Page 84 of Dark King Daddy

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face is saying plenty.”

“My face is a neutral surface.”

“Your face is a fucking neon-lit billboard.”

She grinned. I finished my coffee and went back to the scaffold, and if my hand was less steady on the rungs than it had been that morning, neither Dwayne nor Zoe nor Ilya mentioned it.

Volna’s lower restaurant had been repainted. The walls were the same warm amber, the same dark wainscoting, the same brass fixtures throwing light across crystal and silver. But the plaster near the east corridor entrance was new—fractionally lighter, the paint one shade less aged than the surrounding walls. They had patched the bullet holes.

I stood in the entrance and looked at that patch of wall and thought about the sound a body makes when it hits the floor. The guard at the east stair. I had not known his name then. I had learned it later. Petya. Petya Vlasov. Twenty-six years old. He had a position at the east stair and a weapon he never drew.

Daniil waited at the bottom of the stairs.

He wore a dark suit—charcoal, single-breasted, fitted across the shoulders in a way that made the fabric move with him rather than against him. White shirt. No tie. His dark hair was combed back from his forehead. The line of his jaw caught the amber light from the restaurant.

He looked up as I descended.

I had chosen a dark green dress. Not the one from before—that one still hung in my closet with my father’s blood dried into the fabric, and I could not bring myself to throw it away and could not bring myself to look at it. This was a different dress. Darker green. Higher neckline. Long sleeves. Fitted through the waist and hips.

Daniil extended his arm. Not his hand reaching for mine—his arm, bent at the elbow, offered. An invitation I could accept or decline without creating a scene.

I took it.

His sleeve was warm under my fingers. The muscle beneath the fabric was solid. I felt the controlled strength of him as we walked—the way he moved without excess, each step placed with the certainty of a man who had already assessed every entrance, exit, and face in the room before I reached the bottom of the stairs.

The restaurant was full.

Sokolov captains occupied the long tables on the east side. Orlov men filled the west. Union representatives sat near the bar. Freight clients clustered near the windows. Community figures—the dentist who had treated Lev before he died, the old woman who ran the newsstand on Brighton Fourth, the priest from Holy Protection—occupied the spaces between.

Every face turned toward us.

Daniil led me to the first group. Sokolov captains, mostly older men who had served Lev for decades. They stood when we approached. Some of them looked at me the way men look at a new piece of furniture—assessing whether it belonged, whether it would last, whether it had been worth the price.

“Ksenia Orlova,” Daniil said. “My wife.”

Ksenia Orlova—the name on my license, my contracts, my professional correspondence. The name under which I had built a career that existed entirely outside the room I was standing in.

He had preserved it deliberately. In front of men who would have understood the name change as absorption—the Orlov daughter becoming Sokolov property—he had given me back my name.

I inclined my head to the captains. I shook hands. I remembered names, wives, children, operations. I asked about a knee surgery. I congratulated a promotion. I expressed sympathy for a recent loss. Each man left the exchange looking slightly more comfortable than he had entered it.

That was what I did.

The older captain held his position near the bar. He was perhaps sixty, broad through the chest, with a face that looked like it had been assembled from spare parts and never quite matched. Grey stubble. Thick hands. He watched me approach with the flat assessment of a man who had survived Lev and intended to survive Daniil.

“Daniil.” He nodded. “And the Orlova girl.”

“Viktor Borisovich,” Daniil said.

“Quite a wedding. Hardly time to mourn. Your father would have appreciated the efficiency.”

The implication sat in the air. A marriage arranged for speed. An alliance sealed before the blood was dry. The Orlovs had secured themselves protection through a daughter’s body.

I smiled.

“Viktor Borisovich,” I said. “I understand the concern. Arrangements made quickly can look desperate. But good insurance prevents fires rather than starting them. Don’t you think?”