Chapter 15
Two years after Charles ordered Rebecca to make Ava scream louder, Lucien attended another recital.
Ava was six.
She no longer needed the riser.
She stood at the front of a small stage with eleven other children and sang loudly enough that Lucien suspected she was trying to defeat the piano.
Afterward she came running toward him.
“You cried.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“Defamation.”
Ava laughed.
They walked outside together.
Lucien’s phone rang.
Elena.
He answered after Ava climbed into the back seat.
“What?”
“Charles completed the final court-ordered treatment period.”
Lucien looked through the windshield.
“And?”
“He is asking permission to send Ava a letter.”
Lucien said nothing.
“Not see her,” Elena continued. “Not call. A letter. Through her therapist. Only if you approve.”
“Has he written it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you read it?”
“With his attorney’s permission.”
“Apology?”
“Yes.”
“Excuses?”
“No.”
Lucien looked back.
Ava was fastening her own seat belt badly.
He reached back and helped.
She slapped his hand away.
“I do.”
“Clearly.”
“I do.”
He let her fix it.
Elena waited on the phone.
“What do you want me to tell Charles?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Okay.”
Lucien ended the call.
Ava looked at him.
“Who?”
“Elena.”
“Boring.”
“Very.”
He started the car.
Then Ava asked:
“Was it Grandpa Charles?”
Lucien looked at her through the mirror.
She remembered more now.
Children did that.
The old event had moved from fragments into questions.
“No.”
Ava studied him.
“Is he still alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is he still bad?”
Lucien thought carefully.
“He did something very bad.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Six years old.
Already impossible.
“He’s trying to become someone safer.”
“Will I see him?”
Lucien looked at his daughter.
He could decide no.
Forever.
He had power enough to close that door and call it protection.
A part of him wanted to.
Then he remembered what Charles had done.
Not simply the shove.
Not simply the plan.
Charles had decided what another person’s love was supposed to mean.
He had treated choice as weakness.
Lucien would not answer that kind of control with his own version.
“Not now,” he said.
Ava nodded.
“When I’m big?”
“If you want.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Then you don’t.”
“What if I do?”
“Then we figure out what’s safe.”
Ava considered the answer.
“Grown-up stuff.”
“Unfortunately.”
She leaned back and looked out the window.
Everything else was settled.
The transition charter had become permanent.
The old council no longer controlled the Moretti businesses.
Mason had lost the inherited future he thought belonged to him.
Rebecca had faced consequences.
Charles had faced consequences.
Lucien had faced his own.
Ava could stand on a stage without believing somebody might hurt her to test her father.
Only one question remained.
Years from now, would she ever want Charles back in any part of her life?
Lucien would protect her while she was too young to choose.
He would give her the truth when she was old enough to understand it.
But he would not inherit Charles’s mistake by deciding that love, loyalty, and family could have only one acceptable shape.
May you like
For the first time in Moretti history, the chair was gone.
And the choice would belong to the child.
