Chapter 3
Declan stopped breathing.
Brielle looked confused.
“My what?”
Good.
She did not know.
Patrick had moved the money through a private family trust opened in her name six months earlier.
Quarter million.
Too much for a climbing prank.
Too clean for ordinary family spending.
I looked at Patrick.
“Who sent it?”
His face tightened.
Rafe answered.
“Northbridge Holdings.”
I knew the name.
Everyone senior in Costello did.
Northbridge belonged to Malcolm Crane.
Seventy.
Former Costello adviser.
My father’s oldest friend.
And the man I removed from the organization three years earlier.
Not for betrayal.
For refusing to stop.
Malcolm believed every old method became tradition simply because enough people survived it.
Children used as leverage.
Widows pressured over debts.
Younger relatives assigned marriages to settle internal disputes.
I ended those practices.
He called me sentimental.
I called him retired.
Apparently retirement had been temporary too.
Declan laughed under his breath.
I turned.
“You knew.”
“No.”
“You recognized the company.”
“Everyone does.”
“Not everyone just watched their father hide a quarter million dollars inside their daughter’s trust.”
His expression cracked.
Enough.
Patrick finally spoke.
“Malcolm said Finn needed to look weak.”
I felt my entire body become still.
Not Mara.
Finn.
Specific.
“Why?”
Patrick looked toward my son.
“Because the elders are voting.”
I frowned.
“There is no vote.”
“There will be.”
Of course.
The old charter.
A dead mechanism my grandfather created decades ago.
If enough blood-family elders declared the head of Costello “unable to preserve succession stability,” they could demand a council review.
It had never been used.
Because no one wanted to admit it still existed.
“What does Finn have to do with succession?”
Declan answered this time.
“Everything.”
I looked at him.
He swallowed.
“If the family believes your son is vulnerable, then your position looks temporary.”
There.
Mara becomes mother first.
Boss second.
Her son becomes weakness.
Then the obvious alternative stands nearby.
Older brother.
Healthy teenage daughter.
Traditional branch.
Declan.
I almost smiled.
“You thought a three-year-old falling off a wall would make people hand you Costello.”
He said nothing.
That silence was more humiliating than any confession.
Then Brielle whispered:
“Dad?”
Declan would not look at her.
May you like
For the first time, she realized she had not been asked to play a prank.
She had been used in her father’s campaign.
