Chapter 10
I confronted her about the baby.
She did not deny it.
“If Maren ever left, the children would remain Vassallo.”
I stared.
“You believe you decide that?”
“I believe family comes before women who marry into it.”
Maren stood beside me.
Not behind.
I noticed.
Agatha did too.
“She is the family.”
My mother laughed.
“Until she isn’t.”
That revealed more than she intended.
Marriage, in Agatha’s mind, was provisional.
Blood was permanent.
Except she conveniently ignored that Maren’s children were her blood too.
I leaned closer.
“You were preparing for her to leave.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
I thought about the storage room.
The hidden food.
The missing chair.
“If you make someone miserable enough, eventually they leave.”
Agatha’s expression changed.
Small.
Enough.
Maren saw it too.
“You wanted me gone.”
Silence.
Sienna’s unborn sibling complicated Agatha’s plan.
Maren could leave.
But the children must stay.
That was the fantasy.
A clean Vassallo household without the outsider mother.
I felt sick.
“Why?”
Agatha finally answered.
“Because she changed you.”
Same accusation every controlling elder makes when someone stops obeying them.
Maren changed me.
Sofia changed Raffaele.
Children changed men.
Love became the enemy because love creates loyalties older systems cannot command.
I looked at my mother.
“Maren didn’t take me from this family.”
Agatha’s eyes hardened.
“She made you question it.”
“No.”
May you like
I shook my head.
“You did.”
