Chapter 3
There had been seven.
Margaret usually told Laura she wanted time with her grandnephew.
David described them as boring.
Restaurants.
Private clubs.
Once Margaret’s home.
But when Vincent asked what they discussed, David became evasive.
“School.”
“For seven lunches?”
“Other stuff.”
“What stuff?”
David looked toward Laura.
She said nothing.
Vincent understood what she was doing.
Letting him answer for himself.
David sighed.
“She talks about when I turn eighteen.”
“What happens when you turn eighteen?”
“She says people start taking you seriously.”
Laura’s expression tightened.
“What people?”
“Family people.”
Vincent leaned back.
“What does that mean?”
David looked uncomfortable.
“She says Grandpa won’t run everything forever.”
Silence.
Vincent asked, “Did she talk about me dying?”
“No.”
“Retiring?”
“Kind of.”
Vincent waited.
David finally admitted that Margaret had been telling him he needed to understand the Moretti businesses.
Not necessarily the illegal side.
She was careful about that.
Companies.
Property.
Family relationships.
Who had been loyal to whom.
Which older men mattered.
“She said Dad wasn’t around anymore, so somebody had to teach me what being a Moretti man meant.”
Laura’s face changed.
David’s father had died when David was nine.
Margaret had found exactly where to press.
Vincent kept his voice calm.
“Did she ever talk about Emma during these lunches?”
“Sometimes.”
“What did she say?”
David stared at the desk.
“That she isn’t part of the same responsibility.”
Laura whispered, “What does that mean?”
“She said Emma gets to choose what family means because she was adopted into it.”
“And you?”
David’s eyes filled with embarrassment.
“She said I don’t get a choice.”
Vincent felt the pieces begin to move.
Months earlier, he had announced something privately to senior family members.
No child in the next generation would be expected to join the organization.
Not David.
Not Emma when she grew up.
Nobody.
Adults could make their own choices.
Children would not be raised as successors.
Margaret had opposed him immediately.
“You can’t decide a bloodline ends because you became sentimental,” she had said.
Vincent had dismissed it as another argument with his sister.
Now she was taking David to private lunches.
Teaching him family hierarchy.
Separating him conceptually from Emma.
And repeatedly reminding him that blood created obligations adoption did not.
May you like
The banquet had not been the beginning.
It had been the first time Margaret’s private campaign became impossible to ignore.
