Page 127 of Dark King Daddy

“The numbers are in the ledger, Kostya. If you’d like to review them, I can have the shipment records sent to you tomorrow.”

Kostya looked at her. Then at Anton. Then at me.

“Anton,” I said. “Orlov business is Orlov business. The Maspeth yard is a service point, not a claim on your operation. If you want to renegotiate terms, that’s your call. But the arrangement works because both sides profit, and right now both sides are profiting.”

Anton nodded. Slowly, deliberately. The nod of a man who had been given public backing and intended to use it.

“The arrangement stands,” Anton said. “If the numbers need reviewing, Ksenia will send them. We’ll discuss adjustments at the next quarterly meeting. Not tonight.”

The marriage had changed things. There was more trust, less need for reassurance. I knew that we were alligned, without having to consider it. Kostya, though, maybe wasn’t quite convinced.

He held Anton’s gaze for a moment. Then he picked up his fork and returned to his sturgeon.

The conversation resumed. Nikita said something to Arkady that made Arkady laugh—a short, rough sound, unexpected enough that Yelena glanced up from her wine. The captain at the far end poured more vodka. The room filled again with noise and food and the ordinary business of people eating together.

I looked at Ksenia. She was talking to Anton, something about a client who needed a revised delivery window. Her hands moved as she spoke—small, precise gestures, the same ones she used when she was sketching. Anton listened. He was leaning slightly toward her, his posture open, his expression engaged. She was doing what she did—reading the room, managing the temperature, making people comfortable while saying exactly what needed to be said.

“You’re happy.”

Yelena’s voice was low. She had moved to the chair beside me at some point during the conversation with Kostya. I hadn’t noticed. Her pale gray eyes were on my face, and her expression held the particular attention of a sister who had spent years watching her brothers become harder and colder under their father’s hand.

“Yes,” I said.

She looked at Ksenia. Then back at me.

“Good,” she said. “Don’t fuck it up.”

She returned to her wine.

I sat at the table in my father’s restaurant, surrounded by the people my father had assembled and the people my wife had assembled and the food that had not changed and the room upstairs that we did not enter, and I felt something I had not expected to feel in this building.

I felt like the man in charge.

Not because I had asserted authority. Not because Kostya had backed down. Because I had sat beside my wife and watched her handle a room full of dangerous men with a fork in one hand and shipment records in her head, and she had done it beside me, and the doing had been effortless, and for the first time since my father died, being Pakhan did not feel like a weight I carried alone.

It felt like a life I wanted.

Nikita caught us at the door.

The hallway of Volna was narrow, the coat hooks crowded, the air thick with cooking heat and the particular staleness of a room that had hosted too many people for too many hours. Ksenia was pulling on her coat. I had my hand on the door when Nikita appeared beside me, his tablet in his hand, his expression carrying the focused efficiency of a man who had been waiting for the right moment.

“The deliberate leak,” he said. “Let me fill you in. Quick version.”

I nodded. Ksenia turned to listen.

“I’ve distributed four different shipment schedules,” Nikita said. “Each one lists a different location for the same high-value cargo. Container 7741. Actual product is safe at a warehouse nobody on either side knows about. But four different versions of its location went out—to four different groups of people.”

“Who received which version?” I asked.

“Version one went to our internal dispatch office. Version two went to Orlov’s waterfront crew. Version three went to Kostya and his captains. Version four went to three Sokolov drivers who have been with us less than two years.”

Ksenia’s eyes sharpened. “You’re testing four different pools.”

“If the Voronins move on the cargo,” Nikita said, “the location they hit tells us which version reached them. And which version reached them tells us where the leak is.”

“All four schedules are already distributed?” I asked.

“Went out this morning. Arkady has surveillance on all four locations. Minimal presence—enough to spot movement, not enough to spook anyone.”