Chapter 3
David’s version collapsed within twenty minutes.
He started with Sarah slipping.
Then changed to grabbing her during an argument.
Then admitted the shove but called it instinct.
Every new story arrived only after the last one failed.
I sat across from him in the council room.
No jacket.
No sympathy.
“What were you arguing about?”
“Private marriage business.”
I almost smiled.
“You shoved my daughter in my dining room during a Mafia family dinner.”
I leaned back.
“Privacy ended when her body hit my rug.”
His face hardened.
“She embarrasses me in front of my family.”
“How?”
“She undermines me.”
“Specific.”
Silence.
“David.”
He exhaled.
“She refuses to support Mercer interests.”
There it was.
Not marriage.
Faction.
“What interests?”
He looked away.
“Territory.”
Of course.
David had been asking for control of the South Market route for months.
I refused twice.
He had access already through allied-family arrangements.
He wanted ownership.
“What does Sarah have to do with it?”
“She’s a DeLuca.”
“Yes.”
“She should advocate for her husband.”
I stared at him.
“So when I say no, you make my daughter ask again.”
No answer.
“And when she refuses?”
His jaw tightened.
I already knew.
The shove was not random rage.
It was enforcement.
Marriage as political pressure.
Sarah as courier.
Emma as leverage.
I looked toward Margaret.
She sat at the far end under guard, still composed.
Too composed.
“Did you tell Sarah to ask me for South Market?”
Margaret smiled thinly.
“A wife should strengthen her husband.”
I nodded.
“And if she doesn’t?”
Her eyes flickered.
There.
“Then you call her clumsy.”
Silence.
David looked at his mother.
That relationship mattered.
He had not invented this system alone.
He had inherited a philosophy.
May you like
A wife’s value measured by how useful she was to the man she married.
And Sarah had stopped cooperating.
