The Crown Yet to Come

The future arrived quietly.

Vera noticed it in the smallest moments—Vanessa correcting a tutor with gentle confidence, Matteo standing between his sister and danger without being asked, the way the household listened when she spoke even if Nicolas wasn’t in the room.

Power had changed hands without blood.

That, Vera thought, was the most dangerous kind.

She stood in the private archive beneath the estate, fingers brushing over leather-bound ledgers older than ...