Chapter 2 - THE BROTHER WHO CALLED IT PROTECTION.

Julian Blackwood entered the kitchen wearing a navy overcoat and the confidence of a man who had never been required to explain himself to household staff.

He looked at the dissolving tablet, then at Mrs. Harper.

“You were supposed to follow the instructions exactly.”

Ethan stepped between him and Lily.

“You ordered her to put something in my tea?”

Julian did not deny it.

He claimed the tablet was a prescribed sedative intended to prevent Ethan from attending an emergency board meeting.

According to him, Ethan had become exhausted, irrational, and obsessed with financial irregularities that did not exist.

“Our family cannot survive another public scene,” Julian said. “I was protecting the company.”

Mrs. Harper began to cry.

Julian had threatened to remove her from the mansion, cancel her pension, and report Anna’s undocumented father to federal authorities if she refused.

The threat was designed carefully.

Old-money families rarely had to shout when employment, housing, and healthcare already belonged to them.

Ethan looked at the woman who had raised him after his mother died.

Mrs. Harper had spent thirty years serving the Blackwoods.

Yet Julian spoke of her as if she were a replaceable appliance.

Anna admitted that the household staff had been ordered to describe Ethan as confused if anyone asked about the tea.

Julian called them ungrateful.

He reminded them that the Blackwood Foundation had paid their salaries and provided their apartments.

Lily hugged her rabbit tighter.

“You don’t get to own people because you pay them.”

The simple sentence embarrassed Julian more than Ethan’s anger.

Then Ethan examined the medicine packet.

The name printed on it was not his.

It belonged to Margaret Blackwood, Ethan and Julian’s late mother.

She had officially died twelve years earlier.

Julian reached for the packet.

Ethan took it first.

“Why does this have Mom’s name on it?”

Mrs. Harper covered her mouth.

May you like

THE TEDDY BEAR SAW EVERYTHING.

THE BEGGAR WHO CAME HOME.

SHE HEARD MOMMY UNDER THE FLOOR.

Julian looked toward the hallway.

Then he said quietly, “Because Mother may not be dead.”