Page 147 of Dark King Daddy

The first: Ksenia leaving The Glasshouse on Van Brunt Street. The oversized coat—my coat, the one she had grabbed from the hall closet because she was running late and it was the nearest thing. Her hair was up. Her face was visible. She was stepping onto the sidewalk. The timestamp in the corner read yesterday’s date. 10:47 a.m.

The second: Ksenia in the car. Shot through the rear window. Her profile against the glass. Ilya’s shoulder visible in the front seat.

The third: Boris. Standing beside the car. His position, his posture, the holster beneath his jacket visible because the wind had pressed the fabric against it. Whoever took this photograph knew what they were looking at.

The fourth: The car arriving at Dover Street. The porch light. The row houses. Ksenia climbing the steps. Boris behind her.

The fifth: A wide shot. Dover Street from the end of the block. The house. The windows. The guard at the corner who was supposed to be invisible.

I laid the photographs on the table. One beside the other. Five images of my wife going about her day.

Oleg watched me look at them. His smile had not changed. His posture had not changed. He sat in his badly fitting suit with his broken nose and his scarred eyebrow and his pale eyes and he watched me the way a man watches something he has already decided to take.

“Your wife is beautiful,” he said. “The coat is a little large, but she wears it well. An imposing presence.”

I did not respond. My hands were on the table. They were still. I kept them still through an effort of will that cost me something I would feel later.

“Ksenia Mikhailovna,” Oleg continued. He used the patronymic. Deliberately. A small, precise claim of familiarity he had no right to. “She’s been seen at the café on Van Brunt Street. At the Sokolov house on Dover Street. At Orlov Marine on Beard Street. She moves around the city quite a bit, actually. For a woman whose husband is at war. You should be more careful.”

“What are you telling me, Oleg?”

He leaned forward. His elbows on the linen. His face close enough that I could smell his cologne—something heavy and sharp, applied with the confidence of a man who believed his presence was a gift.

“I’m telling you that taking your wife somewhere far away could be the best decision you ever make.” His voice dropped. Not threatening. Intimate. The register of a man sharing a confidence. “Somewhere warm. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere my father’s people don’t need to follow her. You have forty-eight hours, Daniil. Use them wisely.”

I looked at the photographs. Ksenia’s face in the first one—her expression as she stepped onto the sidewalk, unaware. The timestamp. 10:47 a.m. Yesterday.

I stood up.

The chair scraped. The candles flickered. Nikita stood with me, his movement silent and immediate.

“I’ll give you my answer within forty-eight hours,” I said.

Oleg looked up at me. He did not stand. He sat in his chair with his bourbon and his smile and his broken nose and he looked up at me from below, and the angle did not diminish him. He occupied the chair the way he occupied the room—completely, with the certainty of a man who had never been asked to leave.

“I look forward to it,” he said.

I picked up the photographs. I put them back in the envelope. I put the envelope in my jacket. I walked toward the door.

“Daniil.”

I stopped. I did not turn around.

“Your father was a stubborn man,” Oleg said. “Look how that turned out.”

I walked out. Nikita followed. The door closed behind us. The corridor was empty. The stairs were clear. Arkady stood at the bottom, exactly where I had left him, his hands in his pockets, his jaw set.

He looked at my face. Whatever he saw there, he did not ask about it.

“Car,” I said. “Now.”

Ilya pulled away from the Meridian. The Atlantic Avenue storefronts slid past the window—a bakery, a pharmacy, a bar with its shutters down. Normal places. Ordinary afternoon. The city going about its business while I sat in the back of an SUV with five photographs of my wife and the taste of Oleg Voronin’s cologne still in my throat.

I opened the envelope. I pulled out the photographs. I laid them across my lap.

Nikita sat beside me. He had not spoken since we left the building. He looked at the photographs the way he looked at everything—systematically, his eyes tracking each image for information the way they tracked a spreadsheet for anomalies.

“They establish surveillance,” he said. “Multiple positions. The café shot was taken from across the street—second floor, probably. The angle’s too high for street level. The car shots were taken from a following vehicle. The Dover Street shot was taken from the end of the block, which means they had someone positioned there for at least the duration of her arrival.”