Chapter 2
I sent Ansel to my private sitting room with Rafe.
Not away because adults needed secrecy.
Away because he had already been used enough.
Before he left, I knelt and held out the hearing aids.
“Do you want them in?”
He nodded.
I helped with the first.
Then stopped before touching the second.
“Can I?”
He looked surprised.
Then nodded again.
Tiny thing.
But after watching Tobias take them without permission, I suddenly hated every time an adult had treated those devices as though they belonged to whoever happened to be standing nearest him.
When Ansel could hear me properly again, I said:
“No one takes these from you without asking.”
His eyes moved toward Tobias.
“Even family?”
“Especially family.”
Rafe took him away.
Then I closed the ballroom doors.
Not locked.
Anyone could leave.
After answering.
I looked at Malcolm.
“Start.”
He swallowed.
“There was supposed to be a statement tonight.”
“Whose?”
No answer.
“Tobias’s?”
He shook his head.
“Cassandra’s.”
My sister.
I turned toward my brother-in-law.
“What exactly was my sister supposed to announce?”
Tobias straightened his jacket.
“That she was leaving Westbrook.”
I almost smiled.
“Cassandra is a Westbrook.”
“By blood.”
“And?”
“She’s Carrow by marriage.”
There it was.
The argument.
Eighteen years earlier the Carrow organization had stopped operating independently after a brutal internal collapse. Tobias’s father, Ellis Carrow, brought his remaining people under Westbrook protection.
Not conquest.
Not surrender.
That was how I remembered it.
Apparently Tobias remembered differently.
Malcolm continued.
Six senior associates had agreed that if Cassandra publicly left the Westbrook table and stood beside Tobias, they would follow.
Not geographically.
Symbolically.
Crews.
Clubs.
Family houses.
Old relationships.
Half a structure peeling away during the anniversary dinner.
A family split staged as a wife following her husband.
I stared at Tobias.
“You planned to use my sister as the first vote.”
His jaw hardened.
“She understands what was taken from my family.”
“Does she?”
Silence.
Interesting.
Then Malcolm said:
“She doesn’t know tonight is the night.”
I looked at him.
Even Cassandra did not know the announcement she was supposedly making.
That was when the conspiracy changed shape.
May you like
Tobias was not leading a rebellion with my sister.
He was planning to speak through her.
