Chapter 11
I removed Marcus from every Montoro household account before sunrise.
He called it humiliation.
Delia called it betrayal.
I called it late.
“What happens to my position?” Marcus asked.
I stared.
“Your concern is rank?”
“My entire career is tied to this family.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“It was tied to access through my sister.”
Delia glared.
“You’re punishing him because of me.”
“No.”
I looked at Marcus.
“He shoved me to protect your right to abuse Sofia.”
Marcus laughed bitterly.
“I shoved you because you walked in ready to attack my wife.”
“Your wife was dragging mine toward a sink.”
Silence.
I stepped closer.
“You saw Sofia’s hands.”
He looked away.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
There.
Finally.
No more pretending.
“Why didn’t you stop Delia?”
His mouth tightened.
Then:
“Because Sofia deserved some of it.”
The room went still.
I waited.
Marcus continued.
“She walked into this family and started acting like she was equal.”
There.
Not wife.
Not mother.
Class.
Hierarchy.
“She is equal.”
He scoffed.
“To Delia?”
“To anyone in this room.”
His face hardened.
“That is not how families like ours work.”
I almost smiled.
“It is now.”
Marcus stared at me.
That sentence frightened him more than losing money.
Because old systems depend on inequality feeling permanent.
Sofia had not only married me.
Her existence challenged the belief that birth determined worth.
Marcus and Delia needed her beneath them because otherwise too many other assumptions became negotiable.
I looked around the council room.
May you like
Good.
Let them become negotiable.
