Chapter 7
I dismissed everyone except Genevieve.
Not because I trusted her.
Because I needed to know what “remember” meant.
She stood near the window soaked, exhausted, no longer looking like the perfect engagement portrait everyone admired hours earlier.
“What are you supposed to remember?”
“Nothing.”
I waited.
Silence works better when people expect shouting.
Eventually she sat.
“When I was sixteen, I tried to leave.”
I said nothing.
“My father had already told me about Lorenzo’s agreement.”
At sixteen.
Edmund had raised his daughter knowing her future value.
Not necessarily to marry me specifically.
To marry Rienzi power.
Genevieve hated it.
She ran to her mother.
That was when she learned her mother had helped design it.
Both parents believed marriage was family duty.
Genevieve tried to disappear for three days.
Edmund found her.
“What happened?”
“He made me watch what happened to the driver who helped.”
My expression changed.
“Did he kill him?”
“No.”
Important.
“He destroyed his business. Took his house. Made sure nobody in our circle hired him again.”
Economic ruin as discipline.
Genevieve learned the lesson.
People who helped her lost things.
So she stopped asking for help.
“Then you met me.”
She laughed bitterly.
“And you were nothing like they described.”
“What did they describe?”
“Cold. Arrogant. Addicted to command.”
“Charming.”
She almost smiled.
Then the smile disappeared.
“I thought if I married you, maybe I could redirect the plan.”
There.
The lie people tell themselves when participation becomes uncomfortable.
“Redirect how?”
“Let the council exist formally but keep it harmless.”
I stared.
“You thought four men who spent decades waiting for access would become harmless because you asked nicely.”
She closed her eyes.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I stepped closer.
“Because today you grabbed a three-year-old child rather than let me hear one sentence.”
That reached her.
“I panicked.”
“Exactly.”
I thought of Amara’s soaked stuffed lamb.
“Your father didn’t make your hand close around her arm.”
Genevieve looked away.
“No.”
Good.
Then she admitted the phone call had not been to Edmund.
I went still.
“Who?”
“My mother.”
That surprised me.
Genevieve looked almost frightened to say her name.
“Vivienne Ashworth.”
The elegant woman who had sent regrets this afternoon because of a supposed migraine.
Apparently she was not home sick.
May you like
She had been directing the final stage from somewhere else.
And Genevieve feared her more than she feared Edmund.
