Page 162 of Dark King Daddy

“No. By the time I was old enough to choose, the path was set. The Sokolov organization needed an heir. Lev had decided what I would be.” He picked up his fork. “I don’t regret it. I’m good at what I do. But sometimes I look at a building—the way the weight distributes, the way the structure holds—and I think about what it would have been like to design something instead of inherit it.”

I looked at him. The candlelight. The white shirt. The man who had wanted to build things and had been given an empire to maintain instead.

“You married an architect,” I said.

“I’m aware.”

“I could show you things. Drafting. Design. If you wanted.”

“Maybe.” The corner of his mouth moved. “After the war.”

“After the war.”

His phone buzzed. He glanced at it. Turned it face-down on the table.

It buzzed again five minutes later. He glanced again.

The third time, I reached across the table and placed my hand over the phone.

“One hour,” I said. “You gave Arkady instructions for the evening. He knows how to reach you if something urgent happens. Give me one hour where my husband is not the Pakhan.”

He looked at my hand on the phone. He looked at my face.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Be present.”

He turned the phone off. Not face-down—off. The screen went dark. He placed it in his jacket pocket and buttoned the pocket.

“One hour,” he said.

“Thank you.”

The conversation continued. He asked about the Henry Street project. I told him about the client who wanted modern aesthetic and the contractor who would give him exactly what he deserved. He asked about the bathhouse—the one on the Red Hook waterfront, the one I had described on our first date. I told him about the tile work. The worn steps. The windows that needed restoration but not replacement, because the glass was original and original glass had a character that new glass could not replicate.

He listened. He asked questions. He remembered details from our first conversation and built on them, and the building of details — layer on layer, conversation on conversation — created something that had not existed before. A history. A shared architecture of small facts and remembered preferences and the particular intimacy of a man who listened to his wife talk about windows because he found her fascinating when she talked about windows.

Then he asked a different question.

“What would you have done?” he said. “If we had met without our fathers arranging our lives. If there had been no alliance, no marriage, no agreement. Just you and me in a room somewhere.”

I set down my wine. I looked at him across the candles.

“I would have flirted outrageously,” I said.

“You don’t flirt outrageously?”

“Outrageous flirting is loud. It’s obvious. It’s leaning across tables and touching sleeves and laughing too hard at jokes. I don’t do that. I make eye contact. I ask questions. I remember what you told me and bring it up later so you know I was listening. I find reasons to be near you and then I act as though the nearness is accidental.”

“That sounds effective.”

“It’s devastating. I’ve been told.”

“By whom?”

“By the trombonist, actually. He said I was the most dangerous woman he’d ever met. He was twenty-three and not super suave, so his standards were low. But the principle stands.”

Daniil’s mouth curved.