Chapter 6
Marcus asked to speak alone.
I refused.
Alina stayed.
He hated that.
Good.
He looked at the cards.
“I was seventeen.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t understand.”
“Maybe.”
“I carried lists.”
“You were named on four.”
His jaw tightened.
He remembered.
That mattered.
Marcus admitted Vittorio began teaching him the system at sixteen.
Not as cheating.
As management.
That word again.
“Players think they want fairness,” his father told him. “Donors want memories.”
Give the right donor’s son a perfect horse.
Seat the right capo beside the right patron.
Let the right family win one visible thing.
Then ask for nothing immediately.
Years later, gratitude becomes easier to call.
Mafia influence with polo gloves.
Elegant.
Disgusting.
“Did you continue after your father died?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Yes.”
There.
How much?
Less openly.
No physical card swaps after I took control.
Instead he influenced practice schedules.
Which player trained with which horse.
Which reserve mount was “unavailable.”
Small manipulations.
Still enough.
Ramona handled donor wishes.
Marcus translated them into sporting advantage.
They had modernized Vittorio’s method.
Today’s luncheon included a founders’ exhibition match in two hours.
I asked:
“Who is supposed to win?”
Marcus said nothing.
I smiled slightly.
He gave me the name.
Anthony Rusk.
A capo whose support Marcus needed in an upcoming internal business division.
Not succession.
Not council.
A concrete route dispute.
Rusk winning today would create public camaraderie before Marcus asked for his backing.
I almost admired the pettiness.
“You risked my wife and daughter for a polo favor?”
Marcus flinched.
Ramona answered:
“No.”
Her voice was sharp.
“It was bigger than one match.”
Of course it was.
Alina’s marriage to me threatened their entire inherited narrative.
If Thomas Bell was innocent, Vittorio Carbone had built twenty years of status partly through manipulation and a false accusation.
Marcus’s senior reputation rested on techniques inherited from his father.
Ramona’s donor network rested on the same old favors.
Alina did not merely carry “cheap blood.”
May you like
She carried the surname of the man whose innocence could make their father look small.
That was what they could not tolerate.
