Chapter 8
Wesley arrived at Blackthorne an hour later.
Not invited by me.
Gideon called him before I could stop him.
Good.
I wanted him in the room anyway.
He walked in furious.
Not ashamed.
“You brought Bellandi guards onto neutral ground.”
I stared.
“Neutral ground where you planned to keep my daughter.”
“She would have been safe.”
Same word.
Always.
I showed him Julian’s photograph.
His expression changed.
“You lied about my father.”
“No.”
“You said he preserved the program.”
“He preserved the principles.”
“What did he do after Julian died?”
Silence.
Gideon answered.
“He ended it.”
Wesley turned on him.
“Coward.”
There.
Gideon flinched.
Wesley’s entire authority rested on interpreting the dead founder.
Now the witness beside him contradicted the interpretation.
I leaned forward.
“Why?”
Wesley finally stopped pretending.
Because he believed my father became sentimental after Julian.
Weak.
Too influenced by grief.
Wesley thought ending Blackthorne training was a mistake.
So he preserved it privately.
Not continuously.
Waiting.
For the right child.
Hazel.
Why her?
Not simply because she was mine.
Because she was female.
I stared.
Wesley said it plainly.
“A woman leads differently once she becomes a mother.”
My blood went cold.
There it was.
He wanted Hazel removed partly to reshape me.
If my daughter lived at Blackthorne, I would be forced to negotiate with the Old Table.
Consult them.
Visit them.
Depend on them for access.
My leadership would become tethered to motherhood.
“Hazel was leverage.”
“She was continuity.”
“No.”
I stood.
“She was the rope you planned to put around my neck.”
Adrienne had simply been execution.
Wesley had built the idea.
Then he revealed the final piece.
The Hartwells had not requested Hazel.
They barely knew.
Wesley had contacted them.
He offered shared education between the children.
Sold it as peace.
He had been building the future himself.
No mandate.
No founder.
No family vote.
Just an old man so terrified of becoming irrelevant that he resurrected a dead tradition around a three-year-old.
Gideon looked at him with disgust.
Finally.
May you like
The Old Table had only two living members.
And now even they were no longer on the same side.
