Chapter 10
I carried Ruby upstairs myself.
She refused to let go.
I didn’t ask her to.
Dana brought food and milk to the family sitting room. Ruby ate while Milo sat on a portable perch nearby, occasionally making a clicking sound that seemed to annoy Victor.
Good.
Let the bird annoy him.
Dominic and Celia were kept apart.
No violence.
No spectacle.
I wanted truth more than revenge.
Victor sat across from me.
For the first time in years, he looked older than forty-six.
“I didn’t know about Ruby.”
“I know.”
He looked surprised.
“You believe me?”
“Yes.”
That did not comfort him.
Good.
“I still helped.”
“Yes.”
He looked at the floor.
I waited.
Then he said it.
“I wanted you embarrassed.”
Not removed.
Not dead.
Embarrassed.
Sometimes the smallest motive does the largest damage.
“I wanted the capos to see you weren’t untouchable.”
“Why?”
His jaw tightened.
“Because Dad told me the chair would be mine.”
There it was.
I had always suspected.
Never heard it.
“When?”
“When you were nineteen.”
I was still in training.
Victor had already been serving for twenty years.
Our father promised him succession.
Then changed his mind.
Never explained why.
Victor continued.
“He said you were too emotional. Too attached to Mom. Too soft with staff.”
I almost laughed.
Same accusations Dominic now used against me.
“What changed?”
“You became useful.”
Victor looked at me.
“You fixed the dock split. You ended the Carbone dispute. Captains started following you before Dad admitted it.”
So my father adapted.
Not his beliefs.
His choice.
He picked the son most capable of preserving power, then left the rejected son angry enough for older men to recruit later.
Elegant cruelty.
Victor rubbed his face.
“I thought if the capos saw you fail, they’d remember me.”
I looked at Ruby eating.
“And when Dominic talked about keeping her?”
“I told myself he meant with me.”
There it was.
The lie people tell when ambition requires them not to ask the next question.
“You didn’t ask.”
“No.”
“You didn’t want to know.”
Victor looked at me.
“No.”
Finally.
Honesty.
Then Milo spoke.
My father’s voice.
I had not heard it in thirteen years.
“Victor gets the chair.”
Every person in the room froze.
I turned toward the bird.
Milo tilted his head.
Then repeated:
“Until Julian is ready.”
May you like
Victor went white.
The promise he built decades of resentment around had never been complete.
