Page 12 of Hard Wired

A year ago, when Warren had been convicted and sent off to federal prison, there’d been nobody else with the Crane name to take his place. By then, their father had premature dementia. Raymond had only been nineteen.

Warren even tried running their organization from within prison for a while, but it just wasn’t practical. So Dominic reluctantly became the new head of the Syndicate, over the vigorous objections of many of Warren’s captains—like Uncle Charles.

Dominic had told himself he could still run the family business and not be an evil person. There was always somebody worse, just as Warren had said. Somebody who would offer the same services but use more extreme violence or demand more outrageous terms.

Dominic had seen the corruption within governments and corporations, which only made him more convinced that his family’s Syndicate was just as legitimate as the companies that traded on the New York Stock Exchange. If anything, the Syndicate was more honest about its true nature. Dominic had to lie, sure, but somehow the lie felt cleaner because it was so bald-faced.

As the Syndicate’s leader, Dominic had ordered deaths only a few times. Like punishing a ring of betrayers who’d engaged in underage prostitution on the sly. Or another guy who’d assaulted and murdered a girl. Dominic absolutely couldn’t tolerate hurting women.

He’d tried to walk a fine line between being ruthless enough to control the Syndicate and holding onto his humanity.

But he saw more clearly now. To the Syndicate, Dominic had always been a joke. A sensitive aesthete who’d never be able to cut it as a real gangster. They’d only been willing to tolerate him for so long.

And to people like Max Bennett and Sylvie? Dominic was a monster. They stood back, so superior, acting like he didn’t deserve to spit shine their shoes.

So fuck all of them. He didn’t need the Syndicate or Bennett Security. He could solve his problems just fine on his own.

No matter how impossible a task that seemed.

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