Page 70 of Dark King Daddy

“I am choosing this marriage.”

She was not offering me her heart or her surrender or the version of herself that wanted to be held. She was offering a partnership built on necessity, bounded by conditions, sustained by mutual respect.

I could accept that.

I could also hope that it might become more.

“Then I accept,” I said.

She exhaled. One breath. Controlled but audible.

I extended my hand across the desk.

She looked at it. Then she placed hers in it.

Her grip was warm. Firm. Brief.

We shook hands on a marriage, and the formality of it felt right. Anything warmer would have been a lie. Anything colder would have been a waste.

“I’ll have Nikita draft the formal agreement,” I said. “We can sign it today.”

“Today?”

“The situation won’t improve while we wait.”

“No.” She almost smiled. “It won’t.”

She held my gaze for a moment. Then she turned and walked to the door. She opened it herself. Anton stood in the corridor outside, his arms folded, his face tight with the particular expression of a man who had spent the last twenty minutes imagining every possible outcome and disliking all of them.

“Well?” Anton asked.

“We’re getting married,” Ksenia said. “Tomorrow.”

Anton looked at me over her shoulder.

I nodded.

He closed his eyes for one second. Then he opened them and nodded back.

“Then we have work to do,” he said.

The council room occupied the southeast corner of Sokolov House’s upper floor. It had been designed for decisions that required witnesses—a long table of polished walnut, chairs upholstered in dark leather, a sideboard where vodka sat untouched during business hours. The walls held photographs of Brighton Beach from the 1970s, when the neighborhood still looked like the place my grandfather had left, and a single icon in the corner that Lev had never prayed to but would not remove.

I had spent more hours in this room than in any other part of the building. Sitting beside Lev during negotiations. Standing behind his chair during disputes. Watching men twice my age defer to a man who never raised his voice because he never needed to.

Now I stood at the head of the table, and the room felt different from that angle.

The lawyer was a Sokolov retainer named Grigory Solomon, compact and meticulous, with grey hair and the careful hands of a man who drafted documents the way surgeons handled tissue. He had been with the family for fifteen years. He had drafted Father’s will, the Orlov-Sokolov freight agreement, and every contract that bound our organizations together. He arrived at two o’clock carrying a leather portfolio and the expression of a man who understood that what he was witnessing was both a legal proceeding and a political act.

Anton stood near the window with his arms folded. He had changed into a suit — dark, formal, the collar buttoned tight. He looked like a man attending a signing, not a celebration.

Yelena had come from Chicago that morning. Sal stood beside her, quiet and watchful, his presence a steadying weight she did not seem to need but accepted. Yelena wore black trousers and a cream blouse. No diamonds. No fur. She had left the gilded cage in Chicago and had not brought it back.

She looked at me when she entered. Her pale eyes moved across the room, across the table, across the documents Solomon was arranging.

“You look like him in this room,” she said.

“I know. I feel . . .” I searched for the right word. Couldn’t find it. “I feel sad, sestra.”