Page 41 of Dark King Daddy

I checked my phone.

Six missed messages. Two concerned parking. One concerned the cemetery. One asked whether a former union official should be seated with the senior captains or behind them.

I answered all six.

“Ksyusha.”

Anton stood near the doors to the nave.

He wore a black suit and a white shirt. No tie pin. No pocket square. Our father would have approved of the restraint. Anton had not slept much in four days. Neither had I, but grief settled differently on him. His face looked harder. The soft similarity between us had disappeared.

“You need to stop,” he said.

“The first car is too close to the curb cut.”

“Someone else can move it.”

“They placed the family vehicle third.”

Anton stepped into my path. “Let someone else fix it.”

“Who?”

“Me.”

“You have other things to do.”

“So do you.”

I looked down at the phone in my hand. The screen showed the funeral schedule in fifteen-minute blocks. Church. Procession. Cemetery. Return to Orlov Marine. Food for principal mourners. Security rotation.

Every part of my father’s burial had an assigned time.

It was obscene. It was necessary.

Anton reached out and closed his hand around my phone.

“I need that.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Anton.”

“Ksenia. Today isn’t about following a plan. It’s about Papa.”

His expression shifted.

For one second he was not Pakhan. He was my brother, tired and angry and frightened by how calm I was.

“Please,” he said.

That almost worked.

Then the doors opened, and the men carrying my father’s coffin entered. Every thought in my head stopped.

The coffin was dark walnut. Closed. Polished until the church lights reflected along its sides. A gold cross lay across the lid. Someone had placed a small icon near the head.

I had chosen the coffin. I had chosen the lining.