Page 200 of Dark King Daddy

The joke did not reach his eyes.

“Take this seriously,” I said.

“I am.”

He leaned forward, his forearms on his knees.

“I’m speaking to the man who turned them down tomorrow. He knows people I don’t. We find out who else Viktor has approached before those crews start taking his orders.”

“Take Nikita.”

“Must I? He criticizes my driving.”

“Everyone criticizes your driving. The rest of the world has eyes.”

“Eyes? There’s a serious lack of fucking vision in this family.”

“Arkady.”

He held his hands up. “I’ll take him, I’ll take him.”

I believed him. I also knew that he would tell the story afterward as though I had begged him to bring our brother along for company.

I put the photograph in the drawer.

“And Luka?”

Arkady’s face eased. The young guard from Boris’s car had spent weeks in hospital after the attack. I had learned his name there, standing beside his bed while his mother tried to thank me for paying bills that should never have been hers to worry about.

“Home. Still doing rehab. Still being paid.”

“Does he need anything?”

“A reason to stop apologizing for being off work. I told him if he called me about it again, I’d extend his leave.”

“You went to see him?”

“Someone had to explain it in terms he’d understand.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s handled.”

He looked at me.

Something had been playing on my mind. Something I hadn’t resolved. “In the truck,” I said. “What I asked you to promise. To take her and leave if I didn’t get out.”

His jaw moved.

“I remember.”

“I know what I was asking?”

“Do you?”

I sat with that. With my brother looking at me across the desk, refusing to make the conversation easy.

“Yes,” I said. “I was asking you to be Pakhan. To step in, take my place in case I . . .”