Page 119 of Dark King Daddy

He helped me into my coat. The gesture was practical—holding the collar, guiding the sleeves—but his hands lingered on my shoulders. His thumb traced the line of my neck where my hair ended.

We went to the car.

Il Cedro occupied a narrow storefront on Columbia Street, wedged between a bodega and a shuttered print shop. The awning was dark green, faded at the edges. A single menu was posted behind glass beside the door, the card yellowed and handwritten in Italian.

Inside, the restaurant was small. Eight tables, maybe nine. The ceiling was low and beamed. Candles on every surface—the tables, the bar, the windowsill. The walls were exposed brick, and the light was amber and close and turned everything warm.

The corner table sat beneath an old arched window. The glass was original— I could tell immediately. The arch followed a Gothic curve, and someone had repointed the brick surround in a mortar that almost matched the original.

Almost. The color was off by half a shade. Too grey. They’d used Portland cement instead of lime.

Daniil held my chair. I sat. He sat across from me. The candle between us threw light across his face and caught the edge of his jaw.

A server brought menus—heavy, leather-bound, the kind that suggested the restaurant had been here long enough to invest in its own gravity. The wine list was a separate card, printed on cream stock.

Daniil opened the menu. He read it the way he read security briefings—systematically, top to bottom, his eyes tracking each line with the focused patience of a man who did not skip entries.

I watched him.

He turned the page. He read the second page. He returned to the first page. He studied the specials card the server had placed between the salt and the candle.

“Daniil.”

He looked up.

“Are you conducting a security assessment of the specials?”

His mouth moved. The ghost of something. “I’m evaluating options.”

“You’ve read the menu twice.”

“I’m verifying the specials against the standard menu for redundancy.”

“That’s not how restaurants work.”

“You’d be surprised how often specials are just regular items with a different sauce.”

I picked up my own menu, flicked through. “You going to write a letter of complaint, Pakhan?”

Instead of replying to my question, he asked, “Have you already condemned the window repairs?”

The question caught me mid-sip of water. I set down the glass.

“The mortar,” I said.

“You’ve been staring at it since we sat down.”

“I haven’t been staring.”

“Your eyes went to the arch three times before you opened the menu.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m just . . . interested, that’s all.”

“Interested? Hmm.”

The server returned. We ordered—burrata, ravioli, sparkling water. Daniil ordered for both of us, and I let him, because the act of him choosing for me in a restaurant he had selected felt like an extension of something we had built in the library and the kitchen and the space between our chairs.

The burrata arrived on a small wooden board. Cream pooled around the torn mozzarella. Olive oil. Cracked pepper. A scatter of basil. I tore bread and dragged it through the cream and ate, and the simplicity of it—good bread, good cheese, a candle, and the man across from me—made the restaurant feel like a room I had been looking for without knowing I was looking.