Chapter 2
Eleanor ordered the gates closed.
Serena laughed when she heard it.
“Very graceful.”
Eleanor ignored her.
“Thirty minutes.”
She looked toward the security chief.
“Nobody leaves for thirty minutes.”
Grant pushed himself out of the broken barrel display.
“You can’t hold guests because your feelings got hurt.”
Eleanor looked at him.
Grant stopped smiling.
She turned toward the nearest waiter.
“Who tied the black ribbons?”
The young man went pale.
“I didn’t.”
“Who did?”
“Miss Cole’s event staff.”
Serena folded her arms.
“They’re decorations.”
Eleanor held up the glass.
“Only twenty-three glasses have them.”
Silence.
Serena shrugged.
“Then twenty-three people got the better glasses.”
Grant laughed.
A few guests smiled nervously.
Eleanor looked at them.
“Did anyone with a ribbon know they had one?”
Nobody answered.
Interesting.
She pointed toward a silver-haired family guest.
“Henry.”
Henry Bellini had been Matteo’s uncle.
Seventy-two.
Old enough to remember rituals most younger men had never seen.
His face was uncomfortable.
Eleanor noticed.
“What?”
Henry cleared his throat.
“The black ribbon used to mean something.”
Adrian looked at him.
Serena didn’t.
She already knew.
Eleanor turned toward her.
Then back to Henry.
“Explain.”
Henry looked at the lawn.
“Your father-in-law used them during internal challenges.”
The entire reception went silent.
Eleanor’s voice lowered.
“What kind of challenge?”
“A confidence challenge.”
Adrian stared.
“What?”
Henry continued reluctantly.
“If the head of the family asked for support…”
He looked toward the glasses.
“…a raised black stem meant the person holding it supported the challenger.”
Eleanor said nothing.
She remembered the question.
Who here thinks she was right?
Someone had prepared the old symbol knowing she might ask the crowd something.
Or planning to force her to.
Serena smiled.
“You asked them yourself.”
Eleanor looked at her.
“You knew what the ribbons meant.”
Serena’s eyes glittered.
“Maybe I read.”
Henry immediately said:
“That custom hasn’t been written down in decades.”
Serena’s smile disappeared.
Grant stepped in.
“Everyone understands what happened.”
Eleanor turned.
He pointed at her soaked suit.
“A woman got embarrassed and lost her temper.”
One guest shifted.
Grant saw it and pressed harder.
“She punched me.”
“You punched first.”
Grant shrugged.
“Details.”
Eleanor almost smiled.
Grant continued.
“You threw Serena through her own engagement display.”
“She attacked first.”
Again:
“Details.”
Then he leaned closer.
“This is what people see, Eleanor.”
He spoke her name deliberately.
No title.
No respect.
“An aging widow who can’t stand not being the center of the room.”
Adrian flinched.
Eleanor didn’t.
Grant smiled.
“Matteo built a dynasty.”
He glanced at the ruined flowers.
“You’re fighting women at garden parties.”
That was the line meant to hurt.
Eleanor stepped closer.
“Matteo also taught me something.”
Grant raised an eyebrow.
“That men who keep mentioning dead bosses usually don’t have enough authority of their own.”
A few capos looked away to hide smiles.
Grant’s face hardened.
Serena intervened.
“Enough.”
Then she turned toward Adrian.
“Tell her.”
Adrian’s face changed.
Eleanor looked at him.
“Tell me what?”
He hesitated.
Serena’s voice sharpened.
“Adrian.”
That tone.
Not fiancée.
Controller.
Eleanor recognized it immediately.
Adrian finally spoke.
“Serena said the glasses were part of an engagement tradition.”
Eleanor waited.
“She said when you asked everyone to welcome her…”
He swallowed.
“…they’d raise them.”
“I didn’t ask anyone to welcome her.”
“No.”
Adrian looked ashamed.
“She said she would create the moment.”
There it was.
Serena had planned the confrontation.
Not necessarily the slap.
Maybe.
But definitely the public challenge.
Eleanor turned toward her.
“Why?”
Serena smiled again.
“Because everyone needed to see you can be touched.”
Silence.
“You walk around here like nobody can embarrass you.”
Her eyes moved over Eleanor’s wet clothes.
“Now they’ve seen otherwise.”
Eleanor stared.
Then one of her guards approached quietly.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“We have a problem at the east gate.”
Serena’s face changed.
Grant looked away.
Eleanor noticed both.
“What problem?”
The guard answered:
“The two men you normally keep there were reassigned.”
“By whom?”
A pause.
“Mr. Adrian.”
Eleanor slowly looked at her son.
Adrian went pale.
May you like
“I never gave that order.”
And suddenly the black ribbons were only the first thing someone had done in his name.
