Page 17 of Dark King Daddy

“No.” The word came out hard. “Of course not. I’ve worked for Mikhail Mikhailovich for six years. I’ve been in the same room as Lev Sokolov twice. He doesn’t need to kidnap dock supervisors to learn when Father walks the floor. He could pick up the phone and ask.”

Good. Sergei was thinking clearly, despite everything.

“They put something in your jacket?” I asked.

He reached for the jacket lying on the bed beside him. The breast pocket was torn where someone had forced the card in. He pulled it out — a laminated union card. Sokolov Freight & Cartage. The name on it was not Sergei’s. It belonged to a man named Dmitri Volkov, a Sokolov dispatcher who, as far as I knew, had never met Sergei Petrov.

“They put it there before they left,” Sergei said. “Right before. They gagged me, tied my ankles, and put the card in my pocket. Then they set the — the device. The timer. And they left.”

I looked at the card. Someone had put a Sokolov name in Sergei’s pocket and another in his mouth. Neither was an accident.

“Who found you?” I asked.

Sergei looked at me. Through the swelling, through the bruising, something moved in his expression that was not fear. It was something closer to bewilderment.

“The Sokolovs,” he said. “They raided the garage. I heard shooting — one man, upstairs, shooting at them. Then silence. Then footsteps.”

“Who came to you?”

A pause.

“Daniil Sokolov.”

I did not move. I kept my hands in my lap, my posture open, my expression the same as it had been for the previous ten minutes. I did not let anything change in my face or my hands or the set of my shoulders.

“He came into the room,” Sergei continued. “The storage room, in the back. He cut my hands free. He cut my ankles. He asked my name. He asked if I could stand. I couldn’t. He picked me up and carried me out of the building.”

“Carried you.”

“Over his shoulder. Like — ” Sergei made a rough lifting motion with his hands. “There was a timer beside me. Counting down. He put me in a vehicle and told the driver to take me to a clinic.”

“And the explosion?”

“We were at the gate. I heard it behind us.”

Daniil Sokolov had seen the timer. He had stayed long enough to cut Sergei free and carry him out.

I had told Zoe that Daniil saw people as assets, liabilities, or obstacles. Sergei Petrov was not an asset to the Sokolovs. He was an Orlov man, useful only as a corpse in the Voronins‘ plan. Daniil had carried him out anyway.

I filed that away. I would think about it later, when no one was watching.

I turned to my father. “They wanted us to find Sergei in a building the Sokolovs own and hear that Lev had ordered it. The card was there to support the story.”

Mikhail looked at me. The room was quiet. Anton had not spoken since I arrived. Roman stood by the door with his arms folded.

“We would have retaliated,” I continued. “The Sokolovs would have answered. The Voronins wouldn’t need to defeat either family. We would do it for them.”

My father studied me for a long moment. His dark eyes moved across my face, reading the analysis, testing it. Then he nodded.

“Anton,” he said. “She’s right.”

Anton pushed off the wall. “I know she’s right. I knew it before she walked in. I wanted to hear her say it.”

“Because?”

“Because she says it better than I do.” He looked at me. There was no resentment in it. Anton had grown up watching me translate our father’s instincts into words he could act on. He had made peace with it years ago.

Mikhail turned back to Sergei. “You will stay at the secure clinic until we’re certain the Voronins aren’t watching. Your wife is there right now, waiting.”