Chapter 4
Agatha’s argument had started six months earlier.
Thomas told me privately after the estate cleared.
She had been approaching senior captains one at a time.
Never saying I should be removed.
Too obvious.
Instead, she asked questions.
What happens if Conrad becomes too protective?
What happens if grief makes him suspicious?
What happens if a three-year-old heir becomes the center of every decision?
The phrasing was clever.
Concern without accusation.
I looked at Thomas.
“What did you tell her?”
“That protecting your son isn’t disqualification.”
“And?”
“She asked whether I’d say the same if you damaged family business over him.”
There.
The next step.
Not whether I loved Elliot.
Whether love could be made expensive.
“Has anything happened?”
Thomas hesitated.
“Two incidents.”
I knew one.
Three months earlier, I removed a driver who left Elliot unattended near the estate pool.
Agatha called it overreaction.
“What’s the second?”
“A tutor.”
I frowned.
Elliot did not have a tutor.
Thomas looked surprised.
“Agatha said you dismissed one because Elliot cried during lessons.”
Cold settled into my chest.
“No tutor ever worked for him.”
Thomas stared.
That mattered.
Agatha had not only exaggerated events.
She had invented them.
“How many men heard that?”
“Several.”
“Did Julian repeat it?”
“Yes.”
Of course.
A pattern built from one real event and one false event becomes believable faster than two lies.
Agatha understood people.
That was why she had survived five bosses.
I asked:
“What exactly did she want?”
Thomas finally gave me the answer.
A three-person family council with authority to override me on decisions involving Elliot, household security, and succession.
Succession.
There it was.
My son.
Again.
Elliot was not merely the excuse.
He was the jurisdiction.
If Agatha controlled decisions “involving Elliot,” she gained a permanent legal—no, internal family—route into my command.
Not through territory.
Through fatherhood.
May you like
The chain was supposed to prove I needed supervision.
And the men who witnessed it were supposed to believe they were protecting Bellafonte from me.
