Chapter 17
Two years after Amara tugged my sleeve at the engagement party, I held another celebration in the same ballroom.
Not a wedding.
Fatima’s birthday.
She hated the idea.
Amara loved it.
That settled the argument.
The staff decorated the room themselves. Nothing extravagant. Food from local restaurants. Children running where old captains once stood whispering about alliances.
Amara was five now.
The stuffed lamb came too.
Still stained faintly at one ear.
She climbed onto the chair beside mine and whispered:
“Alessandro.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t trust that woman.”
My entire body went still.
She pointed across the room.
Fatima was approaching with a cake.
Amara burst out laughing.
I stared at her.
“You think that’s funny?”
“Yes.”
Apparently trauma becomes available for comedy when children decide it has lost enough power.
Fatima shook her head.
“Don’t encourage her.”
“I’m the victim here.”
Amara disagreed.
“No.”
Fair.
The ballroom doors opened.
Rafe entered carrying a small package.
Inside was Lorenzo’s old black signet ring.
Or what remained of it.
I had eventually melted the ring after all.
Not into a symbol.
Into plain metal fittings used to repair the old service doors.
Rafe thought I should know.
I laughed.
Perfect.
The object once intended to unlock control over my family now literally held a door hinge together.
I looked toward the west corridor.
The music salon had been changed too.
No locked private meetings during events.
The doors stayed open unless everyone inside chose otherwise.
Simple.
Practical.
Fatima cut the cake.
Amara handed me the first piece, then immediately stole the strawberry from the top.
“Mine.”
“I noticed.”
She grinned.
Two years earlier she had walked into my engagement party with a stuffed lamb and a warning adults were too arrogant to imagine mattered.
She did not understand Ashworth councils.
Dormant family accounts.
Old signet authority.
Lorenzo’s abandoned plan.
Blackmail ledgers.
She understood something much simpler.
Genevieve said something bad.
Genevieve did not want me to know.
So Amara told me.
Everything else began there.
People later described that night as the evening Alessandro Rienzi exposed a conspiracy inside his own engagement.
They were wrong.
I did not expose it.
A housemaid’s three-year-old daughter did.
All I finally did was listen.
Amara leaned toward me again.
“Secret.”
I looked at her cautiously.
“What?”
She whispered:
“There’s another strawberry in Mommy’s cake box.”
I nodded solemnly.
“That one we keep between us.”
She smiled.
May you like
For once, a secret inside the Rienzi house meant absolutely nothing.
Exactly as it should.
