Page 110 of Merciless Daddy

“Drink slowly.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

No bite in it now.

I sat beside her and offered the pencils. She chose red, then gold.

The page showed a firebird inside a ring of black branches. She colored the first feather while I opened the storybook I had found through a dealer who owed me a favor. It was an English translation. Poor in places.

The prince received the voice of a pompous Palermo customs officer. The wolf sounded suspiciously like Tonio after three glasses of wine. The tsar developed a Chicago accent I could not sustain for more than two pages.

Yelena looked up from the firebird.

“What are you doing?”

“Reading.”

“That is not how a Russian tsar sounds.”

“You’ve met many?”

“It’s criminal.”

“I am a criminal.”

She snorted.

I continued.

The horse sounded like Pietro when annoyed. The firebird became a dramatic woman from Brooklyn who refused every instruction and complained about captivity while stealing golden apples.

Yelena put down the red pencil.

“You made the firebird me.”

“I would never.”

“She just called the prince an incompetent kidnapper.”

“Lots of people would do that.”

Her laugh arrived.

Not five seconds late. Immediately.

Warm and helpless and tired. It filled the room more thoroughly than noise had any right to.

By the time the prince reached the third task, Yelena had left the sofa. She sat on the floor between my feet with the blanket around her shoulders and her coloring book on the table. Her cheek rested against my knee. I read with one hand and stroked her hair with the other.

The red and gold firebird slowly took shape beneath her pencils. Her movements became less exact as exhaustion settled over her.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, little one?”

“Was I still a good girl?”

I closed the book around one finger. She did not look up. The question hurt more than the marks in my palm from her nails had.