Chapter 14
Lucia finally admitted why Grant mattered so much.
Not love.
Not family loyalty.
Grant was the man she believed could hold the younger capos once she had household control and temporary authority.
She would manage the old guard.
Grant would manage the impatient men.
A partnership built around the assumption that I would never recover enough to disrupt it.
“You were attacked,” Lucia said. “Everyone was thinking it.”
“Thinking what?”
“That maybe Santoro needed another shape.”
I looked at her.
“You mean another head.”
She did not deny it.
Grant did.
“No. At first, just structure.”
I almost smiled.
Temporary.
Support.
Structure.
The cleaner the word, the uglier the thing underneath.
I asked Lucia one question.
“If I had recovered quickly, what then?”
She hesitated.
That was the answer.
“You would have slowed it.”
“No.”
“You already did.”
Her face hardened.
“You were impossible before the attack.”
“There.”
“What?”
“The real grievance.”
Silence.
“You didn’t create this because I was injured.”
I leaned forward.
“You used the injury because you already wanted me moved.”
Grant looked away.
Lucia stared at me.
Finally she said it.
“You never listen.”
That almost made me laugh.
“All this because I wouldn’t give you more control?”
“Because you treat everyone like employees.”
“You are not my equal in command.”
Her face changed.
That was it.
Not cruelty first.
Humiliation.
Lucia believed family status entitled her to authority.
My injury gave her the chance to turn resentment into necessity.
I looked at June, then Edwin, then the captains still in the room.
Lucia had spent weeks proving I could be isolated.
She accidentally proved something else.
May you like
The organization did not collapse when access reopened.
It corrected itself.
