Chapter 3

The family lawyer blocked me in the entrance hall. He unfolded a Declaration of Silence and Ownership requiring me to state that every negotiation I had conducted represented only the Bellini family, that I would not contact any signatory family after leaving, and that my private notebook, contacts, and verbal commitments would all pass to Luca.

"Sign, and you can go," Selina said, coming out of the ballroom behind me.

"A mediator's credit belongs to the mediator." I turned to the last page. "You can own the contracts that are already signed. You can't make people trust Luca with a piece of paper."

"So you really were planning to take them with you."

She could always turn a refusal to be robbed into a betrayal.

Luca signaled the guards to search me. Two pinned my arms while a third took a small case from my inside pocket. It held my half of the medal and a blank, unmarked wax tablet. That was the backup token for revoking the Moretti White Seal. To them, it looked like a laughably cheap piece of old wax.

Luca tossed the medal onto the table and grabbed my black notebook. Its keywords were written in special ink and appeared only when the person across the negotiating table spoke the matching confirmation phrase. He paged through it for ages and saw nothing but dates and places.

"That night in the chapel, what did she say to you?" he asked.

I did not answer.

Luca turned to Selina. "Say it. This is Bellini property, so of course you know the phrase."

Selina frowned. "Loyalty above all, outside the family."

Nothing appeared on the page.

The real vow was: Outside the family, we still choose each other. She could not even remember her own words.

I took the notebook back from Luca. As he passed the coat rack, his hand paused beside my jacket. All I saw was his cuff covering the pocket.

A second later he said, "Search him again."

A guard pulled a brass witness seal out of the jacket lining. Several people in the ballroom recognized it at once. It was the token stolen from the Commission's presentation case that afternoon.

"There it is." Luca looked at me. "You stole the witness seal so the investiture couldn't go ahead."

"You're the only person who touched that jacket."

"Will the cameras prove it?" he asked, smiling.

"So check them."

Selina took the witness seal and ran her thumb along the edge. She knew it had not turned up in the first search, and she had seen Luca go near the jacket. She still told the lawyer, "Put the theft in the declaration."

"Check the cameras first," I repeated.

"There's no need." She pulled the investiture ring off her hand. Its unpolished edge was sharp as a tiny blade. "If you won't sign it, I'll help you."

She grabbed my hand and sliced my palm open with the ring. Blood immediately ran along my lifeline. The guards forced my hand toward the page, but at the last second, I curled two fingers inward, leaving only half a print.

Commission rules require a complete blood print to confirm identity. Half a print only proves that someone forced my hand onto a document. It does not make a declaration valid.

Selina did not understand that. She looked at the blood on the paper and thought she had finally taken all of my credit.

A guard came for the notebook. I locked my hand around the cover until my knuckles went white. One of them bent my index finger back and told me he would break it if I did not let go.

I looked at the cut in my palm and finally stopped protecting a name I had hidden for five years.

"Before you touch it," I said, "you should ask what the Moretti family has to say."