On the third evening, I found him in his study, staring at a map spread across the desk — the port district, I realized, marked with small red pins I didn’t yet understand.
“Talk to me,” I said, and settled into the chair across from him without waiting for an invitation. It surprised me, how natural that had started to feel. Three days ago I wouldn’t have taken a seat without being told twice it was allowed.
“Castellano’s making his next move through the port authority vote next month,” Damian said. “If he gets the zoning board to reclassify Pier 9 as available for outside contracts, he gets a legal foothold on my territory without ever firing another gun. It’s cleaner. Smarter, probably, than what he tried at the house.”
“So stop the vote.”
“I’m trying. But two of the five board members have already been bought, and a third is being leaned on hard enough that I don’t blame him for wavering.” Damian rubbed his eyes, and for a moment he looked less like a man who controlled every room he entered and more like someone very tired, carrying a weight that never fully set down. “I have people working every angle. I just don’t know if it’s enough.”
I looked at the map, at the pins, at the man across from me who had burned down an evening of his own careful control to save a guard and a caterer he’d never met before that night, and something settled in me — a decision I hadn’t consciously made until I heard myself say it out loud.
“What if it’s not just your people,” I said. “What if it’s people Castellano would never think to watch.”
Damian looked up. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I spent six years bartending and catering every major event in this city before I fell into the wedding-and-gala circuit. I know caterers, valets, hotel staff, half the wait staff at every venue Castellano’s people would use to meet and plan. Nobody watches the people carrying the trays, Damian. You told me that yourself, the first night, in the library. Invisible. That cuts both ways.”
