Page 12 of Dark King Daddy

A dark stain spreading across the chestnut floorboards of the gallery above, visible through the open stairwell, moving fast enough to track.

“Main valve,” I said to Luis. “Now. Basement, east wall, the one we tagged red last month.”

Luis didn’t ask questions. He dropped his clipboard on the desk and took the stairs two at a time, his boots echoing off the exposed brick. He was fifty-three, had been superintendent on waterfront conversions for twenty years, and he moved like a man who understood that water in an old building was not a problem you thought about. It was a problem you ran toward.

It was a problem I had to solve. I was acting on my father’s behalf, on my family’s behalf. And with a family like mine, a bratva like mine, problems always had to be solved.

I was already on the stairs behind Luis, pulling my phone out. The building inspector was due in forty-five minutes. I called the electricians first.

“East wing, isolate it. Everything. Breakers, the temporary panel, the whole run. We have water coming through the second floor and I don’t want a single live wire near it.”

“Ksenia, it’s coming down fast — “

“I can see that. Isolate it. I’ll be up in a minute.” My voice, heavily accented, was nonetheless steady. Calm.

I hung up and turned to the two laborers at the ground-floor staging area. They were standing still, watching the water drip through the ceiling seams the way people watch a car accident—fascinated, useless.

“You two. The salvaged doors leaning against the east wall—move them to the west wing corridor. All of them. Now. If that water reaches the acoustical panels we spent three weeks sourcing, I will be explaining it to the client, and I will be explaining it to you.”

They moved.

I took the stairs to the second floor. The gallery ran the length of the building’s east side, a long open space with the original chestnut floorboards we’d spent two months restoring. Water sheeted across them now, spreading from a point near the north wall where the ceiling had darkened and begun to weep. The source was above—a corroded pipe in the cavity between the second and third floors, a nineteenth-century coupling that had survived a hundred and thirty-seven winters and chosen this morning to fail.

Luis’s voice came from below. “Valve’s shut! It’s going to keep draining — there’s a section between the valve and the break, maybe forty gallons still in the line.”

Forty gallons. Not good.

The client arrived at eight-twenty. Gerald Huang. Mid-forties, lean, dressed in the uniform of a man who funded arts projects and wanted people to know it — cashmere coat, clean shoes, a leather portfolio he carried everywhere like a shield. He came up the stairs and stopped at the gallery entrance. Water spread toward his shoes. His expression shifted from confusion to anger in the space of one breath.

“What the hell happened?”

“A pipe failed. We’ve shut the main supply. The water you see is residual drainage from the line.”

He looked past me and found Marco. Marco was nineteen. An apprentice from a youth training program Luis had run for years, on site for his third week. He had been sweeping the gallery when the pipe burst. He stood now at the far end with his broom, frozen, water lapping at his boots.

“Was he working on the plumbing?” Gerald asked.

“No.”

“Because if someone — “

“Nobody was working on the plumbing, Gerald. The failure is in a concealed coupling above the third-floor ceiling. Original nineteenth-century hardware. Cast iron, buried behind a lath and plaster partition we haven’t opened yet. There was no way to identify it, no way to inspect it, and no reason to suspect it until it failed.”

I kept my voice level. I did not raise it. I did not let my tone suggest that Gerald was being unreasonable, because unreasonable clients became defensive clients, and defensive clients pulled funding.

Marco was watching me. His grip on the broom had turned his knuckles white. I gave him a small nod and a look that said: I’ve got this. Go downstairs. He went.

Gerald stared at the water. “The inspector — “

“Is still coming. We’ll show him the west wing first.”

He opened his mouth. I waited. He closed it. He looked at the ceiling, where the stain had stopped spreading now that the pressure was off.

“Fine,” he said. “But I want a full report.”

“You’ll have it by noon.”

He retreated downstairs. I let out a breath and turned back to the gallery.