Chapter 1 - THE SEAT RESERVED FOR BLOOD
The wooden bat struck the long walnut table hard enough to send a serving fork flying into a bowl of potato salad.
Seven-year-old Jamie dropped to the floor before the plates stopped rattling. Both hands covered his head, his knees pressed against his chest, and a broken cry escaped him as Brandon Moretti raised the bat again.
“That chair belongs to my real grandson,” Brandon said. “Get away from it.”
The annual Moretti barbecue was being held inside Victor Moretti’s glass-walled dining room because the July heat had become unbearable. Platters of ribs, grilled corn, bread, and salad covered the table. The French doors leading to the terrace stood open, and nearly twenty relatives had been moving between the house and garden only minutes earlier.
Now the room had gone almost silent.
Victor sat at the head of the table with one hand around his wineglass. At eighty-four, he remained the official patriarch of the Moretti family and controlling trustee of the company he had founded. He saw Jamie on the floor. He saw the bat in his son Brandon’s hand.
He did not move.
Jamie crawled backward beneath the edge of the table. Brandon followed him, tapping the bat once against his palm.
“You’ve been told before,” Brandon said. “Blood sits with blood.”
Jamie’s face was wet. He fumbled inside the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a tiny black emergency handset. It had one button and no applications, games, or contact list. Rocco had given it to him that morning after Jamie admitted he was afraid to be alone around Brandon.
“Dad said to call this number if I’m scared,” Jamie whispered.
Brandon’s expression changed.
Jamie pressed the button.
A distinctive ringtone began sounding inside the private study directly beside the dining room.
Victor’s fingers tightened around his glass. Brandon stopped advancing.
The study door opened.
Rocco Moretti stood in the doorway with his estate attorney and two independent trustees behind him. He had been conducting a confidential meeting about the future of Moretti Development Group. The study’s insulated walls had hidden the shouting and the impact of the bat, but Jamie’s emergency call had come directly through the handset lying beside Rocco’s unsigned documents.
Rocco looked first at Jamie curled on the floor.
Then he saw the raised bat.
“Drop it,” he said.
Brandon lowered it several inches and produced a strained laugh. “Relax. This is family discipline.”
Rocco crossed the room before his father finished speaking. He locked one hand around Brandon’s wrist, wrenched the bat from his grip, and threw it across the floor. The wood struck the base of a cabinet and rolled beneath a sideboard.
Brandon reached toward Jamie again.
Rocco’s open hand struck Brandon across the face. The blow sent him stumbling backward into an empty chair, which scraped violently across the floor.
Nobody spoke.
Rocco dropped to one knee beside Jamie. The boy threw both arms around his neck before Rocco could ask whether he was hurt.
“I pressed it,” Jamie sobbed. “I did what you said.”
“You did exactly right.”
Rocco lifted him into his arms and turned toward Brandon. A red mark was already forming across his father’s cheek, but Rocco felt no satisfaction. He felt only the weight of Jamie trembling against his chest and the sick realization that he had left his son in a room where two grown men believed the word family gave them permission to terrorize him.
Then he looked at Victor.
His grandfather had not risen from his chair.
“He called his family,” Rocco said. “I answered.”
Victor’s expression collapsed because he understood that Rocco had seen everything that mattered. Brandon’s violence could be explained away as temper. Victor’s silence could not.
Rocco carried Jamie toward the exit. As he passed the study, he saw the unsigned trust amendment waiting beside his chair.
May you like
The final page required his consent before midnight.
He stopped only long enough to tear his signature page from the document.
