Troy snorted. “Same shit, different day. I’ve been hearing that crap since I was a teenager. Cabals are businesses, not charitable organizations. Sure, they use their employees. Doesn’t every corporation? That’s the point: use your resources to build your capital. And yeah, there are sides to Cabals that are just plain ugly. You won’t catch me waving pompoms and spouting the party line, not even in front of Mr. Cortez. But you know what? As far as he’s concerned I’m entitled to my opinions…as long as I don’t share them with the stockholders. Whatever my beefs, you don’t see me quitting either, and that’s not because I’m afraid I’d be fitted for cement shoes. Maybe in the Nast Cabal or the St. Cloud or the Boyd, but where I am, Mr. Cortez doesn’t want me here unless I want to be here.”

“Makes sense.”

“You want some guy watching your back if he’s only doing it because he has to? I don’t do this for a good medical package or to protect some Cabal ideology. I don’t believe in that crap. But I do believe in the guy whose back I’m watching.”

He speared a home fry and chomped it down before continuing. “That’s what really burns me about some gang punk spouting that bullshit about Lucas, that naming him heir proves Mr. Cortez doesn’t care about the Cabal.”

“So it’s true.”

“It’s true that Lucas is the named heir, but that’s all anyone but Mr. Cortez himself can say for sure.”

He slowly drained half his cup of coffee, as if deciding how to continue.

“You’ve never met Lucas’s brothers, have you?” he said. “Hector, William, Carlos…?”

“No.”

“Let’s just say that anyone who knows them and Lucas doesn’t think Mr. Cortez’s idea is completely crazy. Not that the others couldn’t run the Cabal—Hector and William, that is. But the best person to do it?” He shook his head. “If Benicio Cortez didn’t care about the Cabal, he’d pass it on to Hector and say, ‘good enough,’ and it’d run just fine. You know anything about Cortez Cabal history?”

“Not much. They were the first Cabal, and they’re still the most powerful—”