Chapter 8
The baby was not a son.
That revelation broke Marjorie more than anything else.
Sienna told me they had kept the sex private.
Only she and her doctor knew.
A girl.
Another granddaughter.
I smiled when she told me.
Sienna cried.
Not happiness first.
Relief.
That hurt.
“Why relief?”
She looked toward the door.
“Because Marjorie kept saying if it was a boy, everything would finally make sense.”
I understood.
They had built an entire succession fantasy around a child whose sex they did not even know.
“What did Gavin think?”
“He assumed boy.”
“Why?”
“Because his mother told him she had a feeling.”
I almost laughed.
A criminal power structure built on a grandmother’s feeling.
When Gavin learned, his face emptied.
Marjorie looked furious.
Not at Sienna.
At reality.
“This changes nothing,” she snapped.
Sienna stared.
For the first time, something inside my daughter hardened instead of shrinking.
“Yes, it does.”
Marjorie scoffed.
“A daughter can still be useful.”
The room went silent.
Useful.
There.
Not loved.
Not welcomed.
Useful.
I looked at her.
“You have five seconds to explain why my unborn granddaughter needs to be useful.”
Marjorie realized.
Too late.
She tried to recover.
“I meant family continuity.”
“No.”
My voice stayed low.
“You meant leverage.”
Gavin looked at Sienna.
Maybe seeing for the first time how completely his mother had consumed his ambition.
Maybe not enough.
I did not care yet.
The fantasy of the male heir collapsed.
The underlying scheme remained.
They still wanted proximity to me.
Still wanted East Harbor.
Still wanted Gavin normalized as Ferrante leadership.
Only now the unborn child could no longer carry the mythology they had built.
May you like
That made desperate people dangerous.
So I stopped giving them access.
