Chapter 3 - The Weight of the Crown
The Vale estate was not a house.
It was an fortress of glass and marble.
I walked through the foyer, my footsteps echoing against the silence.
My grandfather sat in his study.
The air smelled of old paper and expensive cigars.
He didn't stand up.
He watched me with eyes like polished flint.
"You are a Vale," he said.
His voice was steady.
It didn't ask for a reply.
"You have been raised in the dirt," he continued.
"But you are made of iron."
He slid a file across the mahogany desk.
It contained the records of their crimes.
The stolen inheritance.
The forged medical records.
The hidden accounts.
"They are not going to prison," he said.
"Prison implies they are still part of society."
He leaned forward, his face illuminated by the desk lamp.
"They are going to the debt."
"They will work for the estate until there is nothing left to pay."
I picked up the file.
I looked at the photos of the house I had been kicked out of.
I remembered the cold.
I remembered the belt.
I looked at my grandfather.
"I don't want to be like them," I said.
He smiled, and it was a terrifying, sharp thing.
"You won't be," he promised.
"You will be the one who decides what happens to them."
My training began the next morning.
It was not about love.
It was about leverage.
I learned to read the markets.
I learned to read the people behind the numbers.
I learned that in this world, silence is a weapon.
May you like
And I learned how to use it.
---
