Chapter 6 - The Man Beside Me
Vincent Caruso had been in my life since I was nineteen.
He was there when my father was killed.
There when I took control of the Hale organization.
There when Serena and I married.
There at the hospital when Oliver was born.
He had carried my son in his arms.
He had called Serena “family.”
And now, as he stood in my drawing room with Dante Morelli accusing him of betrayal, I wanted the accusation to be false more than I had wanted anything in years.
Vincent laughed.
Not loudly.
Not naturally.
“You trust a Morelli over me?”
“I trust evidence,” I said.
His smile vanished.
“After everything I’ve done for you?”
“Answer the question.”
He looked at the photograph again.
Then he looked at Emma.
I saw it.
The calculation.
The decision.
Vincent reached for his gun.
My security team moved first.
Two guards took him down before he could clear the holster. Oliver screamed. Emma covered him with her body, turning him away from the violence.
“Get him out,” I ordered.
Vincent struggled as they dragged him toward the door.
“You think this ends with me?” he shouted. “You don’t even know what Serena did!”
The words stopped me.
“Bring him back.”
The guards froze.
Vincent breathed heavily, his face red with rage.
“What did Serena do?” I asked.
He smiled.
“She found the accounts. She found the names. She found out I had been financing the war between you and Morelli.”
Emma stared at him.
“You killed her?”
Vincent’s expression flickered.
“I did not mean for her to die.”
My world went silent.
“What did you do?” I asked.
Vincent looked at me.
“She threatened to take Oliver and leave you. She said she would go to the police with everything.”
I could barely breathe.
“She was sick,” I said.
“She was alive when I gave her the medication.”
Emma made a broken sound.
Dante’s hand moved toward his weapon.
I raised my voice.
“Do not.”
Vincent’s smile turned ugly.
“She trusted me. She thought I was helping with her treatment. I only needed to make her weak enough to stop asking questions.”
My hands were shaking.
“Her cancer,” I whispered.
Vincent’s eyes did not move.
“The diagnosis was real. But the complications were not.”
The room blurred.
Serena had died in a hospital bed while I held her hand and told her I was sorry. She had been pale, exhausted, terrified. She had asked me to take care of Oliver.
And all along, the man standing behind me at her funeral had known why she was dying.
I stepped toward Vincent.
Every guard in the room went still.
“Why?” I asked.
He laughed once.
“Because you became weak after you met her. You wanted to leave. You wanted clean business. You wanted to become a father who read bedtime stories.”
His expression twisted.
“Your father built this empire. I helped you keep it. And Serena wanted to turn you into a man who believed love mattered.”
I hit him.
Once.
My fist split against his mouth.
The guards pulled me back.
Vincent spit blood on the marble floor and laughed.
“She was right about you, Preston. You are weak.”
Oliver’s voice rose behind Emma.
“Don’t hurt my daddy.”
Everything stopped.
Oliver stood trembling, tears on his face.
He looked at Vincent.
“You made Mommy sick?”
Vincent stared at him.
Oliver’s voice became louder.
“She loved Daddy. She loved me.”
The words came out broken, but they came.
My son was speaking.
Not because he was healed.
Because he was angry.
Because he was grieving.
Because he had been holding too much pain inside for too long.
I walked to him and dropped to my knees.
“Yes,” I said softly. “She loved us.”
Oliver grabbed my shirt.
“Then why did she leave?”
I held him.
“Because someone hurt her. But she did not choose to leave you.”
He sobbed against my shoulder.
Behind us, Vincent was taken away.
But as he reached the door, he looked back at me.
“You still don’t know where the money is,” he said. “And when the people I work for come, they will not care about your son’s voice.”
Then he was gone.
Dante Morelli stood in the silence that followed.
“The people Vincent works for,” he said, “are not from Chicago.”
I looked at him.
“Who are they?”
Dante’s face was grim.
“The Blackwell Syndicate.”
I knew the name.
Everyone in our world knew it.
They were not a family.
They were not an organization.
They were an international machine that bought officials, erased witnesses, and turned criminal empires into disposable parts.
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And according to Vincent, they were coming for my son.
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