Chapter 2
The adjoining study was supposed to be unused.
It had belonged to my father.
After his death, I left the furniture untouched because some rooms are easier to ignore than dismantle.
Apparently Veronica had found another use for it.
Four cigar glasses sat on the sideboard.
Three were still warm enough to leave condensation rings.
I looked at my bodyguards.
“Lock the house.”
Veronica laughed nervously. “You’re being ridiculous.”
I walked to my father’s desk.
The leather chair had fresh pressure marks in the cushion.
Not one visitor.
Several.
Someone had been meeting here regularly.
Sofia stood safely in the hallway with Thomas, my oldest guard. She pointed at the chair.
“Gray-hair man sits there.”
“What man?”
She frowned, trying to remember.
“The one who says I’m too soft.”
Veronica closed her eyes.
I turned toward her.
“Name.”
Nothing.
“Veronica.”
She lifted her chin. “Your family has opinions.”
“I asked for a name.”
Finally she said it.
“Damian.”
My uncle.
My father’s older brother.
Seventy-one years old, officially retired from Vaughn command and supposedly uninterested in anything beyond expensive bourbon and criticizing younger men.
Apparently retirement had bored him.
“What did Damian say about Sofia?”
Veronica looked away.
I stepped closer.
“What did he say?”
“That you were raising her wrong.”
I almost smiled.
“How?”
“Like she owns the house.”
“She lives here.”
“She behaves like it belongs to her.”
“She is three.”
Veronica’s voice sharpened. “Exactly. This is when children learn.”
Always early.
Old families love damaging children before children develop enough language to call it damage.
“What was she supposed to learn by polishing your shoes?”
Veronica answered too honestly.
“Service.”
Silence.
“To who?”
“The family.”
I stared.
Not to Veronica.
To the family.
That distinction mattered.
“Why does Sofia serve the family?”
Veronica hesitated.
Then:
“Because Evelyn’s blood was never equal to yours.”
My jaw tightened.
There.
The real doctrine.
My father had hated my marriage to Evelyn because her mother once worked in a Vaughn household. Evelyn later became a respected physician, but old men still remembered where her mother stood at dinner thirty years earlier.
I had thought that prejudice died with my father.
May you like
Instead, Damian had been feeding it to the woman I nearly married.
And teaching her to pass it down to my daughter.
