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His attention sharpens on me, and I know from the look in his eyes that he heard enough. “What did you do?”
“The company I won from Vasco is registered to House Clement. Strategic mining interests on Calder were acquired by a treaty House while you were negotiating an alliance with Veyra.” I rub my thumb slowly over Jade’s ring. “Not the sort of thing you want the wrong people looking at too closely.”
“You placed it under my authority. Reverse the transfer before anyone outside this family discovers what you’ve done.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Of course you can.”
“No, Dad. I mean, it’s too late.” I watch his face change. “I filed for the suspension of your unilateral authority this morning. Until the House review is finished, you don’t move assets, deploy security, or enter into another family agreement without a second signature.”
For a moment, he only stares at me. “You had no right.”
“Actually, I did. You made very sure I understood exactly what my name entitled me to when it suited you, so I finally read the rest of the fucking rules.”
“Withdraw it. Whatever point you think you’re making, you’ve made it.”
“This isn’t a point. Ryven nearly disappeared across the Reach because you signed him away. You sent armed men after my husband because you decided I couldn’t be trusted to choose for myself. I’m making sure you can never do either of those things again.”
Dad’s gaze shifts toward the house, calculation replacing anger as he works through whatever options he believes he has left. “And Calder?”
“Calder is the reason they won’t dismiss the review just because Sebastian Clement tells them to.”
Something moves behind his eyes, and I know that look too. “Who have you spoken to?”
“Nobody. Ardent called you this afternoon, didn’t he? Halfway through your own reception.”
His jaw locks, one hand tightening around his glass.
“He wouldn’t say what it was regarding. He wouldn’t need to. A man doesn’t hold a seat for thirty years and get a courtesy call on a day like this unless the other eleven have already discussed him without him in the room.”
“That is not what that call was.”
“Then you won’t mind when they put it in writing.” I rub my thumb over Jade’s ring. “Either you authorized an acquisition House Clement has no legal right to hold, or it happened under your authority without you knowing about it. You’ve spent my entire life making sure everyone believes nothing happens in this family without your permission, so I’m genuinely curious which version you’d prefer.”
He turns away from me toward the house, then turns back. “Do you have any idea what this could do to our name?”
“Our name will survive two signatures on a piece of paper. What it won’t survive is your continuing to use it as permission to do whatever the fuck you want to the people carrying it.”
For once, he has nothing ready. “The account’s closed, Dad. Whatever you thought I owed you for being born, for Mom dying, for surviving every fucking year after her, it’s paid. You don’t get another one.”
Dad looks at me for a long moment before retreating into the only thing he has left. “You will be at dinner on Sunday.”
A laugh escapes me because, of course, that’s where he goes. After Calder, Ryven, Jade, fifteen years of his hands, and twenty-four years of being made to pay for a woman I never got to know, all he has left is a fucking dinner invitation disguised as an order.
“No.”
“That was not a request.”
“I know.” Taking Jade’s hand, I turn away.
“Asher.”
Looking back, I find Dad alone beneath the terrace lights, surrounded by everything he spent his life controlling, finally unable to control the one thing he always thought belonged to him. Me.
“Happy birthday,” he says.
That one nearly gets through, but only nearly. I rub my thumb over Jade’s ring. “Happy birthday to me.”
