Chapter 5
Maeve’s coin remained on Rocco’s desk.
He had tried returning it twice.
The child kept giving it back.
Finally, Claire laughed and told him he was losing a negotiation to a preschooler.
So Rocco placed it in a small glass dish beside his family signet ring.
It became inconveniently difficult to ignore.
The club investigation widened.
Not publicly.
Dominic remained suspended while Rocco appointed an interim general manager.
That alone changed employee behavior.
People started talking.
A dishwasher said Dominic had ordered leftover club food discarded rather than donated to a neighborhood shelter because he did not want “lines of poor people near the members’ entrance.”
A bartender said longtime community-event discounts had disappeared.
An assistant manager produced emails showing Dominic repeatedly rejected local charity requests without sending them to the committee that technically controlled the budget.
None of those actions were illegal.
Some could even be defended as business decisions.
But together they showed the same philosophy.
Dominic believed the club’s future required separating itself from the neighborhood that had once protected it.
Rocco understood the instinct more than he wanted to admit.
The Castellano Club began seventy years earlier as a place where Italian American families who were denied entry elsewhere could hold weddings, funerals, and meetings.
Over generations, it became wealthier.
More exclusive.
More dangerous.
Rocco’s father had eventually turned it into a legitimate private social club while the family’s darker business remained elsewhere.
Dominic wanted the transformation completed.
No old debts.
No neighborhood obligations.
No people who reminded wealthy members where the family came from.
That motive was coherent.
It did not explain North Harbor.
Grace finally traced the investment company’s financing.
A regional bank had extended it a substantial development line.
The loan documents were public enough to reveal the project name:
Castellano District Redevelopment.
Rocco stared at the phrase.
“District?”
Grace nodded.
“There are preliminary plans involving most of the block around the club.”
“Who approved them?”
“Not you.”
“Not the club board.”
“No.”
Rocco looked at the map.
The proposed development wrapped around the Castellano Club like a hand closing into a fist.
Luxury apartments.
Private parking.
Retail.
Members-only fitness facility.
The Vance Bakery building sat almost exactly where the new vehicle entrance would go.
For the first time, Rocco understood why the bakery mattered.
May you like
Not personally.
Geographically.
