Like I believed him. He let murderers get away with it for six hundred years.
Plucking a piece of paper from the fourth pile, he handed it to me. “Seefor yourself.”
Part of me wanted to crumple it up and throw it in his face, but I restrained.
Calmly, I accepted the page and scanned it.
The scraps Cut had given me in return for serving them lunch had been taken from this document. The Debt Inheritance was there in its entirety.
My eyes highlighted certain lines, remembering the ridiculous contract.
For actions committed by Percy Weaver, he stands judged and wanting.
Even I agreed with that after he’d sent an innocent girl to her death by ducking stool and a boy to be raped for twelve hours.
Bennett Hawk requires a public apology, monetary gain, and most of all, bodily retribution.
How much money did Weaver pay? Was it enough for the Hawks to somehow leave England, find their diamonds, and became untouchable through wealth?
In accordance with the law, both parties have agreed that the paperwork is binding, unbreakable, and incontestable from now and forever.
That part I didn’t believe, but it wasn’t arguable. In the minds and pockets of the Hawks, Weavers had to pay continuously toward the bottomless debt.
But Jethro would’ve ended it.
We could’ve been the last generation to ever have to deal with this brutal nonsense.
Percy Weaver hereby solemnly swears to present his firstborn girl-child, Sonya Weaver, to the son of Bennett Hawk, known as William Hawk. This will nullify all unrest and unpleasantries until such a time as a new generation comes to pass.
So the boy who’d been raped for Weaver’s gambling debts was the one who’d carried out the first Debt Inheritance? Had he taken great joy in hurting the daughter of his enemy, or had he hated it as much as Jethro?
This debt will not only bind the current occupancies of the year of our Lord 1472 but every year thereafter.
How something had lasted for so long was a testament to feuds and grudges of wealthy madmen.
Once I’d reached the bottom, Marshall handed me another page. “This was the last amendment to the contract before today’s meeting.”
Doing a switch, I scanned the new document. The page was white and modern—only a few years old rather than decades.
In the case of the last surviving line of Alfred ‘Eagle’ Hawk and Melanie ‘Bonnie’ Warren, the succession of the Debt Inheritance will go to Bryan ‘Vulture’ Hawk over his recently deceased brother, Peter ‘Osprey’ Hawk.
I frowned, absorbing the legal jargon.
What did it mean?
I looked at the very bottom, sucking in a breath as I double-checked the feminine sweep.
No.
My mother’s signature.
“What—”
I read it again. No matter how much I wished it wasn’t true, it was. My mother’s signature inked the paper, prim and proper, just as I remembered her writing style to be.
Right beside hers was Cut’s masculine scrawl.
My brain scrambled; I glared at Cut. “You weren’t firstborn.”
