Chapter 3
Heirs.
There it was.
Not children.
Positions.
Vincent asked that the kids be taken upstairs before we continued.
For once, I agreed.
Not because he commanded anything.
Because Milo, Nora, and Tess had heard enough adults discuss them like cargo.
Rafe took them with two women I trusted.
Milo refused to release my hand at first.
I walked halfway upstairs with him.
“I’m coming back?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not sending us?”
“No.”
“All three?”
“All three.”
He studied my face.
Then nodded.
Children should never have to verify whether their father intends to keep them.
That fact alone made me want to tear the entire family structure apart.
When I returned, Vincent was pouring himself water.
I knocked the glass from his hand.
“No comfort until truth.”
He stared.
Then began.
The Ferrante succession problem had started after Elena died.
My first wife.
Mother of Milo, Nora, and Tess.
She died eighteen months before I married Miranda.
A sudden illness.
No mystery there.
What followed was.
Elena came from the Marlow branch, an old allied family that had almost disappeared over two generations.
Her children carried both names in blood.
Certain elders believed that made them politically dangerous.
I laughed.
“They’re five, four, and three.”
Vincent did not.
“Eventually they won’t be.”
Milo, as my only son, would be expected by traditionalists to inherit Ferrante.
Nora and Tess could later become marriage bridges.
Three children.
Three future alliances.
Too much power concentrated beneath me.
The old guard feared that when they grew up, I would create a personal dynasty strong enough to end the council entirely.
“So you planned to steal them.”
Vincent’s face hardened.
“Relocate.”
Arthur added:
“Raise them outside the pressure.”
“Under your name.”
“Yes.”
That was almost funny.
Arthur would become nominal guardian inside an isolated Ferrante property in Maine.
The children would use Vale names publicly.
Their whereabouts known only to six elders.
I would be told they were safe after the fact.
And then?
Vincent answered:
“You step down until they return.”
There.
May you like
My children were not being removed because I was dangerous to them.
They were being removed because their absence could be used to control me.
