Chapter 1 - The Land Beneath It
My name is Dante Serrano.
The newspapers had called me a Mafia boss since I was thirty-one.
They were not entirely inventing the history.
My grandfather had spent six years in federal prison.
Two uncles had been indicted before I graduated college.
Men with the Serrano name once made money in ways I neither admired nor continued.
By forty-five, the businesses I controlled were licensed, audited, insured, taxed, and painfully legitimate.
Distribution.
Hotels.
Commercial property.
Restaurants.
Security.
The reputation remained useful to people selling headlines and inconvenient to everyone else.
At family events, though, none of that mattered.
I was simply Margaret Serrano’s son.
And on a Saturday night in October, I walked into a ballroom and found my seventy-six-year-old mother on the floor.
The gala was being held at Bellafonte House, an extravagant stone mansion on nine acres outside New York City.
Three hundred guests.
White orchids.
Black-tie tables.
A quartet near the staircase.
Enough crystal and polished silver to make the room look colder than it was.
My mother wore burgundy.
Pearls.
Flats.
And carried a wooden cane she had been using since hip surgery eleven months earlier.
She did not like the cane.
She called it:
“an accusation against gravity.”
I had been outside speaking with a security contractor when she walked past the VIP table.
Vanessa Crowe sat there.
Vanessa was forty.
Beautiful.
Silver gown.
Diamonds.
The sort of woman who could say something vicious without disturbing her lipstick.
For eight years she had managed much of Bellafonte House’s social calendar and cultivated the impression that every invitation, every table, every floral arrangement, and possibly the moon itself required her approval.
Mom moved carefully across the carpet.
Vanessa watched her.
Then extended one heel.
Deliberately.
Her shoe struck the lower shaft of my mother’s cane.
The cane skidded away.
Mom tried to catch herself.
Could not.
She fell sideways onto the carpet.
Several guests gasped.
Someone stood.
Vanessa leaned back in her chair.
Smirked.
“Old women belong upstairs, not at my table.”
That was when I entered.
I saw my mother.
Nothing else.
I crossed the room quickly.
“Mom.”
“I’m fine.”
She was not on her feet.
That did not mean injured.
I crouched.
“Did you hit your head?”
“No.”
“Hip?”
“No.”
“Give me a second.”
I lifted her slowly.
One hand beneath her arm.
One at her waist.
She winced slightly when she put weight on her right leg.
I noticed.
I retrieved the cane.
Checked it had not cracked.
Then put it in her hand.
She gripped my forearm.
Her voice was quiet.
“She does this whenever you leave.”
The ballroom seemed to shrink.
I looked toward Vanessa.
“What does that mean?”
Mom’s eyes did not leave her.
“She moves my chair. Takes my cane. Sends me upstairs. Every time you aren’t looking.”
Vanessa stood.
“Oh, please.”
I put my mother’s cane back into her hand.
Made sure she was steady.
One of my security men stepped closer.
I raised two fingers.
Stay with Margaret.
Then I walked toward Vanessa.
She lifted her chin.
“Dante, don’t turn one little—”
I slapped her.
One open-handed strike.
Hard.
Her head snapped sideways.
She spun against the velvet banquet chair and nearly went over it.
Gasps moved through the room again.
I did not hit her twice.
I already knew, somewhere beneath the rage, that once my mother was safe my hand had become punishment rather than protection.
That fact would matter.
Later.
Vanessa pushed herself upright.
One palm against her cheek.
Her eyes were venomous.
“You think you can humiliate me here?”
I said nothing.
She looked past me toward my mother.
Then smiled without warmth.
“Humiliate me, and your mother loses this mansion.”
The sentence changed the room.
Several relatives looked toward me.
They understood enough family business to know Bellafonte House was complicated.
Vanessa clearly expected fear.
I turned toward Margaret.
She stood with her cane beside one of my security men.
Then I looked back at Vanessa.
My voice stayed calm.
“She owns the land beneath it.”
May you like
Vanessa froze.
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