Chapter 8
Grant was less complicated.
He wanted power.
He admitted it with almost admirable simplicity.
“Your system has no place for men like me.”
I looked at him across the training room where we met.
“You mean men I don’t trust?”
He smiled.
“Men who aren’t afraid of you.”
“No.”
I sat.
“Men who confuse fearlessness with entitlement.”
His smile disappeared.
Grant had expected to become Adrian’s security chief after marriage.
Then more.
If Sunday moved to Adrian’s house, security determined who entered.
Who waited.
Who met privately.
Grant would control the door.
That was his real prize.
The engagement humiliation served two purposes.
Make me look weak.
Make Grant look strong enough to touch me publicly.
He had shoved me before throwing the punch.
That part was deliberate symbolism.
A man putting hands on Eleanor Bellini and living.
A new era.
Then I hit him.
Problem.
“You expected me not to fight.”
“I expected Adrian to stop you.”
Interesting.
My son.
Not Grant.
“What was Adrian supposed to do?”
“Step between you and Serena.”
There.
The image they wanted.
Mother on one side.
Bride on the other.
Adrian choosing bride publicly.
Grant believed once that image existed, half the family would follow the future household.
“So when Adrian froze…”
Grant smiled.
“We thought it was enough.”
Almost.
Then I started asking who supported Serena.
That exposed the crowd.
Grant’s biggest mistake was believing humiliation makes people less observant.
Sometimes it does the opposite.
I asked about Malcolm Cole.
“Was this for him?”
Grant looked away for the first time.
“Partly.”
“What part?”
“My father died irrelevant.”
There.
The wound.
“He built half the network Thomas used.”
“Then destroyed trust around it.”
“You wrote the history.”
“No.”
I leaned closer.
“Your father wrote his ending.”
Grant hated that.
Then he said:
“Adrian will never forgive you once he understands what you did to him.”
“What did I do?”
Grant smiled.
“You made him thirty years old before he realized nobody had ever asked what he wanted.”
That sentence followed me out of the room.
May you like
Because unlike most of Grant’s words—
that one was partly mine.
