Chapter 7
We retrieved the case ourselves.
Ada insisted on coming.
So did I.
Sebastian stayed under guard at the estate.
The box was smaller than memory.
Dark blue leather.
Our mother’s initials inside.
No key.
Rafe opened the lock carefully.
Inside were earrings.
Two photographs.
A folded silk scarf.
And a black notebook.
No dramatic ledger.
No secret millions.
Just handwriting.
Our mother’s.
Ada sat on the storage-room floor.
I read aloud.
The Inner Chair does not preserve Bellini. It preserves men who are afraid ordinary accountability will expose how often they protected themselves.
My throat tightened.
She named names.
Not just Sebastian.
Our father too.
That hurt.
He had protected a cousin after that cousin threatened a debtor’s daughter.
Forgiven an uncle who stole from a family business.
Moved one young widow out of a property because an older captain wanted it.
Not monstrous acts compared with what some families did.
Enough to reveal hypocrisy.
My father had not been a saint fighting tradition.
He had benefited from it before slowly changing.
Then another entry.
Ronan watches everything but confronts too late. He thinks patience makes him fair.
I closed my eyes.
Ada almost smiled.
“She got you.”
“Apparently.”
Then:
Ada trusts kindness too quickly because she thinks cruelty announces itself.
My sister stopped smiling.
Rhea.
Trusted adviser.
Years beside us.
Never openly cruel.
Until the room closed.
Our mother had warned us both without knowing the exact future.
Then the final pages changed.
Names disappeared.
One sentence repeated:
SEBASTIAN IS BUILDING SOMETHING AROUND THE CHAIR.
My pulse slowed.
This was eight years ago.
Before my mother died.
Sebastian had been organizing resistance long before I took command.
The current livestream plot was not a reaction to my reforms.
It was the continuation of a project my mother discovered.
May you like
The Inner Chair was not tradition he wanted restored.
It was power he had wanted for himself for nearly a decade.
