Chapter 17
One year after Mia stopped me at the dining table, we held another private dinner in the same salon.
Same long table.
Same silver cabinet, repaired.
Different rules.
Staff moved freely.
No one tasted anything for me.
That practice was forbidden.
If security questioned a drink, the drink was replaced.
Simple.
Human bodies were not testing equipment.
Mia sat beside Anna at a small table near the family section.
Not hidden.
Not presented.
Just present.
She watched me lift a crystal glass.
Then narrowed her eyes dramatically.
I paused.
She pointed.
“Open.”
Half the room laughed.
I obeyed.
She inspected my mouth.
Then shook her head.
“Just kidding.”
Anna covered her face.
I looked at Mia.
“Dangerous child.”
She giggled.
The words meant something entirely different now.
A year earlier, Marco called her imagination unreliable because he needed her smallness to erase her truth.
Now her voice could stop a room without fear.
Celeste was not at dinner.
Anna had not invited her into Mia’s life yet.
Maybe someday.
Maybe never.
Marco was gone from Romano operations.
The rotating continuity council had already functioned once while I recovered from a minor illness.
No panic.
No grab for power.
No manufactured symptoms required.
I looked at Anna’s hands as she folded a napkin for Mia.
Healthy.
Then at my glass.
Untouched by anyone else.
The conspiracy had begun with the assumption that powerful men only listen to powerful people.
They were wrong.
The person who saved me was three years old.
She had no rank.
No money.
No idea what a council was.
She simply saw blue dust on her mother’s mouth, remembered it, and decided the adult holding the glass needed to know.
Sometimes an organization does not survive because the boss is feared.
Sometimes it survives because the smallest person in the room knows she is allowed to speak.
I raised my glass.
Mia immediately shouted:
“Not too fast!”
Everyone laughed again.
May you like
So did I.
And this time, nobody in the room needed to taste it first.
