Page 98 of Dark King Daddy

“Yes.”

“And you’re telling me it doesn’t mean anything.”

“No. I'm telling you it means a lot. I’m telling you it means too much to improvise.”

She pressed her lips together. Her hands moved in her lap fingers threading, releasing, threading again.

“I wanted you to tell me to put the plans away.”

She said it quietly. Not looking at me. Looking at the drawings spread across the counter, at the blue pencil and the coffee cups and the dispatch folder she had not opened.

“I wanted you to tell me to eat. Something real, not a granola bar. I wanted you to tell me to go to bed. I wanted to not be the one making that decision.”

Her voice cracked on the last word. Not dramatically. A hairline fracture, barely audible.

“I’ve been making that decision for everyone my entire life. Anton. The Orlov captains. My clients. The crew at Harbor House. Every person who needs something from me, every problem that needs fixing, every schedule that needs adjusting. I do it. I do it well. I do it this late with glass on the floor and a granola bar for dinner and I don’t stop because if I stop, I have to feel—”

She closed her mouth. Whatever the rest of that sentence was, she was not ready to say it.

I stood across the island from her. The counter separated us. The drawings lay between us—her work, her competence, her armor, spread out in blue pencil and elevation lines.

“Then ask me tomorrow,” I said.

She looked up.

“When you have decided what permission you’re giving me.”

The kitchen light caught her face. The graphite smudge on her cheek. The loose hair. The ridiculous purple slippers. The exhaustion she had been carrying like a second skin.

She held my gaze.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“Go to bed, Ksenia. Tomorrow we’ll talk. I mean it.”

She looked at the drawings. At the coffee cups. At the dispatch folder.

Then she slid off the stool. Her feet found the slippers.

“Tomorrow.”

Chapter 8

Ksenia

Acontract signing in a private library. As I entered the space the next day, my heart thudded in my chest.

The library smelled of wood smoke and leather. I stood in the doorway and looked at what Daniil had done.

The marble hearth held a fire that had been burning long enough to establish itself—not the uncertain flicker of kindling but the deep, settled glow of seasoned oak, the coals orange beneath the flames. Two armchairs had been angled toward one another with equal space between them and the fireplace. Not his chair and a guest chair. Matching. Equal. Neither one larger or closer to the heat.

The low table between them held a carafe of water. Two glasses. A tea pot with a single cup, still steaming. A plate of food—cheese, dark bread, sliced pear, almonds—arranged with enough care that I suspected Galina’s hand but enough simplicity that I suspected Daniil’s instruction. Two leather folders, unmarked. Blank paper. And beside the folders, a printed sheet I recognized from years of conversations with Zoe and late-night research I would never have admitted to: a yes/no/maybe checklist. Columns for interests, limits, curiosities. The vocabulary of negotiation.

No alcohol.

I noticed that immediately. Daniil kept vodka in every room of this house. The sideboard behind his chair held three bottles. None of them were on the table. The message was clear: this conversation required clarity.

I looked at the arrangement and understood what it was. Neutral ground. Not his bedroom. Not mine. Not the breakfast room where we performed our marriage each morning or the sitting room where he had found me on the floor with a rabbit. A space that belonged to neither of us, prepared with deliberate precision.