Page 183 of Dark King Daddy

Nikita entered last. He pocketed his phone. He leaned against the bookshelf, his posture casual, his green eyes sharp.

“We’re getting her back,” I said.

The words came out flat. No emphasis. No heat. The cold had stripped everything from my voice except the information itself.

“The plan is this.” I turned from the window. “I give Oleg what he asked for. The recording. The orders. I go to the garage. I walk in alone and unarmed. Nikita waits outside in a car. Ksenia walks out before I enter—she gets in the car with Nikita and she leaves. The moment she is clear, you move.”

“Move how?” Arkady said.

“You, Anton, and Sal’s men. Out of sight until Nikita confirms she’s clear. Then you hit the garage. Recover me. Take Kostya alive.”

The room was quiet. The harbor light came through the windows—gray, thin, November light that fell across the desk and the chair and the photographs on the wall.

“Kostya,” Nikita said.

“Kostya can expose the conspiracy behind our fathers’ murders. He has the information—names, contacts, the chain of communication between himself and Viktor. He is worth more alive than dead. Oleg without Kostya is a son without his father’s network. He loses the men, the infrastructure, the protection Kostya has been building from inside the Orlov organization. We take Kostya and we take the evidence and we dismantle the Voronin operation from the inside.”

“And Oleg?” Arkady asked.

“Whatever it takes.”

Arkady looked at Nikita. Something passed between them—a silent exchange, the kind that happened between brothers who had grown up under Lev and learned to communicate without words because words were overheard and overheard words were dangerous.

Nikita straightened from the bookshelf.

“The resignation and the orders,” he said. “They’re theater.”

“Yes.”

“I instruct the captains to retain control of every yard, every route, every dispatch system. They disregard any resignation, any written order, any transfer of authority. The moment you walk out of that garage, the orders are void. The organization holds.”

“Can you guarantee that?”

“I can guarantee the captains we trust. Twelve of them. The rest will follow when they see the alliance holding.” He paused. “I’ll also make sure Anton’s captains understand the same. The Orlov waterfront stays Orlov. Kostya’s declaration is void the moment we have him in custody.”

“Do it now. Start with the men downstairs. Send men you trust to the others. In person. No calls, no messages.”

Nikita nodded. He left the room. I heard his footsteps in the hallway—measured, unhurried, the footsteps of a man who moved through crises the way other men moved through parties.

I turned to the desk. I picked up my phone. I opened the recording I had made in the truck—the video of my resignation, the transfer of the freight operation, the words Oleg had demanded. I had spoken them clearly. Without hesitation. My face on the screen was pale and still and the ice-blue eyes looked into the camera with an expression I did not recognize. It was not defeat. It was not fear. It was the face of a man who had decided what mattered and was willing to burn everything else.

I attached the recording to a message. I typed Oleg’s number.

I pressed send.

The message showed delivered. Then read.

I waited.

The office clock ticked. A sound I had never noticed before—Lev had kept a mechanical clock on the bookshelf, brass, old, the kind that counted seconds with a small, persistent click. I had not heard it in all the hours I had spent in this room. Now it was the loudest thing in the world.

One minute. Two. Three.

Arkady had not moved from the door. His arms stayed crossed. His eyes stayed on me. He did not speak. He understood that the waiting was part of it—that Oleg would make me wait because making a man wait was a form of control, and Oleg understood control the way Viktor understood economics.

Four minutes. Five.

The phone buzzed.