Chapter 7
Antonio Greco was brought to the estate before midnight.
He was sixty-one now.
Still elegant.
Still convinced age made betrayal respectable.
He saw Evelyn and stopped.
That was enough.
“You knew.”
He looked at me.
“Yes.”
No denial.
I almost respected that.
Almost.
“Why?”
He sat slowly.
“Your father asked.”
“My father ordered.”
Antonio corrected himself.
“Yes.”
“Why obey?”
He looked toward Bianca.
“Because we believed he was right.”
Evelyn laughed weakly.
Antonio continued.
The old Castellano inner circle thought my leadership was becoming dangerous.
Not violent.
Independent.
I was closing traditions they depended on.
No child leverage.
No forced marriages.
No private punishments without my approval.
No hidden councils making decisions behind the boss.
Then Evelyn became pregnant.
My father panicked.
“He thought a son would make you permanent,” Antonio said.
“I already was.”
“Not to him.”
That sentence explained more of my childhood than Antonio realized.
My father always saw my authority as temporary because he believed the family would eventually return to his shape after I tired of reform.
Evelyn made that less likely.
A wife who challenged him.
A grandson raised under my rules.
A new branch of Castellano he could not control.
“So you hid her.”
Antonio nodded.
“For an hour.”
I laughed.
“Everyone loves that phrase.”
His face tightened.
“It became something else.”
“When?”
“When she heard the council plan.”
I looked at him.
“What plan?”
Bianca closed her eyes.
Antonio answered.
My father intended to remove me after Ethan’s birth.
Not kill me.
Nothing so obvious.
Declare me emotionally unstable from Evelyn’s disappearance.
Let old captains take temporary control.
Use the child as proof I needed rest.
Then quietly make temporary permanent.
Evelyn overheard it.
That was why they could never release her.
She knew the whole structure.
I looked at Bianca.
“You didn’t hide Evelyn because she threatened the family.”
May you like
I stepped closer.
“You hid her because she knew you were trying to steal it.”
