Page 135 of Dark King Daddy

“Which version?” she asked.

“The one sent to Kostya’s captains.”

She was quiet for three seconds. I watched her process it. Watched the implication settle into her expression.

“We have a source pool,” she said. “We know which group the leak is in.”

“Yes.”

“They burned our shed. But they told us where to look.”

I held the phone. Arkady waited on the line. The tablet glowed in my lap. Shed C was still burning. Fourteen men were alive because a dispatcher I had protected had smelled accelerant and pulled an alarm.

The Voronins had hurt us. Property damage. Operational disruption. A yard shut down pending investigation.

But they had also, without knowing it, answered the question Nikita had designed the false schedules to ask.

“Arkady,” I said. “Secure the yard. Full perimeter. I want every camera feed preserved before the fire department clears the scene. And get Yuri somewhere safe tonight. He just saved fourteen men. I don’t want him visible.”

“Done.”

“I’ll be there by dawn.”

I hung up. I set the phone on the nightstand. I looked at Ksenia.

She was already reaching for her clothes.

Chapter 12

Ksenia

Ipulled on the clothes from the night before. The grey t-shirt, the black trousers. My hands were steady. My body still hummed with the residue of everything that had happened in this bed—the spanking, the orgasms, the conversation about seating arrangements—and the hum continued while I dressed, coexisting with the cold clarity that had arrived the moment I heard the word Maspeth.

Daniil was already in his trousers, reaching for his sweater. I pulled my hair back and tied it.

“I’m coming with you.”

He looked at me. The sentence had been a statement, not a question, and he recognized the difference.

“Ksyusha—”

“Orlov cargo moves through that yard. The false schedules were my idea as much as Nikita’s. I’m not staying here.”

He held my gaze for two seconds. Then he nodded.

We went downstairs. Ilya was already outside, the engine running. The November air hit my bare arms and I grabbed a coat from the hall closet—Daniil’s, too large, smelling of cedar and cold. I did not button it.

The drive to Queens took twenty-three minutes. I knew because I watched the clock on the dashboard. Ilya drove fast and without commentary, the headlights cutting through empty streets. Brighton Beach gave way to Gravesend. Gravesend to Bensonhurst. The BQE slid beneath us and the industrial corridors began—chain-link, loading docks, the skeletal frames of warehouses against a sky that had not yet decided to be morning.

I smelled the smoke before we saw the yard. It came through the car’s vents—acrid, chemical, carrying the particular sweetness of burned diesel. Daniil’s jaw tightened.

Maspeth Yard appeared behind a firefighters’ cordon. Yellow tape. Two trucks, their lights still cycling. Floodlights on poles threw white glare across the asphalt, and in that glare everything looked wrong—too bright, too exposed, the colors stripped to black and grey and the sick yellow of emergency lighting.

Shed C was a carcass. The loading bay doors had buckled inward. The roof had partially collapsed on the east side, the steel beams bent under heat that had long since died. Blackened walls. The ground was wet—fire hose runoff pooling in the uneven asphalt, carrying ash in slow, dark streams toward the storm drains. Steam rose where the water met surfaces still warm.

The night crew stood together near the south exit. Fourteen men. Some sat on the curb with blankets around their shoulders. Others stood in small clusters, talking low, their faces grey with smoke residue. Two had oxygen masks, the clear plastic fogging with each breath.

Daniil spoke to the fire captain first. Brief. Professional. The captain pointed toward the south exit, and Daniil walked toward the group of men.