Page 264 of Reign

“My brothers ended up with everything,” she says after a moment. “Santo got the summer house. Angelo got my father’s house. The gardens, the journals, whatever belongings my mother left behind—all of it belongs to them.”

Her tone is too light.

“They say they protected me, but mostly they decided things for me. Where I could live. What I was allowed to know. Which parts of my own family I could have.”

A lifetime of her being moved from room to room while men decided which doors she was allowed to open.

“Everything belongs to them,” she says. “Then they act confused when I don’t know where I fit.”

“You fit here.”

The words leave me without hesitation.

Elena goes still across the fire. The softness that overtakes her expression nearly undoes me.

“What else did they keep from you?”

She releases a quiet breath. “Italian, for one.”

I go still.

“I know Spanish because I learned it in school. I wanted a language no one in my house owned. But my father and brothers never taught me Italian.” She shakes her head. “They loved speaking it around me because I couldn’t understand them. God forbid Elena hear a conversation and become a person instead of furniture.”

She shrugs and looks away.

Anger turns cold inside me.

“They kept you from your own language.”

“It was convenient.”

“It was wrong.”

Her gaze lifts to mine.

“Keeping you away from the business may have been protection,” I say. “Keeping you from the language of your family was control.”

“Interesting distinction from a man who doesn’t want women involved in the business.”

“I don’t want anyone I love involved in it.”

That silences her.

“Capability has never been the question,” I continue. “My father put Adriana into this life when she was nine. I will hate him for that until I die.”

The challenge fades from Elena’s expression.

“Violence takes things from people. Sleep. Softness. The luxury of believing the world is safe. Capability isn’t the issue. I won’t celebrate anyone I love being forced to survive it.”

She turns the marshmallow slowly between her fingers.

“Violence in this life finds us anyway. I remember everything, you know.”

“I know.”

“People think photographic memory sounds impressive. And it is sometimes. I can look at a pattern once and sketch it later. I remember pages, measurements, conversations. Stupid details nobody else notices.”

“And everything you wish you could forget.”