Page 161 of Dark King Daddy

I came downstairs at seven.

The dining room table was set for two. White linen—not the kitchen tablecloth, a proper one, pressed, without wrinkles. Candles. Two. Special glasses, not the everyday ones. A bottle of wine, opened, breathing. The room smelled of rosemary and garlic and something I recognized immediately.

Il Cedro. It smelled like the restaurant.

Daniil stood by the table. He had changed. Dark suit—not the charcoal one he wore for business, a different one, darker, with a white shirt open at the collar. His hair was combed. He looked like a man who had made an effort and was not entirely comfortable admitting it.

“Did you cook?” I asked.

He looked at me. The briefest pause.

“Yes.” He gave me a look.

“Yes?”

Another pause. He tried to keep a straight face.

“No. No I didn’t cook.”

“You ordered from Il Cedro.”

“Yes.”

I laughed. The sound filled the dining room—the small, warm room that I had eaten soup in and spilled coffee in and sat on the floor in while Daniil read reports. It was a different room with candles.

“I actualyl thought I might tell you I made it. Then I remembered you have seen me operate a stove.”

“The grilled cheese was not that bad.”

He pulled out my chair. I sat. He pushed it in. He sat across from me. The candlelight fell across his face and made his eyes look darker — less ice, more depth. He poured the wine. He set the glass in front of me.

“Thank you for courting me,” I said.

“Thank you for asking for it.”

We ate. The risotto was delicious—saffron, parmesan, the particular creamy texture that came from someone who understood that risotto was a meditation, not a recipe.

“Tell me something,” I said.

“What kind of something?”

“Something you haven’t told me. Something ordinary. Something that has nothing to do with the Voronins or the Bratva or your father.”

He considered. His fork rested on the edge of his plate.

“I wanted to be an architect,” he said.

I set down my wine.

“You wanted to be an architect.”

“When I was twelve. I read a book about Soviet brutalist buildings. The photographs. The concrete. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I drew floor plans in my school notebooks. My father found one and told me architects were men who couldn’t become leaders, so they settled for drawing buildings for other men to own.”

“Daniil.”

“I stopped drawing.”

“Did you ever think about going back to it?”