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“She'll fight you,” Yaroslav said. “She'll fight you on everything. Let her.”

“I wasn't planning to stop her.”

“Good. Because she's going to need someone who stands behind her. Not in front.” He looked toward the dark window, the chessboard, the reflection of a tired old man in the glass. “My girls are cleverer than I ever was. I never told them that. I kept them out of it because I thought it was safer, and now I'm leaving them a world they don't entirely know how to walk through. Arina could run everything I built better than I did. If the wolves give her time to learn.” His gaze came back to me. “You’ll give her that time.”

The study was very quiet. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed the half hour.

“I won't force her,” I said.

“If you were the kind of man who'd force her, I wouldn't be asking you.”

“If she says no...”

“Then she says no,” he lifted his palms up in a gesture of resignation. “But you keep her alive anyway.”

“I'd do that regardless.”

“I know.” He lifted his glass. “That's why it's you.”

I said yes.

I'd like to say I thought about it. That I weighed my loyalty to a dying man against the wishes of a woman who'd barely looked at me, and arrived at a careful, principled decision.

But I didn't.

It was the easiest decision I've ever made. I've spent longer deciding what to have for lunch.

“Who are the others?” I asked, after.

“Not your concern. Each of them will know what he needs to know.”

“Do the girls know any of this?”

“No. And they won't hear it from you.” He pointed a thick finger at me. “Arina hears it from Viktor, after I'm gone. If she hears it from you first, she'll think you came to collect. And she'll never forgive either of us.”

I gave him my word.

My phone buzzes against the counter.

Viktor.

I answer on the first ring. “Yes?”

There's a pause. In the background I can hear traffic, a car door, the old man's labored breathing as he walks.

“It's done,” he says.

“How did they take it?”

“Evaria threatened to exhume him. Milana laughed until she cried, or cried until she laughed, I'm not certain which. Zhenya asked for a copy of the trust deed and a list of every lawyer in Chicago I personally dislike.” Another pause. “Galana asked if she was allowed to say no.”

“And Arina?”

“Arina said nothing at all.”

I close my eyes.

“That's worse.”