Page 17 of The Silent War

“You have choices every day.” He said it like he was tired of repeating something. “You chose to be twelve minutes late.You chose to wear black when the color sheet for this week specified cream. You chose to let handlers manage your calendar remotely because you resent being told where to be. Free will hasn’t been revoked, Emilia. We’ve simply outlined the limits in which it can operate without costing us money.”

“Us,’” I repeated. “You mean you.”

“I mean Adams,” he said, the correction gentle, as if I were a child mislabeling something.

“And Veil? Three years of posts, gone. The community. The messages. All the stories—mine. Why kill it?”

“Because it served its purpose,” he silenced another phone call. “It created a soft silhouette. It made you visible to households that don’t attend galas. It rallied girls who won’t matter to a ledger but matter to a narrative. Now we don’t need the noise of your adolescence attached to the story of your marriage. We need clean lines. We delete what muddies them.”

“They’re people. Not a campaign.”

“They’re audiences,” he corrected kindly. “Audiences are constructed. They can be re-constructed. Your new profile will retain what matters: your face, your tone, the part of your ‘voice’ we tested as appealing. The rest—old posts, old tags, any mention of relationships that don’t suit the next quarter—goes. We don’t want a food blog where a dynasty wedding should be.”

Heat flooded up my throat so fast I had to swallow hard to keep it from spilling. Relationships that don’t suit. In other words a last name the Dynasties don’t like to say out loud.

Fingers that used to trace my mouth in the dark, a voice that used to call me baby like the word meant home.

“Did you think you could keep it forever?” Alexander asked, genuinely curious. “An asset we didn’t own?”

“It was me,”

“That is the trick you girls never quite grasp. The you youbelieve in—your preferences, your improvisations—that is the part we are selling, yes. But ownership is not about intimacy, it’s about capital. And capital belongs to those who can scale it.”

I wanted to throw something. Instead I adjusted the bracelet at my wrist until the clasp bit.

“What about the retirement you mentioned? The rebrand after the wedding. The stepping down at twenty-five.”

“Public stepping down. You’ll still be useful, just not as a performance. You’ll be seen when required. You’ll disappear when it services the story. We can talk details after your birthday.”

“And the heir,” I said, because he would anyway.

Alexander folded his hands again. “One is sufficient. The Codex insists. The child will not be raised by you—it will belong to the dynasty. Tutors. Handlers. Protocol. This should not surprise you. It is the system that raised you.”

“I don’t want my child recorded as property,”

He blinked, not in confusion, just gearing for an explanation. “No one records children as property. We record lineage. The ledger is a map of inheritance, not a deed of ownership.”

“You can name the map anything you like. I want my name on it. The ledger. Under ‘mother.’ Not just dynasty.”

He took longer to respond than I expected. One heartbeat, two, three. A silent add-up of costs.

“That is negotiable,” he said finally, and I could hear the clause he’d add in the email to counsel:if she insists, concede annotation; ensure it has no practical effect. “It won’t matter in practice. You won’t raise them.”

“I know. But I won’t be erased.”

“You know what I appreciate about you? You don’t confuse boundaries for cruelty. You understand we all serve something larger than ourselves.”

“Do we?” I asked.

He smiled. “Those who don’t end up poor.”

I thought of the girls we’d fed on Veil—small brands run from kitchen tables, mothers who DM’d at midnight because the comment section ate them alive and they needed someone to tell them they weren’t a failure because their toddler wouldn’t wear shoes. I thought of the late nights I posted for them instead of sleeping. How they said thank you like it had saved them. How I believed it might have saved me too.

“Stop being sentimental,” he said, as if he’d heard it. “You’re not losing anything that matters. You’re exchanging it.”

“For what? Silence dressed as safety?”

“For power you can actually use. For a name your children will not have to rent.”