Chapter 4
I took Sadie upstairs.
Maya came with me.
Business could wait ten minutes.
My daughter could not.
She sat on our bed holding my hand.
“Are you going?”
“No.”
“Celeste said you don’t stay forever.”
My jaw tightened.
“When?”
Sadie thought.
“At dinner.”
Maya looked at me.
Neither of us had heard that.
“What did she say?”
Sadie twisted the edge of her cardigan.
“That daddies go away and family stays.”
There.
Conditioning.
Small enough to sound harmless.
Poisonous enough to prepare a child for absence.
I asked no more.
Four-year-olds should not be witnesses for adult power struggles.
After she fell asleep with Maya beside her, I returned downstairs.
Celeste was waiting.
“You spoke to my daughter about me leaving.”
She sighed.
“I spoke generally.”
“There’s no general version of telling a four-year-old her father doesn’t stay forever.”
“She needs to understand succession.”
I stared at her.
“She's four.”
Celeste’s expression hardened.
“Our children learn early.”
No.
Her children perhaps.
Not mine.
Owen interrupted.
“This is exactly the problem.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“You’ve become soft.”
There it was.
Predictable.
“Because I don’t teach preschoolers succession politics?”
“Because everything stops when Sadie cries.”
I smiled without humor.
“She was holding a candle inches from her mother because your sister forced her.”
Owen looked away.
Then I asked the question neither expected.
“Who replaces me?”
Silence.
“Post-Victor structure requires Victor to be absent.”
Celeste answered:
“Not dead.”
Interesting that she needed to clarify.
“Then what?”
“Retired.”
I almost laughed.
“At forty-three?”
“You’ve changed.”
No.
They meant I had stopped being useful to them.
The old Avellino system had depended on fear.
I had cut several methods.
Reduced certain collections.
Moved family money toward support programs rather than loyalty payments.
Celeste considered that theft from tradition.
So she stole it back.
Then Owen said:
“The family needs someone who understands what your father built.”
I looked at him.
“You?”
He said nothing.
Celeste did.
“No.”
That surprised me.
Then:
“Sadie.”
My blood went cold.
May you like
They did not want Owen to replace me.
They wanted control of what came after me through my daughter.
