Chapter 3
The Marlowe key opened Suite 904.
My men confirmed it before midnight.
The room was booked under one of Vanessa’s old family names, but nobody in that suite had been sleeping much.
They had been meeting.
Six chairs.
A long table.
Two empty whiskey bottles.
A tray of untouched food.
And a Bellandi family pin sitting beside a hotel notepad.
The pin belonged to Carlo DeLuca, one of my older capos.
That disappointed me.
Not surprised.
Disappointed.
Carlo had served my father. He also believed fathers became softer after sons were born, a theory he had shared more than once when my wife was pregnant.
I called him to the estate.
He arrived already defensive.
“I met Grant.”
“How many times?”
“Twice.”
Grant laughed.
Carlo looked at him.
That was enough to tell me twice was a lie.
“Again.”
Carlo exhaled.
“Five.”
“What were you discussing?”
He hesitated.
I waited.
“Continuity.”
There was the word.
Clean.
Respectable.
Usually hiding something ugly.
“What continuity?”
Carlo looked toward Luca’s nursery.
“Your attention has changed.”
I stared at him.
“My son was born.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Grant answered.
“You leave meetings.”
I turned.
“When my newborn needs me?”
“You cancel dinners. You moved security from South Pier to the estate. You stopped traveling.”
“My son was three days old.”
“That’s exactly the problem.”
Silence.
There it was.
Not Luca as a child.
Luca as evidence.
My brother had been using every normal act of fatherhood to build a case that I was becoming distracted.
I looked at Carlo.
“What did Grant want?”
He looked ashamed.
“A temporary second chair.”
I almost laughed.
“For himself?”
“No.”
Carlo glanced at Vanessa.
That surprised me.
“For both of them.”
Grant would handle crews.
Vanessa would control the estate.
May you like
The newborn would become the reason Bellandi needed protecting from its own boss.
And suddenly the attacks on Luca looked less like sadism and more like preparation.
