Chapter 4
My husband Marco died eleven years earlier.
Adrian was nineteen.
Too young to lead.
I took control of Bellini because someone had to.
People called it temporary.
Then we survived three internal splits, two failed alliances, and enough betrayal to teach everyone that temporary competence often becomes permanent authority.
Adrian grew beneath that.
Loved me.
Respected me.
And apparently resented me.
All at once.
I understood.
That did not excuse silence.
“You could have asked for more responsibility.”
“I did.”
I stared.
He had.
Not in clear sentences.
In irritation.
Complaints that I checked his guest lists.
Arguments over which captains he could meet privately.
Anger when I corrected him publicly.
I heard impatience.
He meant suffocation.
That part belonged to me.
But Serena had translated frustration into entitlement.
She told him:
A thirty-year-old man should not need his mother’s approval.
True sometimes.
Then:
Marriage should change that.
Maybe.
Then:
The estate should become theirs socially.
Dangerous.
Then:
People needed one visible night showing Adrian was no longer beneath me.
There.
Hierarchy.
Not growth.
Serena did not want Adrian beside me.
She needed him above me.
Because only then would her own status rise automatically.
I looked at her.
“Did you love him?”
She stared.
“Of course.”
“Then why did your version of his adulthood require my humiliation?”
May you like
No answer.
Exactly.
