Chapter 12: The Commission

The Commission convened eleven days later in a marble room that had not admitted a woman in three hundred years. Twelve seats. Twelve old men. And me, standing at the foot of the table in a white coat, with my mother in the gallery behind me and Nikolai Volkov leaning against the wall like he had nowhere better to be. "This is obscene," said the eldest, Vitale. "A woman cannot hold a family seat. It has never been done. It's not tradition—" "Neither is surrendering your entire compound in...