Chapter 12
Damian’s final argument was Sofia.
Of course.
“She is not prepared.”
I looked at him.
“For what?”
“The world she was born into.”
“She’s three.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Yes.”
I leaned forward.
“It is.”
He hated that.
“Your father trained you at six.”
“And I spent fifteen years unlearning half of it.”
Silence.
Several men shifted.
Old Mafia families rarely admit training children damages them because too many powerful adults would have to reinterpret their own childhoods.
I continued.
“Sofia may never lead Vaughn.”
Damian stared.
That surprised him.
“She may want medicine. Architecture. Horses. A bakery. Nothing to do with this.”
Raymond almost smiled.
I continued.
“If she wants leadership one day, she earns it.”
“Then who inherits?”
“No one inherits command.”
There.
The dangerous sentence.
Chairs are earned.
Not blood entitlement.
Old men hate that because blood is predictable.
Ability is not.
Damian stood.
“This organization survives because succession is clear.”
“No.”
Victor answered before I could.
“It survives because people choose who they follow.”
Damian glared at him.
“You abandoned your blood.”
Victor’s smile faded.
“My blood abandoned me first.”
That landed.
Miles looked at his father.
Then at me.
“I’m out.”
Damian turned.
“What?”
“I’m not putting Adrian into this.”
His voice shook.
“But you promised—”
“No.”
First clean no I had heard from Miles in years.
Good.
Then Raymond said:
“So what exactly are we deciding?”
Damian opened his mouth.
Nothing came.
Because his candidates had disappeared.
Victor refused.
Miles withdrew his son.
Veronica was gone.
Sofia was three and I refused to let anyone assign her future.
The crisis had been manufactured around options that no longer existed.
I looked at Damian.
“You didn’t want certainty.”
He stared.
“You wanted relevance.”
Silence.
There.
Ageing men often call their fear of irrelevance tradition.
Damian’s face hardened.
Then he said something that told me this was not over.
“You think Evelyn won.”
I stared.
“She did.”
His jaw tightened.
“She’s dead.”
“No.”
I looked at Nora’s apron.
“She changed the rules.”
May you like
That was the kind of victory men like Damian never understood.
A dead woman had removed more of his power than any living capo.
