Yerma’s heart sank hard as the words echoed in her head:
How scary…
Mrs. Echave’s face also froze for a few moments as she looked at the man speaking from the stage, Jeronimo.
This rebellious son still holds a grudge against Sonia….
There was a murmur in the room.
-What’s going on? Is that chain of chips a fake?
-The last lord of the city was her husband, and surely she must have cashed him in too, so how could it be fake?
-Bearing the token of the City Lord is a rule handed down from antiquity, without a token handed down by the previous City Lord, you are not eligible to succeed the City Lord ah….
Someone recognized Jerome and immediately said:
-This man is the last City Lord’s own brother and would say something like this, so I guess he knows the history from the inside…..
The audience could not help but look on with concern and restrained curiosity.
Carlos watched Jeronimo’s movement to move forward and resisted the urge to get up and approach to see what happened first….
Jeronimo took the stand, he had been thinking about how to stop the ceremony, his daughter Sonia had been arrested accused of premeditated murder, he had begged and pleaded but Mrs. Echave wouldn’t budge and let her out, how was he going to swallow that….
Just when she thought she really had no recourse, the bracelet that Yerma pulled out caught her attention….
She had been longing for the position of Lord of the City for so long that she had looked at the bracelet the old woman had put on Carlos when she first took the position, and then she had asked Carlos for the bracelet and looked at it carefully, engraving it in her mind. …
Jerome approached with a confident stride and reached out to tug on Micaela’s wrist….
Carlos stood up abruptly, a cold light sprang from his eyes, he dared to touch his girl!
-The silver in this bracelet is not real antique silver, it is deliberately old, the stones, the workmanship is too fine, it is not at all passed down from the past, the color is also different, this is definitely not the original, all the old people here can come up and see it….
Micaela shook off Jerome’s hand with a single force and looked at the bracelet in her hand. She had been born into jewelry design and naturally knew a lot about silversmithing and such, and with one glance she was sure that what Jerome said was true, and looked at her mother in disbelief….
Yerma’s face is calm, but inside she is panicking, trying to figure out what to do, there are so many people there and it’s live, if she says one wrong thing, the image and face of the Echave family will be ruined…..
Will this bracelet be the reason for his cautious and careful efforts to keep Echave City and the Echave Group safe for half a lifetime?
The bracelet really did not know where to put it, her husband Lai Chi Hoi did not like to wear it, and then as the acting owner of the city, she did not need to wear it, so it was always kept in the safe and she never looked at it, that time it was mentioned at Dona Echave’s birthday party, she made it a point to look at it, only to find that the bracelet was long gone….
She told Mrs. Echave that she had searched the house and had found nothing. Mrs. Echave proposed to make a fishing line, thinking it would be foolproof, but to her surprise, Jeronimo found it…..
This time, looking at Jeronimo’s conviction, Yerma wondered if Jeronimo had stolen the real one….
The murmurs from the floor were getting louder and louder and Nilson sat a little, watching Moya’s reaction, he feared the thing was really fake, but how could it be?
How could something like a token be lost if it was carefully and painstakingly kept?
He was a little anxious to turn around and ask Ian, who was behind him, if there had been any examples of such lost tokens among the previous lords of Salamonsa, when in an instant he saw that Efraim, next to him, was not concentrating on the stage, but was looking to his left….
There, Carlos could not stand still and had turned around ready to go up to the stage to do his business, which, if false, he really had in his possession, in the Teladia-Grupo Aguayo building, in his office…
-Ms. Yan, your bracelet is here, and this is yours.
Diego’s voice rang out suddenly as he took a small, delicate brocade box out of his pocket and handed it to her.
Carlos stopped his steps and looked at the little box Diego handed to Yerma, his deep eyes shone with disbelief, half an instant later, he slowly sat back down, exhaled secretly and said in his heart, Diego, this month’s gratuity is multiplied by ten times!
No, twenty times!
The bracelet, actually Diego brought it!
The bracelet, which had once been in Anlandana Teladia, was kept by the girl’s adoptive father in a hidden compartment in the bookshelf of the Clearwater Bay villa’s study.
He had asked Diego to search his study and find it, and after he had looked at the bracelet, he had kept it in his desk drawer, and only that map of Salamonsa had been studied repeatedly and carefully, so long after the event that he had almost forgotten about that one himself, which he had opened only to look at it and kept in a little box in the drawer!
So this bracelet meant a lot!
Yerma only had to look at the little box wrapped in blue velvet to know that, without a doubt, it was the bracelet!
She picked it up, opened it and there it was!
Diego quickly thought of something to say.
-I’m sorry, Miss Yan, Miss Moya said that this bracelet would be made in a different style in the future and she asked me to have one made exactly like this as a souvenir, and I got the wrong box.
Mrs. Echave also hurried to meet:
-Make something sharp and scare us all.
Diego nodded his head.
-You’re right, I’ll keep this one from my collection.
Incredulous, Jeronimo reached out and snatched it from Yerma’s hand, looked at it carefully and, surprisingly, this one was real….
How was it possible that the subtle reactions of Yerma and Mrs. Echave a moment ago, which clearly indicated that the real token was missing, had appeared in a moment?
She had not rested on her laurels for a minute, the position of Lord of the City was still firmly in Moya’s hands….
Mrs. Echave returned the bracelet, lowering her voice to a whisper:
-Jeronimo, you disappoint me so much…..
Micaela took the one from her hand and gave it to Diego, reaching out for her grandmother to put on the other one, trying not to look shocked, what the hell was going on?
How did Diego get it?
There was a sigh of relief on the floor and it turned out to be a false alarm?
Nilson, for his part, noticed Carlos and Diego’s reactions and guessed that he feared the real bracelet had been taken to Anlandana when Moya was a child, only what kind of mishap had led to it being in Diego’s possession?
You know, Carlos hadn’t even recovered his memory when Diego came to Salamonsa and he couldn’t have instructed Diego to bring it!
-Jeronimo, I can’t believe you remembered the token so well even after having looked at it only a couple of times, recognizing it from so far away, it’s not easy.
Yerma watched as Mrs. Echave put the bracelet on Moya herself and lowered her voice to Jeronimo.
-Sonia is a dominant and difficult person, mother and I are only sharpening her temper, which she shouldn’t have, and once she has reformed and knows she is wrong, how could we make things difficult for her?
Jerome grunted loudly, knowing he couldn’t afford to back down and slunk off the stage.
With the master of ceremonies’ announcement that Micaela was officially the thirty-sixth Lord of Ciudad Echave, the Assembly Hall erupted in applause.
Mrs. Echave and Yerma, Carlos and Nilson were relieved that this had come to fruition….
After the ceremony, the gentlemen from other cities who had come in person came over to talk to Micaela. Nilson remained in his seat, watching as Moya faced the situation with a slight smile at the corner of her lips….
-She said she would be fine being the ‘man behind me’.
Moya’s earlier words echo in my ears and my admiration for Carlos grows ever stronger….
Unconsciously he looked back to where Carlos was and discovered that he was no longer there, Ian’s voice sounded behind him:
-Lord of the City, shouldn’t we go back?
Nilson nods, thinking to greet Efraim next to him, turns to look and he is long gone from the seat next to him…