Chapter 8
We returned to the Bennett mountain house before midnight.
This time Arthur came.
I wanted him there.
The long dining room looked almost ready for guests.
Nine places had been set on one side.
One place at the head.
Mine.
I understood the insult immediately.
Arthur had planned to seat his own children opposite me like a wall.
Clara would have been beside him.
The baby discussed as if not yet being born somehow made ownership negotiable.
Elias walked to the far end of the table and turned over one heavy chair.
Beneath the seat was a carved symbol.
A small H.
Helena.
Inside the upholstery, hidden under old stitching, was a second recorder.
Arthur looked older the moment he saw it.
I pressed play.
Helena’s voice filled the dining room.
“If all of my children are hearing this together, then I failed.”
Nobody moved.
“I tried to keep Arthur from turning you into weapons against one another. I could not.”
Arthur stared at the floor.
Helena named each child.
Not accusations.
Memories.
Elias hiding food for Nolan after Arthur withheld dinner.
Roman sleeping outside Clara’s door when she had nightmares.
Victor taking punishment for Marcus.
Caleb lying about a broken window to protect Theo.
Small proof that before Arthur trained them to compete, they had loved one another.
Several brothers began looking away.
Helena continued.
“Your father will teach you that love makes you easy to control. The truth is the opposite. Isolation makes you easy to control.”
I looked at Arthur.
His expression became hard again because hardness was the only face he knew how to wear when truth reached him.
Then Helena spoke about Clara.
“She will be the first to leave because she is the first willing to disappoint him.”
That explained Arthur’s hatred.
Clara had done what none of the sons could.
Walked away.
Helena’s final warning was simple.
“If Arthur ever asks all eight brothers to stand against Clara, understand what he is doing. He is proving he still owns all nine of you.”
The recorder stopped.
No one spoke.
I looked down the long table.
Eight brothers.
One father.
Nine people.
Arthur had built them into a weapon.
Then pointed them at his daughter.
May you like
And for the first time, I understood that the nine graves I threatened did not all need to hold bodies.
Some things deserved burial more than men did.
