I have eight years of contingency plans. I have lawyers and regulators and a charter that just passed. I have a sworn non-interference oath from an institution older than the markets.
And now I have a scroll that mentions heirs.
I have forty-eight hours before regulators can act on other forged artifacts. Miles is still missing. Lucien is fractured and away. The city’s press is alive and hungry.
I am supposed to be the woman who never gambles what she cannot afford to lose.
All eyes wait for me to be decisive. To reassure. To refuse. To sign away or to barricade.
I reach for the scroll and, with both hands, pry the brittle edge so I can read more. The script curls under my thumbs. One line sits darker than the rest—no counsel flagged it.
It reads: “In the event of a shared covenant, the bearer of the bloodline shall be entitled to counsel in matters of succession. Such counsel may be convened without prior public notice.”
Ana’s hand lands on my wrist. Her eyes are wide. “Vivian,” she whispers.
My pulse is a drum. The room narrows to the scroll and that small, ancient clause that could define my name for generations.
Some promises are legal. Some are ritual. Some are prophecy.
I should close it, end the exposure, and march the world back into order. Instead my fingers trace the ink as if it were a scar I haven’t earned.
The elder watches me like a quiet judge. The bond between me and the missing man I have come to trust tightens with consequence.
I roll the scroll back very slowly.
A thin strip of paper falls free from the seam, folded like a whisper. When I open it, the wolf-under-crown symbol I’ve seen before stares up, and beneath it one line of modern print:
Heirs must choose.
10
VIVIAN PARK
The cameras bloom like a field of unblinking flowers the moment the terrace doors slide open. Light fractures across the glass atrium, turning the skyline into a jagged necklace. I breathe in the city—metal, coffee, ozone—and for a heartbeat I am exactly where I built myself to be: seen, flawless, in control.
Lucien stands at my side like a line on an old map. Tailored in black that swallows light, his profile is a blade against the glare. He has let the wolf-and-crown lapel pin show today, small and proper. No theatrics. No unnecessary ownership. He looks at me once—with the softness the bond keeps gifting him when no one else watches—and then toward the assembled cameras. We step forward together.
“Today we present a framework,” I say. My voice is steady—each syllable measured, legal, rehearsed. “A Covenant & Charter that binds corporate governance to court accountability. A public charter, with multi-signature emergency protocols, audited by independent trustees. And a private, conditional oath between my company and Lucien Black’s house that guarantees non-interference in our operations.”
Murmurs run through the room like current. Analysts, journalists, regulators in identical navy. Investors with penspoised. My board sits at the head table—faces I’ve learned to read like contracts: cautious, hungry, pragmatic.
Lucien doesn’t speak until I glance at him. Then he does, voice low and precise. “The court will pledge oversight only as a last resort,” he says. “No unilateral intervention. No access without dual authorization. We bind ourselves to your shareholders’ protections.”
The clauses are crisp and enumerated. Emergency triggers defined by measurable criteria. An escrow mechanism with neutral trustees. Forensics mandates. A public transparency clause that will satisfy regulators’ hunger for audit trails. On paper, it is everything I wanted: autonomy preserved, a narrow path built for crisis rather than conquest.
The cameras chew on our signatures. The wax impression of Lucien’s seal is small, contained—an emblem enclosed in a private annex the board will not see. The public gets the charter. The court gets an oath. The city gets its confidence back. I sign last. The pen feels warm.
Later, in the press scrum, a reporter asks what the annex means. I answer as I always do—with policy. “There are private protocols for incident response,” I say. “They’re necessary where national security intersects with proprietary infrastructure.” Lucien’s hand finds the small of my back as we move through the cluster. The touch is secular—protective, not possessive. My skin remembers cedar and salt and the blackout; the bond tugs like a tide I’ve learned to read.
We go home two halves of the same story. The public covenant is out; markets breathe. The board chair texts an emoji I interpret as approval. Lucien drives us through the city in his quiet car. The night windows smear our reflected faces together—glass folding like a second skin. We stop on the river bridge. Wind scours the city.
“You did it well,” Lucien says. It is not praise. It is a report filed in the grammar of attention.
“You did more,” I counter. “You left yourself open.”
He lets the word hang between us like a clause. “I left the court visible enough to be accountable and invisible enough to keep them from exploiting you.”
“You left a seal on my file,” I say. Not an accusation. A negotiated fact. His eyes flash—something like apology, something like satisfaction.
