AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don’t you start, Henri. Every charge Bullstow laid upon her was your fault. Mr. Shaw didn’t ask her to go into the BIRD. You did. Don’t act as if I’m too stupid to figure it out.”
“Lila is a grown woman. Whatever she chose to do, she did of her own free will.”
“She didn’t choose anything.” The chairwoman took a seat in a sofa chair beside Lila. “You’ve always been her favorite. She’d do anything for you, and you know it. You asked her to break a hundred laws. You put her neck on the line. For what?”
“For the good of Saxony.”
“Fuck you and fuck Saxony. You almost got my daughter killed!”
Lila gulped. In twenty-eight years, she’d never heard her mother swear.
“I would never have let that happened,” Lemaire answered, sitting next to Lila. “If they’d sentenced her to death, I would have—”
“Death? Mr. Shaw intervened for a slave’s term. Maybe I should have chosen him to father my brood instead.”
“Bea—”
“That’s Chairwoman Randolph from now on,” her mother said, straightening her silvercoat. “What of Elizabeth? Did she escape this latest round of troubles?”
“I negotiated immunity last week,” Lila said. “They couldn’t have touched me even if they wanted to.”
Lemaire clapped his daughter on the back. “She did well for herself. I’m—”
“Silence,” the chairwoman said. “I don’t want to hear anything else from you. You and Mr. Shaw nearly got Elizabeth executed, and now you’ve made it exceedingly difficult for her to assume her role as prime. Regardless of what the papers say, the highborn know she’s involved in something odd with Bullstow. The families will grow skittish thanks to this scandal. It will take several years before Saxony will forget and allow her to assume control of Wolf Industries, and yet you’re congratulating yourself because she’s not in a holding cell?”
“I thought I was exiled,” Lila said.
“Temporarily. How did you like being out in the cold?”
“I enjoyed it immensely.”
Her mother harrumphed. “Bull.”
“Look into my eyes, Mother, and you’ll see that it is not. You have a prime heir, one who lost her fiancé because she’s just as bloodthirsty as you. I want no part of a family who thumbs the lives of others in such a manner.”
“Said the woman who broke a hundred laws and still managed to slip through Bullstow’s fingers. You find nothing wrong with breaking into—”
“If you can’t see the difference between us, then there’s no hope for you.”
“That’s rich,” her mother muttered. “Your father gets you dragged before the disciplinary committee, nearly gets your neck broken in a noose, and does nothing to help you. I did! Yet I’m the one you rail against? I’m the one you punish? Even today you don’t see that your precious father sits by and lets things happen, the same things you blame me for?”
“It’s not the same situation.”
“Not the same? You’re damn right. It’s not the same. Senator Dubois isn’t family. Jewel is. You are. Your father let your name and your family’s name get dragged through the press. He let you get sentenced to slavery. This wasn’t taking away someone’s right to have a child, Elizabeth. He nearly got his own daughter killed. He’s not a real man. A real man respects and nurtures his family. You deserve better.”
“I’m lucky to have him as a father, to have him as an example.”
> “Fine. Play the wounded daughter for as long as you like, hate me if you wish, but everything I said to you a month ago still stands. Jewel will never be competent enough to run the family. They need you. We need you.”
“We’re back to this?”
The chairwoman’s eyes roved over her daughter’s face. “It’s my own fault for indulging you all these years. I should never have allowed you to join the militia. Let me be perfectly clear, Elizabeth. You’ll never regain your place in the militia on my compound, but I will give you a second chance to become my heir. I’ll give you a month to decide. Think hard and think carefully, because I will not give you this chance again.”
“I don’t need a month, Mother. I have my mark. I also have several contracts waiting on my bedside table at this very moment. I don’t need my old position back, and I certainly don’t need to be your heir. You have no leverage.”
“What do you mean you have contracts? You’re seriously thinking of signing a contract outside the family like some—”
“Filthy workborn? I’m not thinking about it. I already have. I’ve even made enough money in the last week to sort myself out for an entire year. If you thought stealing my money would have me rushing back into the fold, you thought wrong. It’s only pissed me off.”
