Daniel Carter stopped dead in his tracks at the horrifying sight of his wife Clara lying unconscious on the floor in torn

The side doors clicked open, and two Carter soldiers ushered Evelyn into the grand hall.

She had tried to fix her appearance, but the damage was irreversible. Her face was swollen with an ugly purple bruise, her dark-red blouse was torn at the collar, and her hair was disheveled. She walked with a stiff, trembling posture, attempting to summon the regal dignity of a mob boss’s widow, but her hands shook violently against her trousers.

She looked at the twelve capos, expecting to see familiar faces of loyalty—men who had dined at her table, men who had kissed her hand for twenty years.

Instead, she saw twelve executioners staring at her with cold, pitiless hatred.

"Frank... Vincent..." Evelyn stammered, her voice cracking as she took a step toward the table. "You know me. I am Thomas's wife! My son has lost his mind over a common cleaner! He struck me! In front of the staff, he laid hands on his own mother!"

"Your son spared your life, Evelyn," Capo Frank replied, his gravelly voice dripping with disgust as he pointed to the bank ledgers. "Which is far more than you deserve after stealing from our pension lines to buy yourself diamonds."

Evelyn froze. Her eyes dropped to the Panamanian account slips, and the last shred of her aristocratic arrogance vanished into thin air.

Daniel stepped forward, stopping three paces from where she stood trembling on the rug.

"Under the authority of the Carter Syndicate," Daniel said, every word falling like an iron gavel, "you are officially stripped of the Carter name. Your assets, your trust funds, your jewelry, and your real estate holdings are seized and redistributed to the longshoremen's union."

"Daniel, no!" Evelyn screamed, falling to her knees on the cold stone, clawing at the hem of his trousers. "You can't do this! I am your mother! You can't cast me out into the street with nothing!"

"You will not be in the street, Evelyn," Daniel murmured, looking down at her with dead, unblinking eyes. "You will be escorted to our private compound in northern Maine. You will live in a one-room cabin behind the perimeter wire. You will have no staff. You will have no telephone. You will have no visitors. You will wash your own clothes, and you will scrub your own floors."

"No! Please! Kill me instead!" she sobbed, burying her face against his polished leather shoe. "Don't send me there! It's freezing! I'll die alone!"

"You should have thought of the cold when you put my wife in the cellar, Evelyn," Daniel said, pulling his foot back with effortless disdain.

He signaled to the two guards. "Take her to the transport van. If she steps beyond the cabin perimeter in Maine, shoot her on sight."

Evelyn wailed—a long, broken, animal sound of complete ruin—as the guards dragged her backward across the stone floor, her heels kicking fruitlessly until the heavy iron doors slammed shut with concussive finality.

Daniel turned back to the twelve capos at the table.

"The Carter family has a new matriarch," Daniel announced, his voice ringing through the vaulted rafters. "Her name is Clara Carter. Anyone who fails to show her the respect due to a reigning sovereign will answer directly to me."