Chapter 4
Marco finally talked after midnight.
Not confession.
Explanation.
He called it contingency planning.
I almost admired the phrase.
“What contingency?”
He leaned back.
“You’ve been exhausted.”
True.
I slept too little.
Worked too much.
Had occasional headaches.
Normal for my life.
Marco continued.
“If something happened to you, the house would panic.”
“So you created a maid to blame?”
He shrugged.
“You’re assuming too much.”
I placed the false schedules in front of him.
No legal drama.
Just paper used internally.
His face barely changed.
“You arranged these?”
“No.”
Celeste did.
Interesting.
Then:
“Why?”
He looked at me.
“Because nobody can run this family if everyone thinks one of the capos reached for your chair.”
There.
Not murder necessarily.
Succession anxiety.
“What were you expecting to happen to me?”
Silence.
I waited.
“Temporary incapacity.”
I felt my jaw tighten.
“How temporary?”
“A night.”
“Maybe two.”
Celeste cried from across the room.
“That’s all.”
There it was.
Not death.
Sedation.
Weakness.
Confusion.
A Mafia boss appearing impaired in front of donors and capos.
Then what?
Marco would step in “temporarily.”
Handle meetings.
Delay my travel.
Manage security.
Celeste would control the house.
If I recovered normally, fine.
I would be told exhaustion caused it.
If questions arose, Anna’s tasting history existed.
A reckless housemaid experimenting with my drinks.
Maybe trying to help.
Maybe tampering.
Enough uncertainty to absorb suspicion.
I stared at Marco.
“You planned to make me look incapable.”
“No.”
“Unavailable.”
He corrected.
Important to him.
“Why?”
He looked away.
Then Celeste said:
“Because you were going to replace him.”
I turned.
I had been considering reorganizing three capo territories.
Marco’s area would shrink.
Not exile.
Not removal.
Less reach.
He found out.
How?
Celeste.
She read something on my desk?
No.
I had told her during dinner two weeks earlier that I wanted Marco “closer to family, farther from expansion.”
A casual sentence.
She interpreted correctly.
Then warned him.
Their solution?
Create one short period where I appeared unstable.
Let Marco become indispensable.
Then I would hesitate to reduce him.
Power restored by emergency.
May you like
Manufactured emergency.
And Anna was the insurance policy.
