her face into me and said, “Just one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

She pulled away and said, “Hey, Renee?”

My mom turned toward us. “Yeah?”

“Did you bring the package?”

My mom smiled and disappeared into the house.

She came out a long minute later with two dogs in tow.

One was a black mastiff and the other…

“Oh,” I breathed. “He looks just like Finn.”

“You’ll love her name,” she said.

I walked over to the big dog and bent down.

Both of them assaulted us with kisses, but they were incredibly gentle with Rosie, still fast asleep in my arms.

I pulled the collar of Finn’s lookalike around and felt my stomach clench.

Finnia.

Finnia.

“You named her Finnia?” I asked, my heart aching.

“No.” Nastya smoothed her hand over Finnia’s head. “She was named Finnia by the old lady that used to own her. When she died, they came as a pair to your mom’s shelter. As soon as I saw Finnia, I knew we had to adopt them.”

She was right.

Just one more thing.

Dogs.

That made our life utterly perfect.

“I think we finally did it, Mama,” I said softly as I watched my twenty-year-old daughter climb onto her mini excavator.

Nastya turned, our son now amazingly asleep in her arms as she said, “Yeah, Daddy. We sure did.”

I squeezed her ass. “Behave.”

She batted her eyes. “Make me.”