Chapter 2
I moved Ruby out of the breakfast room first.
Not because I wanted to shield Victor from her.
Because I refused to let her learn that family conflict required children to stay and watch.
One of my oldest guards carried her upstairs. Ruby twisted in his arms and looked at Milo.
“Bird coming?”
“Later,” I told her.
She accepted that.
Milo did not.
The parrot immediately squawked and climbed higher on his perch as if he understood he was now the most valuable witness in the house.
Victor watched Ruby leave.
Then he looked at me. “You’re turning this into something it isn’t.”
I almost smiled.
“Good.”
He frowned.
“That means you can explain what it is.”
Silence.
Dana started crying quietly.
Victor looked irritated.
Not concerned.
That told me their partnership was not equal.
“Stop that,” he told her.
She flinched.
I heard years in that reaction.
I pulled out the chair across from me and sat down.
“Dana.”
She looked at me.
“How long has he been giving you orders?”
Victor snapped, “Julian.”
I ignored him.
Dana swallowed.
“Months.”
My jaw tightened.
“What kind of orders?”
“Kitchen schedules. Deliveries. Who ate where. Which capos stayed late after dinner.”
Information.
Not food.
Victor had been using the chef as eyes inside my house.
I looked at him.
“You couldn’t ask me who came to dinner?”
He shrugged.
“You stopped telling me anything useful.”
There it was.
Resentment.
Victor was nineteen years older than me. He spent decades believing the Ferraro organization would eventually lean toward him simply because he had lived longer inside it.
Then our father died.
The captains chose me.
Victor smiled at the funeral.
Apparently he had never stopped resenting the room.
Dana wiped her cheeks.
“The bottle came yesterday.”
“From who?”
“I don’t know.”
Victor laughed softly.
“She knows.”
Dana looked terrified.
I leaned forward.
“No. She knows who frightened her.”
Victor’s face changed.
I continued.
“Different thing.”
Dana’s eyes filled.
Then she whispered, “He said if I didn’t help, my brother would disappear from the docks.”
Victor’s jaw tightened.
There.
Coercion.
Still guilt.
Different kind.
I looked at him.
“You threatened her family.”
“She works for Ferraro.”
“She cooks breakfast.”
“She hears things.”
“And that made her useful.”
Victor said nothing.
Dana looked at the blue bottle.
Then at me.
“It wasn’t meant to kill you.”
Again.
Not meant to.
A phrase cowards love.
“What was it meant to do?”
She breathed in.
“Make you look sick.”
That changed everything.
Not murder.
May you like
Performance.
Someone wanted the council to see me weakened.
