Chapter 16
The black seal stayed on my desk for almost a year.
I hated it.
Too much history packed into one object.
Too many men willing to imagine it carried authority.
One winter morning, I brought Miriam and Marco into the old oath room.
Garrett was not invited.
Neither was Evelyn.
This was Carbone business.
I opened the succession ledger.
Read my father’s warning again.
Never let anyone turn dead men’s fears into living law.
Then I took the ledger out.
Marco frowned.
“What are you doing?”
“Retiring the room.”
His face went pale.
“You can’t.”
I looked at him.
“Why?”
“Tradition.”
Miriam laughed.
Marco glared.
I continued.
“The ledger stays in family archives.”
“Then the seal?”
I looked at it.
“Destroyed.”
Marco stood.
“Alessia.”
“No.”
My voice remained calm.
“If an emergency comes, living captains decide with living information.”
“You’re erasing safeguards.”
“I’m erasing mysticism.”
Miriam smiled.
I handed the seal to her.
She looked at me.
“Why me?”
“Dad gave it to you.”
“And?”
“You decide.”
She stared at the obsidian for a long time.
Then dropped it onto the stone floor.
It cracked.
Marco gasped.
My mother looked at him.
“What?”
He almost laughed despite himself.
We broke it completely.
No ceremony afterward.
No speech.
Just pieces of black stone in an old cloth.
The oath room remained.
History remained.
But nobody would ever again hunt a symbol believing it could grant them a future I had not agreed to.
That mattered.
May you like
Power should be difficult to inherit by accident.
Impossible to steal through mythology.
