Seeing that Naomi wasn't backing down, and hearing Lily's defiant little speech on top of it, Grandma Blackwood's fury boiled over completely.
"Wonderful. Just wonderful. Rotten roots raise rotten fruit, apparently! Naomi, if you can't control this wild child of yours, I'll do it myself. Today she's going to learn some manners, some respect, some discipline, if it's the last thing I do!"
She snapped her fingers at the security detail posted at the estate gate, voice ice-cold. "Take her to the family chapel. It's time she learned a lesson."
Beside her, Chloe pressed a hand to her still-stinging cheek, quietly delighted underneath the theater of it.
The Blackwood family had an old disciplinary tradition, split down gendered lines. A man who stepped out of line got ten strikes across the
