Page 64 of Dark King Daddy

“Of course.”

“No decisions about a ceremony without me.”

“Of course.”

I drew a breath. I chose.

“Tell Daniil I’ll marry him.”

I could become Daniil Sokolov’s wife. I could stand beside him and make two organizations believe the alliance had flesh, blood, and a name.

I could desire him.

I could obey him if I chose.

But I would keep the vulnerable part of myself locked where he could not reach it.

I would never let myself need him.

Chapter 5

Daniil

My father’s chair did not fit.

Not physically. The height adjusted. The leather gave beneath my weight. The armrests sat where my elbows expected them. But the chair had been shaped by decades of a different man’s posture, and my spine refused to settle into the groove his had worn.

I listened to Brighton Beach Avenue wake through the windows. A delivery truck. Someone arguing in Russian below the restaurant. The particular clang of the metal shutters at the bakery across the street being rolled up for the day.

The office smelled of him. The office felt like him. All of it.

His fountain pen lay across the blotter at an angle. I had not moved it.

I would have to move it eventually. I would have to open the drawers. Read the files. Learn the names of every debt, every favor, every leverage point my father had maintained in his head and committed to paper in a handwriting I could barely decipher.

Not today.

Today I sat in his chair and felt nothing that looked like readiness.

The grief came in waves. Not the kind that broke — the kind that sat beneath the surface and changed the pressure of every breath. I had not cried since the cemetery. I did not intend to.

Nikita knocked.

He entered carrying a tablet and a coffee. He set the coffee on the desk—my desk, not my father’s—and pulled up a summary screen.

“Two more Orlov clients requested independent carriers overnight,” he said. “That’s five total since the convoy.”

“Have they signed with independent carriers yet?”

“They’re negotiating.”

He scrolled down.

“Fourteen Sokolov drivers are now refusing shared routes.”

“Replacement drivers?”

“Available. But the refusals are spreading faster than we can backfill. Yard manager at Maspeth says the mood is ugly. Drivers are talking. Wives are calling.”