Chapter 2
The First Plate was older than me.
Older than my father.
An old Montaro banquet ritual used when the family wanted to publicly acknowledge a child entering the “inner table.”
The child prepared or carried a dish.
The senior matriarch tasted it.
Then the child was brought from the children’s table to sit beside the older family.
Ridiculous.
Mostly harmless in the version Raymond remembered.
Except nobody had told me Emmett was participating.
I looked at him.
“You knew?”
Raymond shook his head.
“I knew Lucille planned the ritual. I thought you approved.”
“Did you ask me?”
His face tightened.
“No.”
Good.
At least he did not hide from it.
I turned toward Lucille.
“You arranged a family rite around my son without his father.”
“You’ve ignored family customs since taking command.”
“So you used a toddler to restore one.”
“He’s the direct line.”
I almost laughed.
There it was.
Not Emmett.
The direct line.
People like Lucille stop seeing children the moment a bloodline label becomes available.
Celina interrupted.
“He wanted to do it.”
I looked at her.
“He wanted Lucille to like him.”
“That’s the same thing at his age.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“That is exactly why adults are supposed to protect him from people like you.”
Her jaw tightened.
Raymond explained the old rite further.
If the matriarch accepted the dish, the child joined the table.
If she rejected it—
He stopped.
I looked at him.
“What?”
“There was no formal rejection.”
Lucille spoke coldly.
“There used to be.”
Everyone turned.
Of course she remembered a harsher version.
“What happened?”
She looked at Emmett.
“The child waited another year.”
I stared.
“You planned to publicly tell a three-year-old he was not good enough to sit with his family.”
“It teaches patience.”
“No.”
My voice dropped.
“It teaches a child that belonging can be withheld for performance.”
Lucille looked almost pleased.
“Exactly.”
There.
No misunderstanding.
The cruelty was the mechanism.
Then an older kitchen steward approached.
“Boss?”
“What?”
He held a stained recipe card.
Emmett’s little fingerprints marked the edges.
“Ms. Celina gave this to him yesterday.”
I took it.
At the top, in Celina’s handwriting:
LUCILLE’S FAVORITE — DO IT YOURSELF SO SHE KNOWS YOU’RE READY.
I looked at my cousin.
Her face drained.
May you like
The humiliation had not merely been planned.
They had made my son work for the rejection first.
