Page 120 of Dark King Daddy

The ravioli came next. The pasta was thin. The braised beef filling was rich and dark and fell apart on the tongue. We ate in a silence that was not empty—it was full, the kind of quiet that happens when two people are occupying the same space with enough comfort that words become optional.

He reached across the table.

His hand found mine. I turned my palm beneath his—opened it, offered it—and threaded my fingers between his. The contact was warm and steady. His thumb rested against my knuckle. He did not let go.

I looked at our hands. His were larger, the knuckles broader, the fingers blunt and capable. Mine were narrower, the nails short from work, a faint callus on my right index finger from where I gripped pencils. Our hands fit together with a specificity that felt designed rather than discovered.

“Ksyusha.”

I looked up.

“The dress,” he said. “Thank you for wearing it.”

“I feel good in it.”

“I can tell.”

His thumb moved across my knuckle. A small, slow circle. The touch was precise and deliberate and I felt it in my wrist, my forearm, the inside of my elbow, the place below my shoulder where the dress began.

I wanted dinner to last. I wanted the bread and the ravioli and the candle and the arched window and his hand in mine. I wanted to sit in this corner and listen to him evaluate menu options and watch his mouth when he almost smiled.

I held his hand. I ate the last bite of ravioli. I did not let go.

The server cleared the ravioli plates and placed a panna cotta between us. Single portion. Two spoons. The cream quivered when the plate touched the table.

Daniil picked up his spoon. He set it down again.

“If nobody else had a claim on your time, and money was no object,” he said, “which restoration would you undertake?”

The question was careful. Not casual—he had been holding it, waiting for the right point in the evening to release it. I could tell by the way he placed it: no preamble, no lead-in, just the question itself set down between us the way he’d set down the agreement in the library.

I looked at him. The candle threw light across the hard line of his cheekbone, the pale color of his eyes. He was watching me with the full, focused attention I had come to recognize as his particular form of interest—not polite, not performative, but the engaged attention of a man who wanted to understand something and intended to give it the time it required.

“There’s a bathhouse,” I said. “On the Red Hook waterfront. Abandoned since the seventies. The city owns it and has no idea what to do with it.”

I stopped. I picked up my spoon. I put it down.

“The entrance hall has original tile work. Encaustic. Geometric patterns—blues, creams, terracotta. Half of it is under six inches of standing water and half is exposed to the weather because the roof collapsed in the nineties. But the tiles are there. Underneath the grime and the mineral deposits and the decades of neglect, the patterns are intact.”

I was leaning forward. I hadn’t meant to. My elbows were on the table, my hands moving as I spoke, the gestures unconscious—tracing the geometry in the air between us.

“The high windows. They’re twelve feet, arched, steel-framed. Someone boarded them in the eighties with plywood. If you pulled the plywood out and cleaned the glass—original glass, Daniil, hand-set, with all the imperfections—the light that would come through that entrance hall would be extraordinary. The way it would hit the tiles. The way it would change through the day.”

I reached for the receipt. The server had left it in a small leather folder beside the candle. I pulled it out, turned it over, and picked up my pen from my bag.

I drew. Quick lines—the arched entrance, the proportions, the pattern of the tile layout I could see in my head. The geometric border. The central medallion. The way the steps wore down at the center of each tread because a hundred thousand feet had climbed them over fifty years.

“The steps,” I said, drawing. “Worn. Curved at the center of each tread. Everyone would want to replace them—new stone, level surface, clean lines. You don’t replace them. You preserve the wear. That’s the record. That’s the proof that people were here, that this building mattered, that it was used and lived in. The wear is the history. You don’t erase it.”

I looked up from the sketch. Daniil was watching me. His expression had shifted. It was warmer. Closer.

“The foundation,” he said. “If the roof collapsed, the water damage—how would you stabilize it?”

I stared at him.

“What?”

“The foundation. Water infiltration over forty years would compromise the structural integrity. What’s your approach?”