Chapter 3
Silas denied ordering the marina fire.
He did not deny everything else.
That distinction mattered.
“Wade panicked.”
I stared across the pastry office.
“Your security associate trapped my sister inside a burning building because he panicked.”
Silas’s jaw tightened.
“He was supposed to scare her.”
“Into what?”
“Leaving Boston.”
There.
First layer.
“You wanted Elena gone.”
“She was interfering.”
“With your faction.”
Silence.
I leaned back.
“Use adult language.”
Silas sighed.
“The waterfront was unstable.”
“No.”
“You centralized too much.”
Possible.
Not irrelevant.
Still not an answer.
“Elena discovered I was talking to captains.”
“Using Micah.”
“He’s Rossi blood.”
“He was fourteen.”
“Exactly.”
I almost laughed.
Exactly.
Children are perfect political symbols because adults can speak for them.
“What did you promise?”
“Nothing.”
I waited.
Silas hated waiting.
Eventually:
“Continuity.”
Of course.
A clean word.
Nobody says ambition when continuity sounds respectable.
He told captains that I had no son.
Nora was young.
Micah was the nearest male Rossi of the next generation.
If anything happened to me, Silas could “protect” Micah while the family stabilized.
I looked at him.
“You weren’t building Micah.”
Silence.
“You were building yourself as the man standing behind him.”
His face hardened.
There.
That was it.
A sixteen-year-old figurehead someday.
A forty-four-year-old cousin controlling the room around him.
“Elena threatened to tell me.”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“Wade was supposed to frighten her.”
“But he set the fire.”
Silas looked away.
“After she escaped, why not return her?”
His expression changed.
Important.
“Because by then she knew too much.”
Cowardice again.
One crime creates another because confession becomes more expensive with every hour.
Elena survived the fire.
May you like
Silas found her.
Instead of ending the lie, he built a larger one.
