Chapter 6
My mother’s cruelty always arrived dressed as tradition.
That made it harder for people around her to name.
I remembered being eight and eating alone because I cried at my father’s funeral.
Agatha called it composure training.
At twelve, she made me stand through dinner because I interrupted an older capo.
Respect training.
At seventeen, she locked me out of the family house overnight after I refused an arranged introduction.
Discipline.
I survived all of it.
For years, I mistook survival for proof she had been right.
Now I was looking at the same philosophy reaching my wife and daughter.
Maren noticed my face.
“What?”
“She did this to me too.”
Her expression softened.
That was dangerous.
I stopped her before sympathy could move in the wrong direction.
“That does not excuse me missing it happening to you.”
She stared.
I continued.
“I thought she stopped because I became boss.”
Maren shook her head.
“She didn’t stop.”
No.
She changed targets.
I became too powerful to correct directly.
So she corrected the people I loved.
I looked at the storage room.
“She thought hurting you would teach me something.”
Maren nodded slowly.
“What?”
I already knew.
“That she still had authority.”
Agatha’s voice came behind us.
“I have responsibility.”
I turned.
“No.”
She looked offended.
“You’ve confused responsibility with ownership your entire life.”
Her jaw tightened.
“This family survived because people obeyed.”
I looked at Maren.
May you like
Then Sienna.
“Then maybe survival cost too much.”
