Chapter 12
The surviving Caruso captains gathered the next morning.
I told them everything.
Not every intimate detail.
Enough.
My father’s death.
Enzo’s role.
Dominic’s silence.
Gabriel’s disappearance.
Isabella’s forced exile.
Lucia.
The staged hotel story.
Rosa’s recordings.
Nobody interrupted until I finished.
Then Captain Salvi spoke.
“You’re saying Dominic controlled security information for eleven years while hiding his own father’s betrayal.”
“Yes.”
Dominic laughed from the far end.
“I also kept half of you alive.”
Salvi turned.
“That doesn’t erase it.”
Dominic’s face hardened.
There.
For years, usefulness had protected him.
He believed every good act bought permission for the next betrayal.
Gabriel looked at him.
“You always kept score.”
Dominic snapped, “Because somebody had to.”
I watched.
Two brothers.
Same father.
Different response.
Gabriel ran.
Dominic became Enzo.
Not exactly.
But close enough to matter.
Captain Rocco leaned forward.
“What happens to him?”
Everyone looked at me.
Dominic smiled.
Waiting.
Probably hoping for blood.
A violent ending would give him something familiar.
I chose something else.
“He loses command.”
The smile disappeared.
“No family pin. No security authority. No private men. No access to Isabella or Lucia. No order given in my name will be recognized.”
Dominic laughed.
“That’s it?”
“No.”
I looked around.
“Every captain he told was disloyal gets reviewed directly by me. Every family branch he isolated gets heard without him translating.”
That was the real punishment.
I was dismantling his position as interpreter.
His power had never only been muscle.
It was deciding what I knew about other people.
Dominic understood.
“You’ll drown in everyone’s lies.”
“Maybe.”
I looked toward Isabella.
“But they’ll be their lies.”
Pause.
“Not yours.”
That hurt him.
Then Captain Salvi asked the harder question.
“What about Gabriel?”
I looked at him.
Gabriel did not speak.
“He gets no reward for telling the truth late.”
His face tightened.
Good.
“He does get the chance to rebuild.”
Dominic laughed.
“Of course.”
I looked at him.
“Jealous?”
His face twisted.
There it was.
Even now.
Everything measured by who stood closer to me.
May you like
I finally understood the prison Enzo built inside his son.
Dominic had never learned to love me without needing everyone else farther away.
