I hold them in mine for a second, with a solemness that isn’t just about the loss of my father, and then I let them go.
"No, Uncle."
His face doesn't move. That's the tell. A man who was genuinely grieving would have blinked. A man who was genuinely offering would have looked confused.
Viktor just goes still.
"No?"
"No." I keep my voice low, because Lucia is in the doorway. "I'll sit with him tonight. I'll handle the arrangements. I'll make the calls. I'll speak to the men."
"Kolya—"
"My father made his wishes clear to me." I watch his face as I say it. I watch the small tightening at the corner of his eye, the thing he can't control because he didn't know I'd had that conversation. "The chair is mine. He told me so. He told me what he wanted, and he told me how he wanted it done. I will not let my father down, not even in death, Viktor."
"You are still recovering from a concussion," he says, referring to the wreck on the freeway last week. "You have stitches. You are grieving. Let me—"
"No."
He stops.
I take one step forward. Close enough that he has to tilt his head a fraction to keep contact with my eyes.
"Go home, Viktor." I keep the voice low. I keep the face empty. "Come back tomorrow as family, and pay your respects. We will talk then about what the next week looks like. I will tell you what I need from you, and you will do it, because my father is not yet cold, and this is not the hour to discuss succession over his body. Do you understand me?"
He looks at me for a long second.
His mouth moves into something that wants to be a smile and isn't.
"Of course, Kolya." He lowers his head a fraction. A small bow, the kind a man gives when he has decided to pick his ground somewhere else. "Of course. Forgive me. The grief. I spoke too soon."
"Goodnight, Uncle."
"Goodnight,Pakhan."
He says the word carefully. He watches my face when he says it. I don't give him anything back, because the word is his test and my silence is my answer.
He walks past me to the door. Lucia steps aside. His shoes on the stairs are the only sound in the house for a long moment, then the front door opens and closes, a car starts in the drive, and he's gone.
I turn back to my father.
I sit down in the chair. I take his hand again, even though it won't hold me back this time, and I hold it anyway.
Then I pull my phone from my pocket and call Dmitri.
"It's done," I say. "Wake the men. All of them. And put two on Sadie's building tonight. Inside the lobby. I want eyes on her door by the time I hang up this phone."
