7. WINSTON #2
I texted one of my men to get to the hospital and secure Kaisen’s room as soon as they put him in one. I texted another to find Amai.
The car hit a red light, and I felt the frustration spike through me like electricity.
“Run it,” I said.
“Sir?”
“Run the fucking light.”
He did.
We flew through the intersection, horns blaring behind us, but I didn’t care. Didn’t even register it.
All I could think about was Kaisen bleeding. About Amai’s rage. About Truth—that girl in the Seventh Ward who’d somehow become the center of everything.
About how I thought I could contain this.
How I thought I could control them.
The car accelerated again, pushing seventy on streets that had speed limits of thirty-five.
My driver didn’t slow down.
He knew better.
When Winston Landry said push the car, you pushed the car.
And you prayed that whatever was waiting at the destination was something you could survive.
If Kaisen died, everything I’d built, everything I’d planned, everything I’d sacrificed would crumble. Our empire would look weak. If we were already divided, then our enemies could overpower us.
Amai would be relentless in his revenge. There was no way around it.
The paramedics were already inside when I arrived.
I could see them through the glass doors of New Beginnings Fertility Center—two of them moving with practiced efficiency, securing a stretcher, loading equipment. The kind of chaos that meant someone was bleeding.
I didn’t run.
Running was for people who panicked. I walked through the doors with the same measured pace I used for everything else, and the receptionist’s eyes went wide the moment she recognized me.
“Mr. Landry—”
I didn’t acknowledge her. Just moved past the waiting area toward the back where the paramedics were working.
Dr. Beaumont appeared in the hallway, her brows furrowed, her hands shaking. She opened her mouth to speak, but I held up a hand. Not now. I needed to see.
The paramedics had Kaisen on the stretcher. His shirt was soaked through with blood. His eyes were half-closed, drifting in and out of focus. One of the paramedics was applying pressure to a wound on his side while the other checked vitals.
“Kaisen,” I said, my voice cutting through the chaos.
His eyes flickered toward me. Unfocused. Confused.
“What the fuck were you doing here?” I demanded.
He tried to speak. His lips moved but nothing came out at first. Then, weakly, “I was… I was here for my kid.”
I went very still.
“Your kid?”
“For Truth,” he managed, his voice barely a whisper. “I was here for Truth.”
The paramedics exchanged a glance. One of them said something into his radio about transport time. I didn’t hear it. I was too busy processing what my youngest son had just told me.
I’d told him.
I’d explicitly told him to let this shit go. To understand that the baby was Amai’s. That his role was to stay in the background, to keep his mouth shut, to not complicate the arrangement.
And he’d done exactly what I’d told him not to do.
“You stupid fuck,” I said quietly.
Kaisen’s eyes flickered again. He was fading. The blood loss was catching up with him.
“I told you,” I continued, my voice low. “I told you to let this go. I told you the baby was Amai’s. That’s the arrangement. That’s the deal. And you couldn’t just listen. You had to come here. You had to insert yourself into something that wasn’t yours to insert yourself into.”
“I—” Kaisen tried to speak again but coughed instead. Blood flecked his lips.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t waste your energy trying to explain. I don’t want to hear it.”
One of the paramedics looked at me. “Sir, we need to get him to the hospital. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
I waved them forward. They loaded him into the ambulance with practiced efficiency. I watched them work, my mind already calculating the fallout.
Amai had done this.
Amai had stabbed his own brother.
Which meant Amai had found out about the dual sperm situation. Which meant Dr. Beaumont had told him. Which meant everything I’d carefully orchestrated was now in a freefall.
“Mr. Landry,” Dr. Beaumont said quietly. She’d followed me outside. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know they would—”
“I don’t care what you didn’t know,” I said flatly. “What I care about is that my son is bleeding out in an ambulance because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”
“I didn’t tell him anything. Amai just—he figured it out. When he saw Kaisen here with Truth—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I said again.
I turned away from her and looked back at the ambulance. The paramedics were closing the doors. Kaisen’s pale face was visible for just a moment before they sealed him inside.
I’d lost my grip of this situation.
That was the real problem. Not Kaisen’s stupidity—I’d always known he was stupid. He mistook wanting something for deserving it. Not Dr. Beaumont’s incompetence—I’d always known she was weak. The real problem was that I’d underestimated Amai’s capacity for violence when it came to Truth.
I’d thought he’d be professional. Detached. Rational.
I’d thought wrong.
Because Amai wasn’t just angry. Amai was unleashed.
And there was no putting The Demon back in his cage once he’d tasted blood.
“You need to understand something,” I said to Dr. Beaumont, turning back to face her. “Kaisen won’t be able to protect himself from what’s coming. I won’t be able to protect him. Nobody will be able to protect him.”
“What do you mean?” she whispered.
“I mean that Amai has been waiting his entire life for a reason to let loose. For a reason to stop pretending to be civilized. For a reason to stop playing the game.” I stepped closer to her.
“And now he has one. His brother. His woman. His baby. Everything he cares about, all in one place, all threatened by the same person.”
“He won’t—”
“He will,” I said coldly. “He absolutely will. Amai has something to lose, Dr. Beaumont. And there’s no way to pull him back. Not this time. Not after this.”
I turned and walked back toward my car.
Behind me, I could hear the ambulance sirens starting. Could hear the sound of Kaisen being rushed toward a hospital where he might or might not survive.
But that wasn’t what worried me.
What worried me was what Amai was going to do next.
Because I’d raised him to be ruthless. I’d taught him that weakness got you killed. I’d shown him that the only way to survive in this world was to be colder, harder, more willing to do the unthinkable than anyone else.
And now he was going to use every single lesson I’d taught him.
On his own brother.
On the woman carrying his child.
On anyone who got in his way.
I’d created the bane of my existence.
And now I had to live with what he was capable of.
My driver was already pulling away from the curb when he asked the question I knew was coming.
“Should we follow the ambulance, sir?”
“Hell no,” I said flatly. “Kaisen will be aight. If I go to that damn hospital, I might just finish what Amai started and just get an outside heir and say fuck both of them.”
The driver didn’t respond. Just kept his eyes on the road like a professional. That’s why I kept him around—he knew when to shut the fuck up.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my messages. Nothing urgent. Nothing that couldn’t wait. The city moved on whether I was paying attention or not.
“Take me to Victor Baptiste’s house,” I said.
“Yes, sir.”
The drive across New Orleans gave me time to think. Time to process what had just happened at that clinic. Time to understand the magnitude of the fuck-up.
It was supposed to be seamless. Invisible. A contingency that nobody would ever need to know about.
My phone buzzed. I didn’t need to check the caller ID to know who it was.
I answered on the first ring.
“Amai—”
“Y’all all gon’ bleed for what y’all did to me.”
His voice was different. Colder than I’d ever heard it. And I’d raised him to be cold.
“But y’all gon’ suffer for what y’all did to Truth. I’m about to terrorize y’all ass since my restraint is not appreciated around this bitch.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone for a long moment, processing what I’d just heard.
Not anger about the business. Not rage about the betrayal or the manipulation or the fact that his own father had orchestrated this entire situation.
He was thinking about Truth.
That was the real problem.
That was the shift that changed everything.
I’d raised Amai to be ruthless. To understand that sentiment had no place in our world. In our business it was necessary. Not the big ass buildings we owned, nah, the underworld. Where we made our real money. We just cleaned it through our businesses.
And he’d learned those lessons well.
But somewhere along the way, I’d miscalculated.
I’d thought the surrogacy would be clinical. Transactional. A means to an end. A way to secure the Landry name without the complications of actual human connection. Something to shut Amai the fuck up!
Instead, my son had fallen in love with the surrogate.
And now he was going to burn the entire city down because of it.
“How much longer?” I asked my driver.
“Ten minutes, sir.”
I leaned back against the leather seat and closed my eyes.
I’d created a monster designed to protect the family empire. Instead, I’d created a man willing to destroy it for one woman. He would take everything I taught him and use it against us. Fuck.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Neither was the danger.
The car moved through the city in silence.
I stared out the window at New Orleans passing by—the streets I’d ruled for decades, the territory I’d built from nothing, the empire I’d sacrificed everything to create.
And now it was all threatening to collapse because of one woman.
Y’all gon’ bleed for what y’all did to me. But y’all gon’ suffer for what y’all did to Truth.
Amai’s voice echoed in my head.
Cold. Certain. Absolute. Fuck.
That wasn’t the voice of a man protecting his business interests.
That was the voice of a man who’d chosen love over empire.
And that terrified me more than any rival ever could.