13. WINSTON #4
Kaisen drank like a man dying of thirst, water spilling down his chin and soaking into the blanket. When the bottle was empty, he dropped it and looked up at me.
“He knows,” Kaisen said, his voice hoarse. “Amai knows everything.”
I crouched beside him, keeping my expression neutral. “What does he know?”
“The sperm swap. The clinic. Victor’s involvement. All of it.” Kaisen’s hands were still shaking. “He knows I violated Truth. He knows the baby could be mine.”
I processed this information quickly, running through the implications. If Amai knew about the manipulation, if he understood the full scope of what had been done to Truth, then this wasn’t about legacy anymore. This wasn’t about family or power or control.
This was about vengeance.
“How did he find out?” I asked.
“When we got into it at the clinic.” Kaisen wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But he knows. And he’s—Dad, he’s not right. He’s not thinking straight.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Kaisen took a shuddering breath and began to speak.
He told me about the clinic—how Amai had appeared like he’d been summoned, how he’d stabbed Kaisen in front of Truth and the medical staff without hesitation or remorse. How Truth had screamed. How Amai had looked at him with eyes that held nothing but murder.
He told me about the hospital—how Amai had walked into his room in the middle of the night, taken the nurse call button, reminded him of childhood trauma. The toy. The pool. The drowning attempt.
“He said I never learned,” Kaisen whispered. “He said I kept taking things that belonged to him, and now I was going to pay for it.”
“What else?”
Kaisen’s jaw tightened. “He injected me with something. Knocked me out. When I woke up, I was in that hole.” He gestured weakly toward the concrete tomb behind us. “He told me I was going to die down there. That no one would find me. That Truth would forget I ever existed.”
I stood slowly, my mind working through the timeline. Amai had extracted Kaisen from the hospital, transported him here, sealed him in that tomb—all while Truth slept peacefully in the cabin nearby.
The level of compartmentalization required for that was extraordinary. Sociopathic, even.
I’d taught Amai to separate emotion from action. To do what needed to be done without hesitation or guilt.
But I’d never taught him to bury his own brother alive.
That was something else. Something darker.
“He came back,” Kaisen continued, his voice gaining strength. “This morning. But he came back and opened the lid just enough to talk to me.”
“What did he say?”
Kaisen’s expression twisted with rage and humiliation. “He told me he fucked her. That he made love to Truth last night while I was down there in the dark. He said she was his now. That she’d never think about me again.”
I felt something cold settle deeper in my chest. Amai had claimed Truth. Not just physically, but emotionally. He’d crossed the line from obsession into possession.
“I told him she’d leave him once she found out about Yahmaria,” Kaisen said. “Once she learned he was still married, still tied to Victor’s daughter. I told him Truth would fall apart, and I’d be there to pick up the pieces.”
“And what did he say?”
“He tried to seal the lid. He was going to leave me down there to die.” Kaisen’s hands clenched into fists. “But I got the text out to you first. He didn’t know I still had my watch.”
I looked at the Apple Watch on Kaisen’s wrist—scratched, dirty, but still functional. That small piece of technology had saved his life.
“He’s going to destroy her,” Kaisen said quietly. “Truth. He’s going to love her so hard it breaks her. And when she tries to leave, when she realizes what he really is—he won’t let her go. He’ll destroy it all before he lets her walk away.”
I stared at my son—broken, traumatized, but still defiant—and realized he was right.
Amai had always been ruthless. I’d cultivated that ruthlessness, shaped it, weaponized it. But ruthlessness without control was just chaos.
And Amai was chaos now.
He’d stabbed his brother in public. He’d built a concrete tomb and buried Kaisen alive. He’d claimed Truth with a possessiveness that bordered on madness.
All because he loved her.
Love.
That was the variable I hadn’t accounted for. I’d assumed Amai’s interest in Truth was transactional—a means to an end, a way to secure his legacy through the child she carried. I’d thought his obsession was rooted in control, in the need to possess something that had been taken from him.
But it wasn’t control.
It was love.
Real, consuming, destructive love.
The kind of love that made men do unforgivable things. The kind of love that burned through logic and strategy and self-preservation. The kind of love that would launch ten thousand ships and start a war.
I’d never loved anyone like that. Not even Odette, though I cared for her in my own way. I’d always kept emotion separate from action, desire separate from decision-making.
But Amai hadn’t learned that lesson. Or maybe he’d learned it too well and then unlearned it the moment Truth Renois entered his life.
Either way, he was out of control.
And out of control meant dangerous. Not just to himself, but to the entire family structure.
“Get him to the car,” I told the men. “Clean him up. Get him medical attention. Keep him somewhere secure until I decide what to do next.”
They nodded and helped Kaisen to his feet. Kaisen swayed, barely able to stand, but he locked eyes with me before they led him away.
“You created this,” he said, his voice low and bitter. “You made him into this. And now you can’t control him.”
I didn’t respond. There was nothing to say.
Because Kaisen was right.
But I’d never taught him what to do when the thing he wanted most wasn’t power.
When it was a woman.
When it was love.
I watched the men disappear down the trail with Kaisen between them, and then I turned back to the concrete hole.
The steel lid lay open, revealing the tomb beneath. I walked to the edge and looked down into the darkness.
This was what my son had built. A prison designed to break his own brother. A monument to obsession and rage.
And somewhere in that cabin, less than a quarter mile away, Truth Renois slept peacefully, unaware that the man protecting her was capable of this.
I pulled out my phone and stared at the screen.
Priest was locked away in Terrell’s facility. Kaisen was extracted and secured. Truth was isolated at the lakehouse with Amai.
All the pieces were in position.
But for the first time in decades, I wasn’t entirely sure what move to make next.
Because Amai wasn’t playing by the rules anymore. He wasn’t operating within the family structure or respecting the hierarchy.
He was operating on instinct. On emotion. On love.
And love made men unpredictable.
I typed out a message: Keep Kaisen sedated and under guard. No contact with anyone until I say otherwise.
The response came immediately: Copy.
I pocketed the phone and took one last look at the concrete tomb.
He’d learned ruthlessness from me.
But the love that drove him to use it? That was all his own.
And it was going to destroy everything if I didn’t stop it.
I turned and walked back down the trail toward the cars, my mind already working through the next steps.
Amai thought he’d won. He thought he’d eliminated the threat, claimed his woman, secured his future.
But he’d forgotten the most important lesson I’d ever taught him.
Power wasn’t about what you could take.
It was about what you could keep.
And right now, Amai was holding onto something that was going to slip through his fingers the moment Truth discovered who he really was.
The moment she learned about Yahmaria. About the concrete hole. About the violence he was capable of.
She’d run.
And when she did, Amai would either let her go—
Or he’d destroy her trying to keep her.
Either way, the family would fracture. The empire would crumble. Everything I’d built would collapse under the weight of my son’s obsession.
Unless I stopped it first.
I reached the cars and climbed into the driver’s seat. The men were already loading Kaisen into one of the SUVs, wrapping him in blankets, administering an IV. He’d be out soon.
I started the engine and pulled onto the dirt road, heading back toward the city.
Behind me, the concrete tomb lay open under the stars, empty now but still radiating menace.
A reminder of what my son had become.
And a warning of what I’d have to do to stop him.