Chapter 1
“She gave me her last dollar. And you’ve just lost your last chance.”
Dominic stopped moving.
Champagne foam ran down his tailored jacket while ice cubes melted around his shoes.
I barely looked at him.
Maeve mattered first.
I crouched and opened my palm.
Her coin rested there.
“Yours.”
She curled tiny fingers around it.
Then looked toward the pastry crushed across the marble.
Her face fell.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Your food.”
That answer told me more about my club than Dominic’s expensive suit ever could.
“You said you were hungry too.”
Maeve nodded.
“When did you eat last?”
She thought carefully.
“Yesterday.”
Everything inside me went still.
Behind her stood a lobby stocked with enough food to feed fifty people before dinner even began.
“Where’s your father?”
“At the bakery.”
“Why isn’t he feeding you?”
Her eyebrows pulled together.
“He does.”
Then:
“But Mr. Dominic takes the boxes.”
I looked up.
Dominic’s face changed.
“What boxes?”
Maeve pointed toward the service corridor.
“The ones Daddy makes for us.”
Interesting.
Her father, Arthur Carter, had supplied bread and pastries to Castellano Club for eleven years.
His contract included something I remembered personally.
Every day, unsold club food and a staff-family meal allotment went to the bakery workers and their households.
My father created that arrangement.
I kept it.
Apparently Dominic had changed it.
“Where does the food go now?”
Maeve whispered:
“Mr. Dominic says important people get it.”
Dominic pushed himself upright.
“She doesn’t understand what she’s talking about.”
I glanced at the brass manager badge on his chest.
A badge I had never authorized.
Not the design.
Not the title engraved beneath his name.
EXECUTIVE STEWARD.
My club had no Executive Steward.
I straightened.
“Who gave you that badge?”
Dominic touched it instinctively.
Wrong move.
“Uncle Rocco—”
“Who?”
He said nothing.
Behind the management desk, one of my oldest bodyguards bent down and picked up a second brass badge from the scattered paperwork.
Different name.
Same title.
Then a third.
This was not Dominic playing king alone.
May you like
Someone had been manufacturing authority inside my club.
And apparently charging hungry families for the privilege.
