Chapter 5
The crest changed the story.
Pigment could be panic.
The opened bracelet could be explained as madness.
A specially prepared Moretti blanket meant planning.
Margaret sat down.
For the first time, she looked tired.
“Where were you taking him?” I asked.
“Home.”
Emma’s breathing changed.
I moved beside her immediately.
“Which home?”
Margaret looked at me.
“The Moretti estate.”
My estate.
The house Emma and I had deliberately moved out of eight months earlier.
That decision had nearly ended my relationship with my mother.
The old estate contained everything Margaret considered family.
Portraits.
Rules.
Old captains arriving uninvited.
Dining rooms where children learned silence before conversation.
Emma hated it.
I eventually realized I did too.
We moved into a smaller private house.
Margaret called it abandonment.
Now she had prepared to take my newborn son straight back there.
“You intended to remove him from Emma.”
Margaret’s voice stayed calm.
“Temporarily.”
Emma laughed through tears.
There it was again.
Temporarily.
The most dangerous word in families that use control as affection.
“For how long?” I asked.
“Until you understood.”
“Understood what?”
“That she isn’t capable of raising a Moretti heir.”
Emma turned her face away.
Linda started forward.
I stopped her gently.
My mother continued as if she had not just destroyed something.
“Emma is soft. She questions everything. She’ll teach him to apologize for who he is.”
I looked at my sleeping son.
“Good.”
Margaret stared.
“If who he is requires hurting people because our last name gives permission, I hope he apologizes.”
She looked horrified.
That almost made me smile.
Then Linda spoke.
“Tell him about the nursery.”
Margaret shut her eyes.
I looked at Linda.
“What nursery?”
“The one at the old estate.”
My pulse slowed.
Linda had seen it two weeks earlier after Margaret invited her there under the excuse of discussing baby gifts.
A full nursery had already been prepared.
Crib.
Clothes.
Family photographs.
Everything.
Except Emma.
My mother had planned a room for my son inside my childhood home before he was born.
A room where his mother did not exist.
Linda looked at me.
“There isn’t one photograph of Emma in it.”
I stared at Margaret.
May you like
My son had been alive for less than a day.
My mother had already designed a future where she raised him and my wife disappeared from the picture.
