She Discovers Their Secret, She Chooses Their World novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Trust

Sergio's POV

I had carried that paper in my breast pocket for twelve years, and I had never once taken it out in front of her.

Now I laid it on the desk in my study, under the green lamp.

The girl I had raised sat on the leather sofa with her mother's blue letters in her lap.

Marco stood at the window with his back to us.

The ten old men waited downstairs in the dining room, because I had told them they would wait.

"Read it to me," Élise said.

Her voice was steady, and her hands were not.

I unfolded the paper.

It was the old don's hand, cramped and slanting, and it had been witnessed by every man now sitting under my roof.

"This is the law of the Giordano table," I read. "The chair passes to the blood of the one who held it. If the blood is a child, it is held in trust by the man the table names. The trustee sits until the heir is eighteen and able to name the two men who will stand at her side."

"Her," she said.

"Her."

"Say it plainly."

"You are his only child," I said. "Your mother was Claire, and your father was the old don. When he died you were six, and the council wanted to give the chair to its own man. I was twenty-eight. I stood up and said I would hold it for you."

She was silent.

"Every man in this house has stood for you since the day you came," I said. "I never told you why."

"You never let me sign anything," she said slowly. "Not a card. Not a permission slip."

"No."

"You were afraid my name on paper would tell people who I was."

"Yes."

She laughed once, a small, wet sound.

"I thought you didn't trust me with a pen."

I went across the room and knelt on the carpet in front of her.

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