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“You’ll have it.”

The answer comes automatically.

Arthur looks at me for a moment before returning to the timetable.

“The next two weeks will be compressed. You’ll have several briefings that ordinarily would’ve happened over months.”

“I understand.”

Another trustee says, “No one expects you to absorb everything immediately.”

I look at him. “They should.”

The room goes quiet for half a second. Sebastian shifts beside me but says nothing. Arthur closes the folder at last.

“Then we’ll begin first thing Monday.”

Chairs move back slowly as the meeting breaks apart. My mother remains seated for a moment longer, staring at the documents in front of her as though they belong to another family.

Sebastian stands beside me.

“You all right?” he asks quietly.

I look down at the folder bearing my father’s name.

“No,” I say. “But I know what happens next.”

Sebastian studies me, then nods.

Around us, everyone begins gathering papers, scheduling calls and preparing for the transition my father planned long before any of us were ready to use it.

The corridor outside the conference room feels unnaturally quiet after everyone disperses, and I keep walking past the executive offices until I reach my father’s door. His name is still on the brass plate, exactly where it has been for years, and I stand there for a moment before opening it.

The office looks almost untouched. Dark wood, floor-to-ceiling windows, shelves filled with books he actually read, and the low cabinet where he kept the files no one moved without asking him first. His empty watch tray still sits on the credenza near the window, and the room carries the faint scent of leather and cedar that has always belonged to him. I step inside and close the door behind me.

His desk sits at the center of the room, commanding the same view over London that I have seen from the opposite side more times than I can count. I run my hand along the edge as I pass, then stop behind the chair.

I have sat across from this desk for years, listening while he challenged decisions, corrected assumptions, and pushed both Sebastian and me harder than anyone else ever could. I have never sat here. I lower myself into the chair.

The city stretches out beneath the windows, gray and expansive under the afternoon sky. From this height, everything looks almost still, but I know how much is moving below it. Meetings are continuing, markets are reacting, calls are being made, and people are already adjusting themselves around the fact that Charles Kensington is no longer here to make the final decision.

Soon, this office will be mine. The thought lands differently here than it did in the conference room.

There, succession was language buried inside documents, trust provisions, board procedures, and transition schedules. Here, it is the empty chair, the untouched desk, the pen lying near the blotter, and the knowledge that someone will eventually remove his name from the door and replace it with mine.

I reach for the fountain pen and turn it once between my fingers before setting it back exactly where I found it.

My father spent decades in this room. He built relationships here, made decisions here, argued with me here, and expected that one day I would sit where I am sitting now. I always understood that in theory. I never understood what it would feel like to arrive here because he was gone.

I lean back and look out at London again, letting the grief and responsibility sit together without trying to separate them. This is what he prepared me for. It is also what his death has left behind.

I stay there for several minutes before standing, straightening my jacket, and leaving the office without touching anything else.

When I return to the estate, I find my mother in the small sitting room off the west corridor with a cup of tea untouched beside her. She is looking through one of my father’s old photograph albums, though she is not really turning the pages. Her fingers rest against a picture of the two of them taken years ago, and when she hears me come in, she closes the album gently and looks up.

“How did it go?” Eleanor asks.

“It’s done,” I say. “The transition starts Monday.”