Chapter 11
Victor recorded the argument.
Not the whole night.
Enough.
Sofia’s voice came first.
“You’re stealing from people who think they’re paying Rocco.”
Victor laughed.
“They’re paying Castellano.”
“No. They’re paying because they’re afraid of him.”
“Same thing.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The disease inside our name.
Sofia answered:
“No. Fear of Rocco is supposed to protect our borders. You turned it inward.”
I had never heard anyone explain it that cleanly.
Victor became angry.
He accused her of embarrassing the family over shopkeepers and bakers. Said small payments meant nothing compared with what Castellano provided.
Sofia asked:
“Did they agree?”
Silence.
Then Victor said something that sounded painfully familiar.
“They live under us.”
As if geography were consent.
The argument escalated.
Sofia threatened to tell me.
Victor told her I would not believe her because I still saw him as family.
She answered:
“Then I’ll make him.”
The recording jolted.
Wind.
Movement.
Then Sofia shouted.
Victor shouted her name.
A crash.
Water.
Then nothing for eleven seconds.
Victor’s breathing returned.
Panicked.
He kept saying:
“Sofia?”
No answer.
The tape ended.
Nobody spoke.
Daniel stood beside me.
Antonio behind.
Dominic farther away.
I replayed the final seconds once.
Victor did not sound like a man celebrating murder.
He sounded terrified.
That mattered.
Maybe he pushed her.
Maybe she fell during the struggle.
Maybe he reached too late.
The tape did not resolve every detail.
But it resolved one thing.
Sofia’s death was not a random boating accident.
Victor lied afterward to protect himself and the system she planned to expose.
Dominic looked at me.
“My father didn’t mean—”
I turned.
He stopped.
Intent again.
The favorite refuge of people who build consequences and then complain about the shape they take.
“I don’t know what your father meant.”
I looked at the recorder.
“I know what he hid.”
Dominic lowered his eyes.
Then Antonio asked the question that mattered now.
“What happens to the club?”
I looked around the lobby.
The broken emblem was still there.
Dominic’s badge still lying across it.
For years this place had represented status.
Victor and Dominic turned it into a collection machine.
I finally knew what Sofia would have wanted.
May you like
The club would survive.
But not as they built it.
