He Chose Another Heir, Now He Wants Me Back novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Livia's Terms
The hall erupted.
Men stood on the benches and shouted over each other.
Ruggero did not move, and the color in his face went slowly to grey.
Under the old law, the boy asleep on the bench had no mother in the Bellandi registry.
The boy was the whole of his plan.
Livia let go of Nico's hand and rose.
She did not cry.
I had never seen her face without tears on it, and what lay underneath was calm and smooth.
"I have always known," she said again, and the old man struck the table with his stick until the benches quieted. "I will say the rest, since you are all listening."
"Say it," I said.
"The marriage was a civil room and a clerk. Alessio never took me to this hall. He never touched me either." She looked down the length of the aisle at him. "I never minded, and I never asked."
"Then why keep the name?" a woman called from the benches.
"Because it was mine to keep."
She turned to face me.
"I have sat beside Mama's bed for six years. I turned her in the night. I fed her with a spoon when she would not eat. You sent postcards."
My face went hot.
"I sent letters," I said. "You buried them."
"I did a great many things."
It was an answer, and not a denial, and a hundred people heard the difference.
Ruggero cleared his throat.
"The child is distraught," he began, and Livia lifted one hand without looking at him.
"I am not finished, Zio."
He closed his mouth.
"Here is my price for Mama's liver," she said to me, loud enough for the back benches. "You sign the dissolution tonight. You sign it before witnesses, and you swear in the old words that you give up Alessio Bellandi and every claim on his house. Then I go under the knife on Monday."
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