5. Maddox Creed
MADDOX CREED
My wife was smart, always had been… calculated too, but this shit was different. This wasn’t somebody deleting a few emails and hoping for the best.
The deeper I looked at it, the more organized it seemed. The more organized it seemed, the more I started wondering who the hell was really running the show.
Standing from my desk, I walked over to the large window overlooking the warehouse floor below.
Most people would’ve looked at the operation and seen money.
I saw my father.
The warehouse had changed over the years, but the foundation remained the same. Men moved shipments from one side of the building to the other while forklifts rolled through the aisles. Some of the inventory was legitimate. Some wasn’t.
That’s how the Creed empire had always operated. One hand washed the other. The legal businesses brought legitimacy. The streets brought leverage. Together, they built a fortune.
A fortune my father spent decades creating.
A fortune that now belonged to me and Kyro.
Rozay had stepped away from this side of things years ago, so the day-to-day operations of the warehouse mostly fell on me and my youngest brother now.
For years, I wore that responsibility with pride.
Today?
I wasn’t sure what the fuck I felt.
My eyes followed a shipment being loaded onto a truck as a thought hit me square in the chest.
Apollo Creed had connections everywhere.
Lawyers, judges, politicians, business owners, security companies, private investigators… you name it, he had connections.
If pops wanted something handled, it got handled.
No questions asked.
The thought should’ve meant nothing.
Instead, it settled somewhere in the back of my mind and refused to leave. Maybe because this entire situation felt bigger than Luciana. Bigger than Gia. Bigger than a scared twenty-two-year-old woman trying to hold onto her man.
There were too just many moving parts.
My phone suddenly buzzed against the desk behind me.
The sound immediately pulled me from my thoughts.
Turning around, I walked back over and glanced down at the screen.
It was an unknown number.
For a second, I considered letting the shit ring.
Then I answered. “Yeah.”
“Mr. Creed.”
It was the PI, and immediately, my attention sharpened.
“What you got?”
“Not enough.”
I sucked my teeth.
“Then why the fuck you calling me?”
A brief chuckle came through the speaker.
“Because I found something.”
I dropped into my chair and told him, “Talk then.”
Papers shuffled on the other end before he finally continued. “The attorney is real.”
“No shit.”
“I’m not talking about the attorney existing. I’m talking about the paper trail.”
That got my attention. I leaned back and said, “And?”
“The NDA was legitimate. The consultations were legitimate. The billing records were legitimate.”
“So what?”
“So whoever put this together wasn’t winging it.” He paused then said, “He had meetings.”
“He?”
The PI paused again, “Sorry. They had meetings.”
My eyes narrowed, but I tried not to read too much into that, or he was referring to the lawyer. With a clear of my throat, I said, “Keep talking.”
“There were multiple drafts before the final agreement. Multiple consultations. Multiple revisions.”
Every word made the situation sound bigger. More deliberate. More calculated. Nothing about it sounded rushed. Nothing about it sounded emotional. It all sounded planned.
“You’re telling me shit I already know.”
“No. I’m telling you this because whoever was behind it knew exactly what they were doing.”
I didn’t say anything right away. Then I mumbled, “What else?”
The PI hesitated long enough for me to notice. Then said, “I haven’t found the name yet.”
The answer immediately irritated the fuck out of me. So, I told his ass, “Then keep digging.”
“I’m already digging.”
“Dig faster, nigga.”
He laughed.
“Trust me. I’m trying.” For a few seconds neither one of us spoke. Then he said something that stopped me cold. “Your wife wasn’t the only person protecting that secret.”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means exactly what I said.”
Silence filled the line. I’m talking, heavy silence. The kind that made a man’s mind start connecting dots he wasn’t ready to connect.
Finally, I broke it. “You got proof?”
“Not yet.” The answer came too damn fast. “But I’ve been doing this a long time, Mr. Creed.”
“And?”
“And people don’t pull off something this organized by themselves.”
My grip tightened around the phone, because deep down, I already knew he was right.
The question wasn’t whether somebody helped Luciana. The question was who the fuck it was, and I trusted him to find that out.
Slowly lowering the phone from my ear, I stared at it for a second before tossing it onto the desk.
The call was over, but my thoughts weren’t.
Leaning back in my chair, I looked out across the warehouse floor again. Forklifts continued moving inventory while employees went about their day like nothing had changed, business as usual.
Meanwhile, I felt like I was standing in the middle of a damn minefield.
Every answer seemed to create another problem.
At first, I thought this was about Gia…
Then it became about Nylah…
Then it became about Luciana…
Now it was becoming something bigger than all three of them, because if somebody helped hide my daughter, that meant somebody else made a decision that wasn’t theirs to make.
The shit pissed me off all over again. Not the loud kind of anger. Not the type that had you throwing punches or breaking shit.
This was worse.
This was the kind that sat in your chest and burned. The kind that kept you awake at night. The kind that made you question every damn thing.
My eyes drifted toward the framed picture sitting on the corner of my desk.
It was one taken during a family vacation a couple years ago of me, MJ and Michael.
For a second, I just stared at it.
Nylah should’ve been in that picture. Maybe not literally, but she should’ve been part of my life. Part of our family. Part of all the memories we’d spent years creating.
Instead, she’d been living an entirely separate life while I walked around completely unaware she even existed.
“Damn.”
The word slipped out before I could stop it.
I grabbed the picture and turned it face down. Not because I didn’t love my sons, but because looking at it suddenly hurt.
A knock sounded against my office door.
This time, I actually answered. “Yeah.”
One of the warehouse supervisors stepped inside holding a clipboard. “Truck just came in from Savannah.”
I nodded.
Normally, that would’ve led to a ten-minute conversation. Instead, all I said was, “Handle it.”
The man frowned.
“Everything alright?”
I looked at him. Then immediately looked away. Apparently, everybody was asking me that shit lately.
“I’m good.”
He clearly didn’t believe me, but he was smart enough not to push.
The second he left, I stood from my desk, walking over to the window again, I slid my hands into my pockets and watched the operation below.
My father used to say a man could tell the health of his empire by how it ran when he wasn’t looking.
If that was true, then the empire was doing just fine.
The problem was its king wasn’t.
For years, I thought the hardest part of life was building something worth passing down.
Money…
Property…
Businesses...
A legacy…
Now I realized none of that shit mattered if you couldn’t trust the people standing beside you.
My phone lit up again.
This time it wasn’t the PI.
It was Luciana.
Just seeing her name on the screen tightened something in my chest. The text she sent was just a screenshot with a therapist’s information.
Date, time and location.
Underneath it were four simple words.
HER: Can we please try?
I stared at the message for a long time, long enough for the screen to go dark. Long enough for my phone to lock itself. Then I finally unlocked it again and reread the text.
Part of me wanted to ignore it. Part of me wanted to tell her it was too late. Part of me wanted to ask how the fuck she expected a stranger to fix something she’d spent nine years breaking.
Instead, I typed a single word.
ME: Okay.
The message showed delivered.
A few seconds later, the three little dots appeared. Then disappeared. Then appeared again. Eventually, nothing came through.
I slipped the phone back into my pocket and looked out across the warehouse one more time, because agreeing to therapy didn’t mean I was ready to forgive her. It didn’t mean I trusted her. Hell, it didn’t even mean I believed our marriage could survive.
It just meant one thing.
Before I walked away from everything we’d built together, I needed to know I’d done everything I could.
I stood here for a few seconds longer before pulling my phone back out. I opened one of the pictures Gia had sent me.
Nylah couldn’t have been more than seven or eight in this one. She was standing in front of some science project with a blue ribbon in her hand and the biggest smile on her face. Looking at the picture should’ve made me happy.
Instead, it pissed me off because I should’ve been there. I should’ve been the one taking the picture. The one bragging about it. The one standing beside her acting like she’d just cured cancer because that’s what parents did.
Instead, I was looking at a memory after the fact like some damn outsider.
My jaw tightened as I stared at the screen.
Nine years.
That number kept hitting different every time I thought about it.
Locking my phone, I shoved it back into my pocket and grabbed my keys from the desk.
Sitting around this office wasn’t doing shit for me. If anything, it was making things worse. I needed air. Needed space. Needed a break from everybody asking if I was okay when we all knew the answer to that question was hell no.
After killing the lights, I stepped out of my office and headed toward the warehouse floor, already knowing one thing for sure. The answers I had weren’t enough, and the ones I was still waiting on were probably going to hurt even worse.
By the time I pulled into Ma’s driveway, the sun was already starting to set.
For a minute, I just sat here with the engine running. Part of me wanted to leave. Not because I didn’t want to see her, but because I was tired of talking and thinking. Flat out tired of replaying the same shit over and over in my head.
Eventually, I killed the engine and climbed out.
The aroma of food hit me before I even made it to the front porch. It didn’t matter what day of the week it was, somehow Ma always had something cooking.
I opened the front door and stepped inside.
“Ma.”
“In here…” She called out from the kitchen.
I walked in and found her standing at the stove stirring something in a pot while music played softly in the background.
The second she looked up, her smile appeared, but the second she really looked at me, it disappeared.
“You look terrible.”
I let out a laugh. “Good to see you too.”
“I’m serious.” She turned the stove down before pointing toward one of the stools at the island. “Sit.”
I pulled out the stool and sat down. Immediately, she stopped what she was doing. That alone told me she knew something was wrong, because usually I’d have to fight for her attention when she was cooking.
“What happened?”
I rubbed my hand across my beard. “Nothing.”
“Boy, if you don’t stop lying to me.”
My gaze dropped to the countertop. For a second, I considered leaving it alone, and it damn sure wasn’t because I wanted to protect Luciana.
Finally, I looked up.
“Luciana knew.”
Her brows pulled together immediately. “Knew what?”
I swallowed hard.
“About Nylah.”
The confusion on her face deepened. “What you mean she knew about Nylah?”
“She knew about the pregnancy, ma. The whole time, she knew about my daughter.”
Silence filled the air. I’m talking complete silence. The kind that made the entire room feel still.
Ma blinked her eyes twice, like she was trying to make sure she’d heard me correctly. Then she whispered, “What?”
“She found the emails years ago.”
I watched the color slowly drain from her face. “Years ago?”
I nodded.
“Gia emailed me when she found out she was pregnant. Luciana saw the messages before I did.”
The spoon slipped from my mother’s hand and landed against the stove with a loud clatter.
“How long?” she asked quietly.
The question hit me harder than I expected. Maybe because I already knew what was coming next. Maybe because hearing somebody else ask it made it feel worse.
I leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling for a second before looking at her again.
“The whole time.” Ma just stared. She wasn’t moving. Wasn’t speaking… nothing. So I finished it for her. “The whole nine, almost ten years.”
She looked so disappointed. Slowly, she lowered herself into the chair across from me.
“I don’t understand.”
Neither did I…
Hell, I’d spent the last several days trying to understand it myself.
“Luciana knew she was pregnant?” She asked, still trying to process it.
“Yeah.”
“And she never said anything?”
I shook my head and answered with, “Nope. Nothing”
Mama just looked away. Then she whispered with so much hurt laced in her voice, “Oh, Luciana…”
Not hateful.
Not judgmental.
Just disappointed, like somebody she loved had broken her heart too.