Page 170 of Dark King Daddy

“Papa’s office,” she said when I finished.

“Yes.”

“And Kostya sent the message twenty minutes before they took the building. He coordinated it. He’s not just compromised—he’s directing it.”

“That’s my assessment.”

“Daniil.”

“Yes.”

“Be careful at the loading bay. The east entrance has a blind spot—the corridor between the warehouse and the dock office. Papa had mirrors installed above the bend because the angle—”

She stopped herself. A half-smile crossed her face in the dark—the brief, involuntary recognition of a woman supplying tactical intelligence about her dead father’s building while her husband prepared to go to war in it.

“The mirrors may still be there,” she said. “Tell Arkady.”

“I’ll tell him.”

I stood up. I went to the dresser. I pulled on clothes. I reached for the holster in the bottom drawer and I strapped it on and I checked the magazine and I set the gun on the dresser.

Ksenia sat up in bed. The cartoon-cat pajamas. The loose hair. The amber light from the porch filtering through the curtain gap, catching her face.

“Are you bringing Arkady?”

“He’s coming here first. Anton too. We’ll leave together.”

“And me?”

“You’re leaving today. The flight is at—” I checked my phone. Sal had sent the details at one-fourteen a.m. I had not woken her to share them. “Two o’clock this afternoon. Ilya drives you to the airport. Boris and a second escort ride with you. Sal’s people meet the plane in Chicago.”

“Daniil.”

“Yes.”

“Come back.”

“I will.”

“Come back to me. Not to the house. Not to the office. To me. Come back to me and I’ll be waiting and we can—”

Her voice thinned. She pressed her lips together.

“I’ll call you when the building is secure,” I said. “I’ll call you from Anton’s office. I’ll call you from your father’s desk and I’ll tell you it’s done.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

She reached for me. I crossed the room. I bent down and she took my face in both hands—her palms warm now, warm from sleep, warm from the bed we had shared—and she held my face and she looked at me and I looked at her.

I kissed her forehead. Her temple. The spot below her ear.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you. Go get our building back.”

I picked up the gun from the dresser. I holstered it. I looked at her one more time—the pajamas, the loose hair, the face in the half-dark, the woman who had just given me her father’s building layout from memory because she loved me enough to trust me with it.