Chapter 10
Renata apologized badly.
“I lost my temper.”
I stared.
“That’s not what happened.”
She swallowed.
“I thought she was lying.”
“Wrong again.”
Silence.
“You hit a child while another adult held her still.”
Her eyes filled.
“I know.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“You know now that everyone else knows.”
That distinction mattered.
She looked toward Maisie across the garden.
My daughter was playing with chalk under a guard’s watch.
Renata whispered:
“I don’t know what to say to her.”
“Good.”
She looked at me.
“Why good?”
“Because apology should not be a performance.”
She nodded.
Then asked:
“Will she ever forgive me?”
I almost laughed.
“You’re still making it about you.”
That silenced her.
Frank watched from the terrace.
Disgusted.
Not at what Renata did.
At her remorse.
“You’re humiliating her,” he said.
I turned.
“No.”
“She made one mistake.”
“One?”
I pointed toward the north house documents.
“You planned to remove my daughter.”
Frank folded his arms.
“That was never violence.”
There.
Another narrow definition.
“If she had food, clothes, and a bed, you think captivity becomes hospitality?”
He scoffed.
“You’re dramatic.”
I stepped closer.
“Maisie is three.”
“So?”
“You planned to wake her, take her from her father, move her to a remote house, and tell her it was because I chose the family over her.”
Silence.
“That is not discipline.”
His jaw tightened.
“It is correction.”
Same word.
Always.
I finally understood Frank would never call cruelty by its real name because his entire identity depended on the softer vocabulary.
Correction.
Tradition.
Family matter.
Hierarchy.
Protection.
Every word designed to make the victim sound unreasonable for resisting.
I looked at him.
“You can keep the vocabulary.”
May you like
Then I glanced toward my guards.
“You’re losing the power behind it.”
