Chapter 8
Katherine’s hatred of Clara began before Christmas.
Salvatore found that out from the nursery staff.
Three separate employees told the same story.
Katherine changed Clara’s place settings.
Moved her farther from me during dinners.
Took away her chair beside mine during family breakfasts.
Corrected anyone who called her “little princess.”
One nanny finally explained why.
“She said daughters should not grow up believing the family belongs to them.”
I stared.
Clara was three.
“She said that exactly?”
“Yes.”
Then another detail.
Katherine had forbidden Clara from entering the old portrait gallery alone.
Why?
Because the newest portrait showed me holding Clara after my wife died.
My wife, Lucia, had passed during childbirth complications.
Clara survived.
I never remarried.
Katherine apparently hated that portrait.
I went to the gallery.
There it was.
Me at twenty-eight.
Exhausted.
Grieving.
Holding a newborn.
My father commissioned it six months before he died.
Beneath the frame was a small brass plaque:
ROMAN D’ANGELO AND DAUGHTER CLARA — CONTINUANCE OF THE HOUSE.
I had barely noticed the wording.
Katherine had.
She entered behind me.
“You see now?”
I turned.
“What?”
“What your father did.”
I looked at the plaque.
“He called her continuance.”
“Yes.”
“So?”
Her expression hardened.
“He named a girl as continuation of the house.”
There it was.
The oldest wound.
My father had deliberately broken tradition.
Not formally naming Clara heir.
Something more symbolic.
He had declared she counted.
Equal family blood.
Enough to enrage Katherine.
“She was six months old.”
“That’s when it started.”
“What started?”
“The dismantling.”
I almost laughed.
“My daughter existing?”
“Your father making her central.”
I understood.
Katherine had not simply preferred Marcus.
She believed my father insulted the entire old structure by placing a baby girl in the lineage portrait.
Then he died.
I became boss.
And I kept the portrait.
Without realizing it, I had been carrying forward the choice she despised.
May you like
Clara was not only my weakness in Katherine’s eyes.
She was proof the family could change without Katherine’s permission.
