Page 42 of Dark King Daddy

It moved slowly down the center aisle. The men carrying it stepped in unison. Their shoes sounded against the church floor.

I could not breathe.

Anton’s hand found mine.

His fingers were cold.

The coffin passed us.

Four days earlier, I had knelt beside my father in the Birch Room. His blood had soaked through my dress and dried against my knees during the hours that followed. I had watched Anton close his eyes. I had watched men lift him from the floor.

I had known.

My body had not.

Now it did.

The first mourners arrived soon after.

They came in dark coats with rain caught on the shoulders. Old men from the waterfront. Union officials. Warehouse owners. Families whose children I had known since childhood. Men who had feared my father. Men who had owed him money. Men who had loved him as much as men like them allowed themselves to love anyone.

Each person crossed himself before the coffin. Each person came to us afterward. Anton stood first in the receiving line. I stood beside him. Kostya, my father’s brother-in-law and one of the oldest surviving Orlov advisers, stood on Anton’s other side.

Hands closed around mine.

Voices lowered.

Your father was a great man.

Mikhail Mikhailovich helped my family.

He will be remembered.

God keep him.

I thanked them.

I remembered who had wives, who had children, who had recently undergone surgery, who took sugar in tea, who had argued with Papa in 2018 and never quite repaired the relationship.

I made each of them feel seen.

That was what I did.

It was easier than feeling myself.

The church filled. Wet wool, candle wax, incense. Low voices rose and fell beneath the icons.

A shift moved through the men near the entrance.

I saw it before I saw the reason.

The Sokolovs had arrived.

Daniil entered first.

Black coat. Black suit. White shirt. No visible sign of the blood that had covered him four nights earlier. No sign that tomorrow he would bury his own father.

He had changed.