Chapter 2
Victor had been twelve when Enzo never came home.
The story Beatrice told him was simple because grief often demands simple stories.
Your father had enemies.
Your father trusted the wrong meeting.
Your father died like men in this family die.
No funeral body.
Only a closed casket.
A priest.
A black coat too large for Victor’s shoulders.
Beatrice took him in that week.
She was Enzo’s older sister, unmarried, sharp-minded, and feared in a quieter way than the men with guns.
She fed Victor.
Educated him.
Corrected his table manners.
Taught him which relatives lied with tears and which lied with silence.
She also taught him never to ask where Enzo’s body was.
“Some doors,” she said, “open onto rooms children should not enter.”
Victor grew into the exact kind of man who opened doors by kicking them down.
He became what the Bellacosta family expected him to become.
Leader.
Judge.
Threat.
Protector.
Criminal.
Beatrice watched all of it with a grief that looked like pride from a distance.
Seraphina Cole entered years later.
Elegant.
Educated.
Connected to legitimate money.
She knew how to speak to bankers without sounding like a gangster’s wife.
She organized charity dinners, museum tables, political donations, and legal acquisitions around Victor’s legitimate businesses.
Victor thought she made him look less like the thing he was.
Beatrice distrusted her immediately.
“Women like that don’t marry power,” Beatrice said. “They reorganize it.”
Victor laughed.
“You don’t like anyone I bring home.”
“I liked the ones who were afraid of you. Fear is honest. She isn’t afraid.”
On the wedding night, Beatrice had interrupted Seraphina’s toast because Seraphina was about to announce a new “family unity council” that would fold several Bellacosta assets into a trust structure she helped design.
Beatrice knew the language.
Unity meant access.
May you like
Council meant control.
And Seraphina wanted the microphone before anyone older could object.
