Chapter 14
We eventually revisited the oversight question.
Without Agatha.
That mattered.
Thomas proposed a five-member advisory circle with no hereditary seats and no authority specifically tied to Elliot.
Security.
Finance.
Territory.
Internal discipline.
Family welfare.
Advisory.
Not command.
I accepted most of it.
Julian abstained.
That surprised people.
Afterward, I asked why.
“Because if I vote yes, they’ll think I’m still trying to build Mother’s council.”
“And if you vote no?”
“They’ll think I’m proving loyalty to you.”
Fair.
“So?”
“I kept out of it.”
For once, he understood that not every room required him to position himself.
Progress.
Thomas later told me something important.
“Agatha was not wrong that Bellafonte needed broader advice.”
“I know.”
“She was wrong about how.”
“Yes.”
That distinction became central.
Bad methods do not automatically make every underlying concern false.
If I centralized too much, we could fix that.
If senior capos lacked channels to challenge me, we could build them.
But no one would use a child’s suffering to create governance again.
I wrote that rule nowhere.
I did not need paper.
Everyone at that table had seen the broken lock.
Some symbols work once.
Then live in memory.
Elliot remained entirely outside the process.
As he should.
His biggest political decision that month was whether strawberry ice cream was better than chocolate.
Strawberry won.
May you like
Unanimously.
I trusted that vote more than most.
