The Real Heiress Returns Five Brothers on Their Knees novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Five Pieces

Dalton stepped back from the podium, and Brynn took the microphone.

She held it in both hands and let the room wait.

"First, Coralie," she said, turning to me with shining eyes. "Welcome home. I mean it."

A few people clapped.

"I've kept something to myself for love of this family. I don't want to hurt anyone. But there's an old pact between the Livingstones and the Tafts."

Winslow's arm went hard under my hand.

I pressed it gently.

"The first daughter of the Livingstone house is promised to the eldest Taft great-grandson," said Brynn. "That's Winslow. I've been that daughter for twenty-five years."

The room murmured.

"I love this family. I'm happy to step aside as a sister if the paper says I must. But I won't be the woman who let an engagement be taken in secret, in a hotel suite, behind everybody's back."

She turned her face to the guests, and her voice broke beautifully.

"I'm only asking to be treated fairly."

At the first table, Winifred put both hands on her cane and stood up out of the wheelchair.

It took her a moment.

Nobody helped her.

"Child," she said, in a voice that reached the back wall. "The pact says the first Livingstone daughter *by blood*."

"I was raised as the first daughter."

"Raised is a word I do not find in it."

"Mrs. Taft, the lab can be wrong."

"Has it been wrong three times?" said Winifred. "Because that is what you needed."

Brynn laughed, a small, wounded laugh.

"I'm being ganged up on. Dalton, please."

Dalton did not answer her.

The cardiologist walked up the steps of the stage and stood beside the microphone.

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