Chapter 3
I did not embrace my father.
Movies would have.
Real families are rarely that efficient.
I put Lucas in the private office with Mrs. Bennett and two guards, then brought Lorenzo, Evelyn, and Graham into the planetarium conference room.
Nobody sat beside anyone.
Good.
“Start twelve years ago.”
Lorenzo looked at the table.
“I discovered your grandfather’s old faction was still active.”
“My grandfather was dead.”
“The faction wasn’t.”
That sounded plausible.
My grandfather believed family power should remain divided among senior branches. My father centralized it.
Old men hated him for that.
“Who led it?”
Lorenzo looked toward Evelyn.
She laughed bitterly.
“Go ahead.”
He answered:
“Her father.”
My uncle Stefano.
Evelyn’s father.
Dead nine years.
I stared.
“What did Stefano want?”
“Me removed.”
“And you staged your death instead of fighting.”
“No.”
Lorenzo’s eyes hardened.
“I staged my death because Stefano had already bought men inside my security.”
My jaw tightened.
“Why not tell me?”
“You were twenty-four.”
“I was your son.”
“You were the leverage they would use.”
I almost laughed.
There it was.
Protection.
The word powerful fathers use after deciding their children deserve no choice.
“So you let me believe you were dead to protect me.”
“Yes.”
“And handed me the chair they were trying to take from you.”
His face changed.
“I thought the faction would dissolve if they believed I was gone.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
Exactly.
I leaned back.
“What happened instead?”
“Stefano approached you.”
I remembered.
My uncle became my closest elder adviser after my father died.
For three years.
Then cancer took him.
Or so I believed.
Lorenzo continued.
“He thought he could shape you.”
“Could he?”
“No.”
For the first time, something like pride entered his voice.
I hated that it affected me.
“Then why stay dead?”
“Because every time I prepared to return, someone around you benefited from my absence.”
My eyes moved toward Evelyn.
She stared back.
“My father was gone by then.”
“Yes,” Lorenzo said. “And you inherited his fear.”
She laughed.
“Fear?”
“You thought Rafael learning the truth would strip your branch of everything.”
Graham interrupted.
“This is ancient history.”
I turned.
“No.”
My voice dropped.
May you like
“You tried to make my son forget a man existed behind a wall today.”
That made it present.
