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Security was posted at every exit of the building. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first, but when we got downstairs and I saw the same two men from yesterday change positions when I moved, I understood what was happening.

I wasn’t staying there for my health. I was being kept, and I still didn’t understand why everybody wanted me home so damn bad.

We rode to the brunch in the back of my father’s Rolls. By the time we got there, the party was already going. Music filled the venue, women were laughing, and champagne flutes kept clinking together. My aunt ran up and hugged me like there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with me.

“Look at you,” she said, beaming.

I smiled underneath my veil and kept quiet.

I made it twenty-seven minutes before my grandfather, Devon Wells Sr., tapped me on the shoulder.

“Come with us.”

He didn’t have to say it loud. His tone told me I wasn’t being invited anywhere.

They led me down a narrow hallway and into an office at the back of the venue. The door closed behind us, cutting off most of the music from the party. My father was there with my grandfather, three of my uncles, and two elders I had only seen at funerals. These were men who didn’t show up to birthday brunches unless something serious was happening.

The room smelled like cigar smoke and expensive cologne. I stayed standing because I had no intention of getting comfortable.

“What is this?”

Nobody smiled.

My father came toward me with the look of a man who had rehearsed whatever he was about to say a hundred times.

“Azaria, my baby girl, we have some things to discuss, and your last name is one of them.”

I stared at him, confused.

“Your last name is not what you think it is.”

I waited for somebody to laugh.

“Stop.”

“You are a Laveau.”

A dry laugh came out of me. “That’s not funny. Who the fuck are the Laveaus?”

“It’s not a joke,” my grandfather said. “This isn’t new either.”

I looked between all of them, trying to figure out what the hell I had walked into.

“You were raised under another name for protection,” my father explained. “We kept you removed from the Laveau title so you could grow up outside of it and outside of what it requires.”

“What exactly does it require?”

My grandfather rested both hands over the top of his cane while he studied me.

“It requires strength. It also requires you to marry into a prominent family in France that our family needs to align with.”

“To marry?” I turned my nose up at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

My father took his time answering because he knew that was the part that changed everything.

“Yes, marry. The Laveau name sits at the center of Black organized power on the West Coast, and you hold the key to keeping us up and running.”