All Chapters of THE DON'S SECRET HEIR: Chapter 51 - Chapter 53

Luca had always been a watcher.Not in the surveillance sense though that too, that was part of the professional architecture of who he was. In the deeper sense. The man who read before he did anything else in the morning. Who listened in meetings while other men performed. Who turned his pen three times when he was thinking and whose thinking was more thorough than most people's action.He watched Viktor with the specific attention of someone who had decided years ago that watching was how you learned the things that mattered and that the things that mattered about Viktor were too important to learn any other way.I had been watching him watch for seven years.Three days before the formalisation meeting I woke at five and he was not in bed.This was not unusual Luca's sleep had always been light and his early mornings were often spent in the study or the kitchen with his book and his coffee doing the specific interior work that he did before the day required him to be operational.

The question Viktor asked was not the one I had prepared for.I had prepared for the obvious ones. The ones that seven-year-old logic produced when working through something large and new. Why didn't you tell me before. Does Klaus know about me. Is he nice. Will he come to my football match. The practical architecture of a child building a picture of something unfamiliar from the materials available.I had answers ready for all of those.The question he asked was different.It happened four days after the formalisation meeting.Not in the garden. At the kitchen table on a Thursday after school, which was when Viktor did his homework with the focused efficiency of someone who wanted it finished before Donna had grounds to mention it. The twins were somewhere in the compound being supervised by Donna with the specific vigilance their operational tempo required. Luca was in the study.Normal afternoon.Viktor finished his maths worksheet. Stacked his papers with the neatness he had devel