He looked at her frightened face, at the careful way she held herself, at everything the velvet hood had been meant to hide — and I watched my father, a man the financial world called ruthless, go absolutely white with a rage he did not raise his voice to express.
He looked up, over my daughter’s head, at Declan and Seraphina.
“Who,” he said, and the single word carried to every corner of that vast room, “put their hands on my granddaughter?”
Chapter 10 — Granddaughter
The word moved through the ballroom like a current through water. Granddaughter.
Declan’s knees simply gave way; he sat down hard on the polished floor.
Seraphina’s eyes went to the exits, and found each of them quietly filling with the dark suits of my father’s security.
Aldous held Poppy with a gentleness I hadn’t seen from him since I was small myself.
She wasn’t frightened of him — she knew that face from six years of birthday calls, the grandfather who sang badly and made her laugh.
I had refused my father’s fortune for six years.