Alex looked at Grandmother Marta.

"You're right," he said. "I'm not going to tell you who I am. That's not relevant to this meeting." He leaned forward slightly.

"What's relevant is that the trust instrument says Feby gets her money. You've been withholding it for fourteen months past the legal trigger date. In that time, the estate has continued to generate returns which have been administered by the co- administrator structure - which means by your family. Every month of delay is a month of returns that should have been accessible to Feby and weren't." He paused.

"I'm not a lawyer. But I've read the documents, and from where I'm sitting, this looks less like prudent management and more like four years of spending someone else's money and finding reasons not to give it back."

The silence was absolute.

Leon broke it first, and the friendliness in his voice had thinned considerably. "That's an extraordinary accusation."

"It's not an accusation," Alex said. "It's a description of what the documents show. If it's inaccurate, produce the accounting. Full accounting, every quarter since Edmund Steinmeyer's death, every disbursement, every return, every administrative f*e."

He looked around the room pleasantly. "I'll wait."

Nobody moved.

What happened next happened quickly.

Adeline turned to Feby with the expression of a woman abandoning a strategy and reaching for a different one.

"Febyella. I understand you're in a difficult position. You're newly engaged, you have a man who clearly cares very much about your financial interests — " her eyes moved to Alex with a meaning she didn't bother to disguise - "and I understand why that might feel supportive. But this man has been in your life for three days. Three days, Febyella. And he is sitting in our family home telling us that we have stolen from you. Can you believe it?"

Feby said, "I didn't say that."

"He did. On your behalf." Adeline's voice softened further, which made it harder.

"Sweetheart, I have to ask. Do you know anything about this man? Do you know where he actually came from? Do you know what he wants?" A pause, precisely placed.

"Because from where I sit, this rude man who appears in your life the same week as the quarterly meeting — is not a fiancé. He's a problem. He wants your money."

Rael added, gently: "Febyella, we're not saying you did anything wrong. We're saying you may have been taken advantage of. The kindest thing we can do is ask him to leave so we can speak privately."

Leon, from his chair, looked at Alex with the expression of someone who expected him to stand up.

Alex did not stand up.

He looked at Feby.

Feby looked back at him. The bruise on her jaw from two nights ago had yellowed at the edges. She had the expression of someone who had been in this room before,

in different versions of this conversation, for four years, and had always left with nothing.

She turned to her mother.

"He's my fiancé," she said. "He stays."

Adeline's face did something complicated. "Febyella -

"

"He stays," Feby said again. Her voice had the quality of something that had been heated and cooled into a new shape.

Grandmother Marta looked at Alex for a long moment. Something had shifted in her expression — not retreat, not yet, but the specific recalibration of someone who has realized the terrain is different from the map.

"Mr. Leonhart," she said finally. "Let us speak plainly."

"Please," Alex said.

"The estate is complex. There are genuine entanglements that the documents alone don't reflect. We are not thieves. We are a family managing a difficult situation that we did not choose."

She folded her hands. "What we are proposing — the certification requirement — is not a punishment. It is a protection. Febyella would be managing a very large sum of money. She would be a target. The certification provides her with the institutional standing to defend herself."

"From whom?" Alex asked.

A pause. "From people who might want to take advantage of her."

"People like you or people like me," Alex asked.

Marta's eyes flashed with anger as she jabbed a finger at him. "Of course it's people like you! We're his family—the last people she should ever have to worry about!"

"That's what you mean," he said, without heat. "You're worried that if Feby gets access to her inheritance, a man you don't know will have access to a woman with a very large sum of money. That's the concern."

Another pause. Then, carefully: "It is one of the concerns."

Alex nodded. He sat back. He looked at the ceiling for a moment, as if doing arithmetic.

Then: "Here's my position. I don't want Feby's money. I have my own." He said it the way he might say the weather was clear — a statement of fact, requiring no emphasis.

"What I want is for Feby to have what her father left her, on the timeline the law specifies, with a full accounting of every coin managed on her behalf in the intervening four years."

He looked at Marta. "If the accounting is clean, there's nothing to fear from it. If it isn't, that's a different conversation — one that happens in a courtroom, not a sitting room."

The word courtroom landed in the room the way he had intended it to.

Rael and Adeline exchanged a look that lasted approximately half a second. Alex catalogued it.

Grandmother Marta was quiet for a long moment.

Then she said: "The certification requirement stands."

Alex had expected this. The accounting threat had rattled them but not broken them. They needed time to move money, to clean records, to prepare for whatever a courtroom might find. The certification condition bought them that time.

"One condition," Marta continued. "Febyella achieves Level Three Magician certification, and the full inheritance transfers within thirty days of that achievement.

No further delay, no further review." She looked at Feby directly. "You have my word."

Feby was quiet.

Alex stood in the middle of the room, his jaw tight. Relief sat openly on Rael's face and Adeline's. They thought this was already over. Leon watched him with the quiet attention af someone who had changed their mind about a person and still wasn't sure what the new versión meant.

Alex turned back to the others. "Do you think we're stupid?”

His voice was flat, but the anger underneath it was sharp enough to cut. "There's nothing in the will that says she has to reach level three You added that It's not real. So fine. We'll see each other in court Let's find out what a judge thinks about conditions that were never there."

He looked at Febyella. The fight had already drained most of the color from her face, but she was still standing. “We're done here,” he said, softer now. "They can explain the rest to the court."

"Wait." Marta's voice came fast, almost panicked. She knew Alex was right. It showed in the way her fingers dug into her own arms. "We're saying this for Febyella's sake. She needs to be protected."

Alex let out a short, ugly sound. "Protected?" He took one step closer. "If protection is what you actually care about, she can take the mone and hire twenty bodyguards tomorrow. She could hire five level three magicians to stang outside her door every night. Don't stand there and lie to her face. You just don't want her to have what's hers. We'll let the court decide."

Adeline tried again, her voice careful. "We really are worried about her safety."

Alex's eyes moved to her. “No, you're not. You're worried she'll finally get the money

her father left her. Stop pretending. Give her what belongs to her before the court

makes you."

Marta stared at him. The hatred in her eyes was no longer hidden. This was supposed to be easy. Febyella had always been easy. But something had changed, and Marta could feel it slipping.

"As her family and guardian," Leon said, voice tight, "I won't release the money unless she proves she can handle it. If she won't become a level-three magician, then she needs a real job. Something that shows she's responsible."

Febyella answered before anyone could stop her. "I have a job." The words came out quick, almost desperate. Her hands were shaking at her sides.

Rael laughed once, short and mean. "You call serving coffee a job? That proves exactly why you shouldn't touch that money. You'd spend it in a year and have nothing left. You're not ready."

Leon's mind caught on something then — the one thing that might actually work. The one place Rael had tried and failed to enter for years.

"Do you know the Reagent Group?" he asked.

Febyella nodded slowly. "They make magic equipment. Everyone knows them. They're the biggest company in the state."

Leon's smile was thin. "Then that's the condition. You get a manager position there. Prove you can actually manage something. Do that, and we'll release the inheritance your father left you."

The color drained from Febyella's face so fast Alex thought she might fall. “But... getting a manager position at Reagent is harder than becoming a level-three magician. There are thousands of people fighting for every opening." "That's the only way we'll know you're truly ready," Marta said. Febyella looked like the words had physically hit her. Alex moved without thinking, stepping in front of her, his back to the others.

"Put it in writing," he said. His voice was low now, dangerous. "The second Febyella becomes a manager at Reagent Group, you hand over the inheritance. No more conditions. No more games. Sign it."

For a moment the room was quiet.

Then the laughter started.

Rael laughed the loudest, wiping at his eyes. "Febyella? A manager at Reagent Group? She was never the smartest person in any room she's ever been in. Everyone knows that. The idea of her running anything there is actually funny."

Leon was still laughing when he answered. “Sure. We'll sign it. If she somehow manages to become a manager there."

The sound of their laughter filled the room, cruel and certain.

Alex didn't move. He could feel Febyella behind him, small and shaking, trying not to

cry.

He kept his eyes on Marta.

"Write it up," he said. "Because she's going to do it. And all of you will sign it."