Chapter 13
Lucia asked for one final audience.
I gave her one.
Marco stayed.
No private truths.
She sat in my study wearing pearls and the same expression she used at funerals when other people were grieving too loudly.
“You’ve embarrassed the family,” she said.
I almost laughed.
“You locked Sophia behind bars.”
“And you showed it to captains.”
“I showed them what you did.”
“You could have handled it privately.”
There it was.
The sentence that protected generations of Bellandi cruelty.
Privately.
Behind doors.
Inside estates.
Away from anyone who might call the thing by its real name.
“My father handled everything privately,” I said.
Lucia’s face changed.
“Your father built this family.”
“My father terrified it.”
“He made you strong.”
“No.”
I leaned back.
“He made me afraid of becoming him.”
That silenced her.
Lucia had loved my father in the way people sometimes love the person who taught them survival. She had turned his worst instincts into tradition because admitting he was cruel would mean admitting what they endured was not sacred.
She looked at Marco.
“You agree with this?”
Marco answered simply.
“Yes.”
Her mouth tightened.
Then she looked at me again.
“You’ll regret softening this family.”
I thought about Sophia whispering that she believed I did not need her.
“No.”
I said it slowly.
“I regret every hour my daughter spent thinking fear was a lesson.”
Lucia stood.
“What are you doing with me?”
Nothing dramatic.
No old Bellandi spectacle.
She lost every command channel.
Every family gathering requiring access went through me.
Every captain who once answered her private calls stopped.
Hawthorne House was closed.
The Inner Table stayed dead.
Lucia almost looked disappointed.
“You think isolation frightens me?”
“No.”
I looked at her.
“I think irrelevance does.”
That one reached her.
I saw it.
May you like
My father taught Lucia that being feared meant being necessary.
I was going to let her discover the difference.
