Chapter 7
Gloria reacted worse than Elias.
“You can’t erase what your father promised.”
“I can erase what concerns my son.”
“You inherited Bellaro.”
“Noah did not.”
Her face hardened.
“He will.”
There it was.
Automatic inheritance.
The disease.
I had grown up with it too.
A Bellaro son becomes Bellaro power.
A Mercer grandson becomes Mercer leverage.
Nobody asking what the child wanted.
Vivienne stood beside me holding Noah.
“He is six weeks old.”
Gloria looked at her daughter.
“You don’t understand what keeps families alive.”
Vivienne laughed.
“No.”
Then looked toward the laundry corridor.
“I understand what almost happened because you wanted control.”
Gloria’s face broke for half a second.
Then she blamed Camille.
“If she hadn’t interfered, nobody would have been hurt.”
The room went silent.
There.
Victim logic.
I stepped closer.
“You placed a newborn inside a washer.”
“It was off.”
“Not the point.”
“I was standing there.”
“Not the point.”
“I would never have let anything happen.”
Vivienne whispered:
“Something already happened.”
Gloria looked at her.
“My daughter.”
“No.”
Vivienne’s voice became cold.
“You made me think I was forgetting how to care for my own baby.”
That finally reached her.
Gloria started crying.
Not enough.
She tried another defense.
“I was losing you.”
Vivienne closed her eyes.
There.
The real motive beneath politics.
Her daughter married.
Moved.
Had a child.
Built a life where Gloria was no longer central.
Elias turned that grief into strategy.
Gloria turned strategy into manipulation.
“You didn’t lose me because I married,” Vivienne said.
“You started losing me when every boundary became betrayal.”
Gloria looked at Noah.
“Can I hold him?”
Vivienne answered immediately.
“No.”
Gloria recoiled as if slapped.
Good.
Not punishment.
May you like
Boundary.
She needed to learn the difference.
