“No.” My voice stays quiet. That is better. Quieter cuts deeper. “Don’t say my name like I’m the thing that needs controlling.”
“You’re angry.”
“How perceptive.”
“You have reason.”
“I have more than reason. I have evidence, grief, nausea, and two children pressing on my spine while men debate whether my father’s killer has been sufficiently polished for reentry.”
He says nothing.
“Did you vote against it?” I ask.
“Yes,” he replies.
“Did you know you would lose?”
“Yes.”
That stops me for a second. Not because I expected denial. Because I expected more ambition.
“You knew,” I say.
“Yes.”
“And you let the vote happen.”
“I could delay it. Not prevent it.”
“You’re the don.”
“I am.”
“And apparently democracy arrives only when inconvenient.”
His jaw shifts once. “Council authority exists for a reason.”
“To protect men like Dante?”
“To prevent one man from turning a family into a private kingdom.”
I look around the suite. “How noble. Does it work?”
“No.”
“You’re bringing him here,” I say. “Into the same house. While I am like this.”
His gaze drops then to my stomach. “Yes.”
The word is a stone placed on my chest. I turn away before my face does something unforgivable. The terrace doors reflect us faintly. Me in green, visibly pregnant, hands clenched. Him behind me, still as judgment.
The portrait of domestic harmony, if painted by someone with a grudge against women.
“Does he know?” I ask.
“About the pregnancy?”
“Yes.”
