Page 186 of Dark King Daddy

“When you gave them the code,” I said. “When you walked out of Volna and left him upstairs. What did you call it then?”

He put the water on the desk. Carefully. As though spilling it was something we needed to worry about.

“Your father—”

“Don’t.”

He fell silent.

“He trusted you.”

My voice broke. I hated that he could hear it. Hated that I wanted an answer from him, something that would make the man standing in front of me fit inside the life I remembered.

“We both did.”

Kostya opened his mouth.

I waited, shaking, with my wounded hand clutched against my stomach.

“Mikhail made—”

“Don’t you dare tell me what he did wrong.”

He looked away first.

I got up because I couldn’t bear to sit beneath him any longer. My knees almost folded. I caught the edge of the desk with my good hand and waited until I could trust my legs.

Kostya reached for my elbow.

“Don’t touch me.”

His hand dropped. I moved to the office window.

Beyond the glass lay the repair bay, empty except for two vehicle lifts and Oleg’s men. Across it, a steel door stood open to the yard. A brick held it against its closer. I had stumbled through that doorway when they brought me in. I remembered the metal against my shoulder, Oleg’s hand between my shoulder blades.

I looked for a way out even though I knew he had men at the door.

The wide black garage shutter beside it was down. Through the open doorway I could see the back of Oleg’s SUV and part of the yard’s open gate. The road lay beyond. People were driving along it. Going to work. Going home.

None of them knew I was here.

Oleg stepped into view, looking at his phone. He stopped just inside the repair bay, and a voice came from the speaker.

“I am stepping down as Pakhan of the Sokolov organization, effective immediately.”

Daniil. Daddy.

My good hand went flat against the glass.

“Administration of the Sokolov freight operation—the yards, the routes, the dispatch system, the labor contracts—is being transferred to Viktor Voronin.”

I waited for him to say something else. To refuse. To tell them what they could do with their demands.

The recording ended.

Oleg played it again.

“There,” Kostya said behind me. “You see? It will all end well.”