I lift the papers.
“I’m handing everything over to Arseniy,” I say.
The hall erupts.
Not fully. No one is stupid enough for chaos in front of me, even now. But the shock moves like a wave, voices cut off halfway, bodies shifting, men looking at each other as if they misheard and hope someone else will be brave enough to ask.
Tatiana and Kai say my name at the same time, Maksim swears under his breath, but Arseniy does not move at all.
I continue over all of them. “Effective immediately, Arseniy Dragovich takes full command of the family, the sectors, all external negotiations, internal discipline, and operational authority. The documents are signed and sealed.”
Tatiana moves first, crossing the space in three fast steps. “No,” she says, voice too sharp. “No, you don’t get to do that.”
I look at her. “I already did.”
Her eyes flash. “Then undo it!” she says, the tone of her voice bordering on hysteria.
“No.”
“Nikolaj,” Kai says, stepping in carefully now, his voice controlled but tight. “This is not a decision to make in grief.”
I laugh once. The sound turns the room colder. “Do not speak to me about grief like it’s made me stupid.”
Kai’s jaw tightens. “I’m saying a month is not enough time.”
“A month was more than enough.”
“For what?” Tatiana demands, and now her eyes are bright with anger she doesn’t know where to put. “For you to decide we’re all disposable because he’s gone?”
I stare at her until she realizes what she said out loud.
“Tanyusha,” I say, and the gentleness in my own voice surprises me enough to make something in her expression worsen.
She shakes her head hard. “No. Don’t call me that right now.”
Maksim steps forward slightly. “Niko, what are you doing?”
I turn my gaze to him. “The only useful thing left.”
“That’s bullshit,” Maksim says, and several men in the room look like they’d rather vanish than witness him saying it. “You want to leave, leave for a week. A month. Go to your island, break every glass in the place, come back when you’re done scaring the sea. But don’t stand here and hand the whole fucking family over because you’ve decided there’s nothing left for you here.”
“There isn’t,” I say.
Arseniy finally speaks. “No.”
I look at him. “This is not a request.”
Arseniy walks forward now, the crowd parting for him because even five years gone, even stripped of position by absence, he is still Arseniy Dragovich, and the old instincts recognize him before politics catches up.
He stops in front of me and looks at the papers in my hand like he’d rather burn them than touch them.
“I’m not taking this because you’ve decided to bury yourself while still breathing,” Arseniy says.
“You don’t have a choice.”
He lets out a bitter chuckle. “There’s the family disease.”
“Duty is not a choice,” I say.
