Chapter 8
Gregory’s ambitions went deeper.
He had been quietly encouraging several younger capos to imagine a post-Raffaele structure.
Not a coup.
No murder.
No plot to remove me.
Something socially cleaner.
Retirement.
I was fifty-six.
Healthy.
Apparently old enough for other men’s imagination.
Gregory believed I would step back when Sophia’s second child arrived.
Why?
Because he thought I wanted to become grandfather more than leader.
He did not know me very well.
Worse—
he considered my daughter’s expanding family a weakness in the leadership structure.
Too many maternal obligations.
Too much emotional distraction.
I asked:
“Would you say that about a man expecting his second child?”
Silence.
There it was.
Old Mafia thinking wearing modern tailoring.
Sophia could manage charity assets while pregnant.
But in Gregory’s future story, motherhood gradually moved her aside.
Not because he hated women.
May you like
Because he had inherited assumptions so comfortably he never examined them.
That made them more dangerous.
