Chapter 2
The “test” had rules.
Frank wrote them.
I found the card in Damon’s jacket after one of my guards noticed him trying to fold something into his pocket.
LEO — composure, obedience, courage.
OLIVIA — initiative, control, family instinct.
I stared at the words.
My son and niece had been scored like candidates.
“They’re children.”
Frank sat across from me in the garden study.
“They are Rossettis.”
“That is not an answer.”
“To you, perhaps.”
There it was.
The old bloodline voice.
The one I had heard since I was a girl sitting outside rooms where men discussed the future as though I were furniture.
I became head of the organization anyway.
Frank never fully accepted that.
He tolerated it because I won.
Different thing.
“What exactly was today supposed to prove?”
Damon looked away.
Frank answered.
“That Leo panics.”
I almost laughed.
“You tied him to a post and swung wood beside his head.”
“A leader must function under pressure.”
“He is four.”
“So was your grandfather when he learned what his name meant.”
I leaned forward.
“My grandfather was also terrified of elevators because his father locked him in one.”
Frank’s jaw tightened.
Family legends become less impressive when somebody remembers the damage.
“What did Olivia get if Leo failed?”
Silence.
I placed the child-sized ring on the desk.
“This?”
Frank’s eyes moved to it.
There.
“Yes.”
Damon finally spoke.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen now.”
I turned.
“What wasn’t?”
His face changed.
Wrong sentence.
I waited.
He exhaled.
“Olivia wasn’t supposed to receive the ring until the council agreed.”
May you like
The council.
My brother had just admitted the children’s game was part of an adult succession discussion happening behind my back.
