The Curvy Girl Was Forced to Marry a Childless Mafia Boss

The drop of water that fell from the edge of the crystal water carafe on Odial’s tray hit the polished oak floor with an audible tick.

Nobody moved.

Beatrice’s hand, still clutching her linen napkin, remained frozen six inches from her lap. Two of the older cousins at the far end of the semicircle exchanged a single, horrified glance before looking down at their shoes, their spines pressing back against their chairs as if trying to physically distance themselves from the woman sitting in the purple wool dress.

Odial Kestrel did not pick up the blue portfolio.

Her arthritic fingers tightened around the carved lion heads of her chair until the wood groaned beneath the pressure. Her breath came in short, dry wheezes through her hooked nose, her pale eyes darting from the blue seal on the paper to the swell of Noel’s green velvet gown, and then finally to Callen, who was standing beside her with his face the color of skim milk.

"Aaliyah...?" Odial croaked, her voice cracking on the syllables. "Callen... what is she talking about?"

Callen did not answer his grandmother.

His eyes were fixed on the red calfskin binder Noel had laid on the low table. The gold pocket-watch chain across his vest was trembling, vibrating against his ribs with the frantic, erratic rhythm of a trapped sparrow.

"It’s an ambush, Grandmother!" Callen suddenly shrieked, his voice losing every shred of its smooth, bourbon-aged polish, rising into a shrill, hysterical pitch that bounced off the coffered ceiling. "She fabricated the ultrasound! She’s an outsider from a bankrupt family! She went to a public clinic in Lexington and bought a scan from an unverified technician to delay the annulment hearing! Adrien, are you out of your mind?! You're taking the word of a debt-hostage over your own family doctor?!"

Dr. Sable did not join the defense.

The sixty-year-old physician had slipped entirely off his chair, his knees hitting the parquet with a dull, heavy thud. He was crawling on his hands and knees toward the low table, his fingers clawing at the blue portfolio, his face drenched in an oily, gray sweat that was dripping from his chin onto his gold-rimmed glasses.

"Adrien... please," Sable wept, looking up through his smudged lenses at the towering figure of the family head. "I... I was under financial duress! Callen held the second mortgage on my clinic in Versailles! He told me the council had already decided on the annulment... he told me it was just an administrative formality to speed up the paperwork! He promised me the note would be marked satisfied in full!"

"You fool!" Callen roared, lunging forward with his arm raised to strike the kneeling doctor across the head.

CRACK.

Adrien did not draw his weapon.

He moved with the blinding, explosive speed of a thoroughbred breaking from the gate. His left hand shot out, catching Callen by the silk necktie at his throat, twisting the fabric into an iron tourniquet, and driving the thirty-two-year-old cousin backward across the low table, shattering the crystal water carafe and sending the silver tray clattering to the floor in a cascade of ice and broken glass.

Callen choked, his hands clawing frantically at Adrien’s wrist, his eyes bulging as the six-foot-three patriarch pinned him flat against the oak planks with a single, unyielding forearm across his windpipe.

"You touched the stud ledgers, Callen," Adrien whispered.

The voice was terrifying in its absolute lack of heat. It was the tone of a butcher explaining the cut of a carcass to an apprentice.

"You skimmed six percent off the Dubai yearlings," Adrien continued, his face four inches from his cousin’s purple, suffocating cheek. "You diverted seven hundred and forty thousand dollars through an unindexed shell company in Delaware. And last night, you had Envoy loosed in the main barn to crush my pregnant wife against the stall boards."

A collective, horrified gasp tore through the fourteen cousins in the gallery.

Beatrice stood up so fast her chair tipped backward, her hand flying to her mouth. "Callen... the stallion?! You loosed Envoy in the aisle?!"

"I... I didn't..." Callen wheezed through his swollen tongue, his fingers losing their strength against Adrien’s sleeve. "Adrien... mercy... we’re blood..."

"My blood is sitting in my wife's womb, Callen," Adrien said softly.

He reached into his breast pocket with his free right hand, pulled out a three-page legal instrument stamped with the seal of the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY, and dropped it squarely onto Callen’s face.

"That is a federal grand jury indictment for Wire Fraud, Interstate Transportation of Stolen Livestock, and Attempted Aggravated Homicide," Adrien murmured into his ear. "United States Marshals are currently clearing the gatehouse at the foot of the drive."

He turned his head slowly, looking over his shoulder at the old woman sitting rigid in the purple dress.

"And Grandmother?" Adrien added, his gray eyes cold as a winter pond.

Odial’s chin lifted, her lips trembling with seventy-eight years of unbending pride, but her eyes were dilated with pure, unadulterated terror.

"The master trust agreement of nineteen eighty-eight," Adrien said, each word falling like an iron wedge into the silence of the room. "Section Twelve, Subsection B: Any voting member of the family council who participates in an act of commercial fraud or violent conspiracy against the legitimate heirs of the primary line forfeits all executive stipends, all residential rights at Larkspur, and all testamentary claims to the bloodline registry."

He released his grip on Callen’s tie.

Callen collapsed onto the floor, coughing violently, clutching his throat, sobbing in the puddle of ice water and broken glass.

Adrien stood up straight, smoothing the lapels of his midnight-blue suit, his shoulders broad, tall, and sovereign.

He reached out his hand to Noel.

Noel walked forward, her green velvet train gliding across the parquet, her fingers slipping into his with an iron, unbreakable grip.