Page 67 of Dark King Daddy

I stared at her.

She did not look away. She did not elaborate. She stood with her hands on the chair and her chin level and she waited.

“Marry you?”

“Yes.”

I paused a moment and the said, “No.”

The word left me before I had finished thinking it.

Anton shifted in his chair. Nikita did not move.

“Explain,” Ksenia said.

“My father offered my sister to a man she did not choose. He called it alliance. He called it strategy. He called it necessary.” I kept my voice flat. Controlled. “I will not begin my time in this chair by doing the same thing to someone else’s sister.”

“You don’t know what I’m offering.”

“I know what it looks like.”

“Then you’re not looking carefully enough.”

She released the chair. She walked around it and sat down. The movement was precise — controlled, deliberate, the same composure she had shown at Volna when she questioned my security arrangements.

“I am not Yelena,” she said. “Nobody is forcing me. Anton argued against this. Uncle Kostya proposed it. I spent the rest of the afternoon considering the consequences before I told my brother to contact you.”

“You considered it for an afternoon.”

“Yes.”

“Your clients are leaving, your drivers are refusing your cargo, and a veteran captain in my organization is pushing me to abandon your family. You considered it under pressure.”

“All decisions are made under pressure. That doesn’t make them coerced. It doesn’t make them wrong.”

“When the pressure is a gun to your family’s head—”

“Then the decision is still mine to make.” Her voice dropped. Not softer. Tighter. “You don’t get to decide what my proposal means.”

I held her gaze.

She held mine.

The radiator clicked in the corner. A car horn sounded on Brighton Beach Avenue. Lev’s fountain pen caught the light from the window, its clip throwing a thin line of gold across the blotter.

I had watched Yelena stand in a gold dress at her engagement reception while Gianni Scordato smiled beside her. I had watched my sister’s face go blank with the particular stillness of a woman who had already begun disappearing. I had stood in the corner with my hands in my pockets and done nothing because Lev was Pakhan and Lev had decided.

I was Pakhan now.

Ksenia was twenty-eight, educated, independent, and sitting across from me with complete control. Total agency.

She was not asking me to save her. She was asking me to let her save both of us.

“Everyone out,” I said. “Ksenia stays.”

Nikita straightened from the bookshelf. Anton looked at me, then at Ksenia.

“I said everyone.”