Chapter 1
“Go buy wheelchairs. You will need them tomorrow.”
Mara stopped breathing.
Derek remained tangled beside the tilted portrait panel while Evan sat on the upholstered bench with one hand wrapped tightly around his prosthetic leg.
I turned toward the council-room doors.
That was when Evan caught my sleeve.
“Lucian.”
His voice sounded more frightened now than when Derek had been holding him on the floor.
I looked down.
“What?”
“Don’t open those doors yet.”
I stared at him.
Behind the polished wood sat nine members of the Bellini council. Men who had attended my father’s funeral. Men who had watched Evan relearn how to walk after losing his leg six years earlier.
And apparently men my brother did not want me to see.
“Why?”
Evan swallowed.
Mara immediately spoke.
“He’s embarrassed.”
I turned toward her.
“You’ve used that word enough.”
She fell silent.
Evan looked at the floor.
“They’re waiting for me.”
“For what?”
His fingers tightened around the prosthetic.
“To go inside and say I’m stepping away from the family table.”
Everything in me became still.
“Why would you do that?”
He laughed once.
Broken.
“Because apparently I make Bellini look weak.”
I looked at Mara.
Then Derek.
Neither denied it.
Evan continued.
“For weeks they’ve been telling me you’re tired of explaining me to other families. That you only keep me in the council room because Dad made you promise.”
My jaw tightened.
“I never said that.”
“I know that now.”
“Now?”
He finally looked at me.
Mara had been telling him that every cancelled dinner, every meeting I attended without him, every photograph where he sat instead of stood was evidence that I was ashamed.
Derek reinforced it.
Then this afternoon they gave Evan one final instruction.
Walk into the council room.
Return his Bellini council ring.
Publicly announce that his injury made him unable to represent the family.
And endorse the Whitfield alliance Mara’s family had been pushing for months.
I looked at the doors again.
“Who told you they would accept that?”
Evan’s face changed.
He whispered one name.
“Uncle Carlo.”
My father’s younger brother.
May you like
My longest-serving adviser.
The man sitting behind those doors right now.
