Page 93 of Dark King Daddy

Ksenia’s eyes tracked it.

She looked at my arm. She looked at the folder. She looked at my face. Her expression did not change—polished, composed, the professional mask she wore like armor. But her hand tightened on the coffee cup. Her thumb pressed white against the ceramic.

Neither of us spoke. Nikita said something about the Kozlov route. Arkady responded. The conversation continued around us.

I ate the eggs. I drank the coffee. I read the folder. Ksenia drank coffee.

She ate nothing.

I wanted to talk about the kiss, was desperate to. But I couldn’t, there was no way in front of my brothers.

“Would you like breakfast sent to the site?” I asked instead. Neutral. Practical.

“No, thank you.”

“You’ve had coffee.”

“I’ve had coffee.”

“That isn’t breakfast.”

“It’s what I’m having.”

I looked at her. She looked at me. The polished, composed woman in the stone-colored blazer and the swollen mouth dared me to push.

I didn’t.

She stood at seven-thirty-five. She thanked Galina for the coffee. She collected her bag—a structured leather tote that contained, I suspected, flat shoes and architectural drawings and—probably—a granola bar. She nodded to Arkady and Nikita. She looked at me.

“I’ll be at Harbor House until five.”

“Ilya will be outside.”

“Fine.”

She left. Her heels clicked down the hallway. The front door opened and closed. Ilya’s voice murmured something to the second man. A car engine turned over.

“So,” NIkita said. “Is married life as blissful as everyone says?”

I wanted to throw something at him.

Idrove to Beard Street with Nikita at nine-fifteen that Sunday morning. The sky over the harbor was the color of wet slate. Rain had been threatening since dawn without committing. The windshield wipers ticked once, twice, then stopped.

“Anton’s expecting us at ten,” Nikita said without looking up. “Maksim is already inside. He pulled the Volna building records himself.”

Maksim. One of Anton’s intelligence people. I had met him once at the funeral reception—compact, quiet, with the watchful patience of a man whose job was to notice what others missed. Anton trusted him the way I trusted Nikita: completely, and with good reason.

“Who else knows we’re coming?” I asked.

“Anton. Maksim. Uncle Kostya is aware there’s a meeting but not what it concerns. Nobody else.”

“Keep it that way.”

Nikita nodded and returned to his tablet.

We pulled into the lot at Orlov Marine & Storage at nine-fifty. The building looked the same as it had the last time I had stood inside it—the afternoon of the Hamilton Avenue convoy attack, when the operations room had been full of smoke reports and frightened clients and the particular silence of men who had just learned their world had changed.

Anton met us at the stairwell. He wore a dark suit, no tie. His face carried the same fatigue it had carried since the funeral, but beneath it was something sharper now. Anticipation. He had something.