Page 139 of Dark King Daddy

I waited. I did not fill the silence. I did not soften. I did not add qualifications or concessions or the polite retractions that would have made the challenge easier to absorb. I let the silence hold my position for me.

“You’re right,” he said.

Two words. Spoken quietly.

“I should have called you. I should have asked. I was—the fire. The men. I keep thinking about how easily—” He stopped. “That’s not an excuse. I should have asked.”

“Will you change Ilya’s instruction?”

“Already done. I’m texting him now.” A pause. “Take a second car. Boris will follow. And Ksyusha—please eat something. Real food. Not just coffee.”

“I’ll eat something.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise, Daddy.”

The word landed differently over the phone. Softer. A deliberate reminder that the authority he held was the authority I had given him, and that I was choosing to acknowledge it even while I corrected how he used it.

“Thank you,” he said. “For telling me when I’m wrong.”

“Get used to it.”

I heard something on his end. A breath that might have been a laugh.

I hung up. I lowered the window.

“Ilya. The Glasshouse, Van Brunt Street. Boris follows.”

Ilya looked at his phone, read whatever Daniil had sent, and nodded. He closed the window. The car pulled away from the curb.

Zoe had taken the table in the rear room. The same table where Daniil and I had sat the previous week. The ivy climbed the back window. The light was soft. Zoe’s enormous tote bag occupied the chair beside her, and she had already ordered two coffees and a plate of something that turned out to be lemon cake.

She stood when she saw me. She hugged me hard enough that I felt the tote bag shift against my hip.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Well thank you so much, I’m so glad I agreed to meet!”

“No, I mean—you look like you haven’t slept. You look like you’ve been through something. Sit down. Drink this.”

I sat. I drank. The coffee was good. The lemon cake was better. Zoe watched me eat two pieces before she said anything else.

“The project on Henry Street fell through,” she said. “The client decided he wanted a ‘modern aesthetic,’ which means he wanted white walls and recessed lighting and he came to an architectural designer for that. I referred him to a contractor who will give him exactly what he deserves.”

“That’s depressing.”

“That’s the industry. What about you? I haven’t heard from you in—what, four days? Five? I was starting to think your terrifying husband had locked you in a tower.”

“He hasn’t locked me in a tower.”

More like a sex dungeon.

“Good. That would have been a lot of paperwork.” She paused. Stirred her coffee. “How are you, though? Actually?”

I set down my cup. The question was genuine, and Zoe’s particular talent was asking genuine questions in a way that made them impossible to deflect.

“Tired. There was a fire last night. At the yard—the Sokolov freight yard in Queens. Someone torched it.”