"Storage?"
"We're good for now, the warehouse has capacity."
I glance at Marco and he gives me a nod, which means he's already checked the numbers.
"What about distribution?"
"No delays," Enzo says. "Southie, Dorchester, Roxbury. Everything's moving."
Good, a disruption in supply creates questions. Questions create attention, and attention gets people killed.
"Any heat?"
"Nothing unusual."
I tap my fingers once against the table. "Keep it that way."
Enzo inclines his head. "I will."
I push away from the table. Most people look at one of our construction sites and see steel, concrete, and men in hard hats. I see money. I see product moving through containers and trucks. I see legitimate invoices hiding illegitimate profits. I see an operation that works because every piece supports the next. And if I'm going to be the Boss one day, I need to know exactly how every piece fits together.
Marco falls into step beside me as I leave. "Replacement foreman's already in place at the North End site."
I nod once and keep walking.
By the time I leave my office, it's dark. The issue with Sal is resolved and the site is now running as it should. Tomorrow there'll be another problem, there always is.
The day started in a hotel conference room; it ends exactly where most of my days end.
Here.
The chapel sits at the edge of the estate. Ignored by almost everyone in this house. I head for the door. My father thinks I come here in the mornings. That's the only time he ever sees me leave. What he doesn't know won't hurt him. I push open the door and step inside.
The chapel is the only place on these grounds where I can think without something being required of me.
I stand in front of my mother's candle, and I think about what happened today. I always come here to think, to dissect whatever has happened and find solutions to any problems that may arise.
My current problem: Dáire Delaney.
I know very little about her. Twenty-three. The eldest daughter of one of the most powerful men in the Irish faction of the Syndicate. I'm hoping that the reports of her attitude are wrong. If not, then hopefully she'll change her ways once we're married.
I look at my mother's candle and I think about my parents' marriage. It wasn't a love match, but it was never presented as one. Cesare Mariano married Beatrice Scarponi because the alliance between their families required it, and they built something from that requirement. They created six children, a stable household, and a respected position within the Syndicate. They were effective together in every way the Syndicate measured.
They were not happy.
My mother gave everything to this family. All of herself, her intelligence, her time, and her endurance. Beatrice understood this world better than most and spent twenty-one years beside a man who treated her as an asset rather than a person. She never once let us see her break under the weight of it.
And then she died anyway.
My mother gave everything, she endured everything, she was everything this life asks a woman to be, and the Harrington family decided she was a useful target. That's why they put a bullet in her head, and that was the end of it. All that endurance, all that strength, it didn't protect Beatrice. Nothing protected her.
No amount of connections made her safer. No amount of love made a single difference.
I have watched what her death has done to my siblings. Sofia hasn't slept properly in months. Valentina carries so much anger that she doesn't know what to do with it. Even Ciro, who was always the most controlled of us after me, has a haunted look in his eyes when he thinks that no one is watching.
Grief makes people careless, and attachments make people victims.
I have thought about this every day for fifteen months. I have watched what it costs. I have watched it hollow out the people around me and leave them slower, softer, and easier to break. And I have made a decision, not out of coldness, or out of indifference to my mother's memory.
