MITCH POV
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The third clause was about Ren.
Mitch had known it would be before he'd finished reading the first page. The architecture of the document was deliberate — the first two clauses were straightforward, the kind of territorial adjacency terms that made legal sense on their own and would have been acceptable in isolation. The third clause was why the first two existed.
It read, in full:
*In consideration of the mutual benefits outlined herein, the Aldis family requests a formal recognition that any future territorial decisions or advisements issued from the Mallen-Aris compound be made available to Aldis family representatives on a consultative basis, in acknowledgment of the Aldis family's longstanding investment in the stability of the surrounding region.*
He set the docum
