The Zehntner estate rose with stoic grace from the snow-dusted fields outside Berlin—proud, not ancient, and built not on lineage, but on earned honor. It was the home of a family whose nobility had been won on the battlefield, not passed down from coronets and court favor.
In the great hall hung a portrait of Jakob von Zehntner, the founder—a broad-shouldered Prussian officer with iron-gray eyes and a saber at his side. Enobled for his actions at Waterloo, where his infantry regiment broke the Imperial Guard's final charge, Jakob had never worn his title like jewelry. To him, duty was its own inheritance. His descendants had never forgotten that.
Bruno sipped his Eierpunsch, warm and spiced, eyes lingering on the photorealistic image of his grandfather, Jakob von Zehntner. There was pride in his posture—and something unspoken behind his silence.
