Page 182 of A Vicious Love

Adrian’s mouth twitched beside me. I pressed my lips together to hide a smile.

Aurelia noticed anyway. “You think this is funny?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I just—Julian always sounds like he’s chairing a trial.”

“He should,” Liora said dryly from farther down the table. “He’s been practicing on us since childhood.”

That got a small laugh.

Julian gave our sister a look. “I prefer not having every family breakfast turn into a revolution.”

“Revolutions often start over bread,” Adrian said.

Our father looked up from his tablet. “Not in this family.”

A few people laughed again, but the air held tension under it.

My aunt Celestine took a slow sip of coffee. She was beautiful and emeralds in her ears that could probably fund a small island’s education system.

Her branch of the family owned private clinics, and a biotech stake no one mentioned unless they wanted something.

“So,” Aunt Celestine said, “what would you want so badly?”

Aurelia blinked. “What?”

Celestine set her cup down. “If mergers are so awful. Every daughter before you has been cowardly, or too stupid to see the cage, what is it you want instead?”

Aurelia’s throat moved. Cosima stopped smiling.

The table quieted.

Celestine leaned back, diamonds catching in the lake light. “Tell us.”

Aurelia looked suddenly younger. She had been fearless while attacking the system, but wanting something aloud was different.

“I want to study law,” she said.

My uncle Gerard, Aurelia’s father, lowered his newspaper.

“Then you can.”

Aurelia turned toward him.

He folded the paper neatly. “I’m serious. You can study law.”

She stared. “Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“But the merger⁠—”

“All opportunities are open to daughters of dynasties,” Gerard’s voice stayed calm. “That is the point. Education, art, medicine, law, governance, business, philanthropy, foundations. You want law? Study law. Be excellent at it. Make yourself impossible to ignore in a negotiation room. No one here has said you must be decorative.”

Cosima lifted her glass slightly. “Some of us enjoy being decorative.”

Aurelia shot her a look.

“But you will still merge, and carry your bloodline obligations.” Gerard added.