Page 185 of Dark King Daddy

Nobody spoke. Nobody needed to.

I walked out of the office. Down the stairs. Through the ground floor where men stood in clusters and parted for me without being asked. Through the doors of 307 Brighton Beach Avenue and into the November cold.

Nikita’s car idled at the curb. He was behind the wheel. The engine running. The passenger door open.

I got in.

“Drive,” I said.

Chapter 18

Ksenia

My uncle was watching me bleed.

I pressed the dirty towel harder against my right palm. Pain shot up my wrist, sharp enough to make me gasp. The blood had come through again. I didn’t know how much I’d lost. I didn’t know whether the shaking was from that or the cold or the fact that every time someone moved outside the office, I thought they were coming to get me.

Kostya stepped towards me, and I shrank back against the chair.

He stopped.

He had never made me flinch before.

“Drink something.” He held out a bottle of water. “Please, Ksenia.”

I stared at him. At his familiar face. His wedding ring. The little crease between his eyebrows that I had spent my whole life mistaking for concern.

Some frightened part of me still wanted his help. Wanted him to get me out of this garage, take me home, tell me everything would be all right. He was my uncle. He was supposed to be someone I could run to.

My eyes burned. I looked down before he could see.

“You’re still bleeding,” he said.

Then get me a doctor. Open the fucking door. Do something.

I couldn’t say any of it. Asking him for help would mean waiting to find out whether he would give it.

I tried to hear Daniil’s voice again.

I love you. I’m coming.

I wanted him so badly I could barely breathe. But they were waiting for him, too. That was why I was still alive.

“Once Daniil signs,” Kostya said, “this unpleasantness will be over. You’ll be released. No one else needs to be hurt.”

I lifted my head.

“Unpleasantness?”

“Ksenia—”

“Is that what you called it when you helped kill my father?”

The bottle shifted in his hand.

I watched his fingers tighten around it and remembered those fingers holding a pencil beside mine. I was twelve, crying over a maths problem. He had stayed at the kitchen table until I understood it. I remembered how patient he had been. How safe I’d felt.

A sob caught in my throat. I swallowed it so hard it hurt.