Chapter 17: The Vote

In the dark, forty men breathed and shifted and nobody spoke.

Mara kept very still beside the doors with Rodney's sleeve under her fingers.

A match scraped.

At the far end of the table, a small flame lit an old man's face.

He was the oldest patch in the club, ninety if he was a day, with a cane across his knees.

He touched the match to a fat white candle in a brass holder, then to another.

"The lights go out in church when blood calls the table," he said, in a dry whisper. "Nobody told you that, boy?"

The husband stood at the head of the table with his hand still raised.

"I didn't call it," he said.

"No," the old man agreed. "She did, when she walked in."

Candlelight crept down the long table and caught the faces one by one.

Mara saw that every man in the room was looking at her, and not one was looking at him.

"Mara Sizemore," the old man said. "You walked through the door of this church as the president's blood. Speak, if you want to speak."

"She is my wife," the husband said gently. "A wife has no voice at this table."

"She's your wife," the old man said, "and she's his daughter. Blood outranks a ring. Sit down."

The husband sat.

It was the smallest thing, and Mara felt it in her knees.

She walked up the side of the table, past the men who had watched her grow up.

She stopped at the foot of it, where Wyatt sat in his zip ties.

His eyes met hers over the candle.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Reaper's Runaway Princess from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.