Chapter 52 Vince
Vince
I sat on the edge of the couch, laptop open, listings and blueprints spread across my screen like a war map. The penthouse behind me felt wrong.
I wasn’t bringing my wife back here after the island.
She needed a palace. Something that said mine without feeling like punishment.
A new listing loaded.
West Ridge. High above Villain, the streets where old money, and no one looked up unless they had a reason.
Stone facade. Tall arched windows. Iron balconies tangled with ivy. A long, curving drive through cypress that ended in double doors big enough to swallow a dynasty.
It looked built for kings.
I wanted it for a girl who watched shows in bed and pretended she didn’t need anyone.
The grounds were wide. High walls buried under green.
A central courtyard with a fountain I’d rip out and replace with water she could listen to when her head went loud.
Inside, the foyer opened into a cathedral space. Marble tempered by carved wood instead of the glossy developer bullshit I hated.
Dining room had enough bones to host sovereign and make them remember whose house they were in.
The master wing sat apart from everything else, reachable by a corridor that could be locked down in seconds. Security mattered with our last name.
Two offices, I marked them automatically, His and Hers. She built beside me.
The dressing room was big enough for the wardrobe she pretended she didn’t deserve and still had room for a chair where I’d sit while she talked through her day.
Off the main hall, a raw theatre space waited. Unfinished. I could already see it done.
The backyard, glass-walled pool house facing gardens. Easy to tint the glass and to hide a panic button exactly where her hand would land when she got anxious.
I added a note about adding a spa house.
I scrolled up for lower level specs.
Underground garage. Fourteen-car capacity. Private elevator. Vault poured in concrete, a good start. I re-labeled it in my head.
Planning notes mentioned possible helipad on the west terrace. Possible meant yes, with the right leverage.
I saw the jet immediately.
Her own plane with her name on the tail if she wanted it. Crew loyal to her first, then me. Flight plans she signed, not some dynasty father who thought daughters were inventory.
The thought calmed something vicious in my chest.
Power disguised as luxury. That was the language my girl deserved.
By the time the hour rolled over past midnight, this wasn’t a listing. It was a blueprint.
She should’ve been here, beside me, helping design it.
Instead I had a glass of water I hadn’t touched and too much Codex in my head.
She doesn’t get cornered in our house. I underlined it in the notes.
Security layered itself over the floorplan on instinct. Lockdown zones disguised as design.
Reinforced doors. Glass that refused to shatter. Safe rooms that opened from her side. An armory, contained and coded, where she’d never accidentally see it.
My wife wouldn’t open a drawer and see a gun sitting there.
I kept building past the wedding.
Six heirs, minimum. Legacy. Blood. I’d never wanted it. Never wanted to hand any child my last name and watch the world mark them as leverage.
Then Madeline walked into my life.
She’d be a good mother. That was the part that scared me. That I knew it. And I wanted to see it. Yet none of it happened unless she wanted it.
We’d have children if she chose that life. Not because ink written by dead men insisted. If she said no, that was the law.
If she said yes, I’d turn the world inside out to keep her safe while she did it.
Babies, a nursery with, blackout curtains, a couch big enough for me to sleep on when she was too tired to argue. Floors that forgave clumsy falls. A playroom with glass doors so she could see them and still breathe.
School years, quiet study spaces. A music room so “culture” belonged to them, not as a punishment.
Snack kitchen because the idea of anyone in my house wanting food made my jaw clench.
Teenagers, rooms with privacy without exposing them. Soundproofed walls. Exits that didn’t require walking past a hundred eyes. A gym for rage. A garage wing, because I wasn’t stupid enough to pretend my kids wouldn’t want engines and speed.
Accommodation at the estate for nannies to teachers. All staff that lived at our estate would not be given the best. Jealousy led to resentment. Resentment led to security breaches.
Holidays, a ridiculous tree in the receiving hall. Garlands threaded through subtle crest work. Kids sprawled on the rug like they owned the world.
They would. I’d make sure of it.
If she gave me children, I knew exactly what would happen to me.
I’d be wrecked. Completely. A man who used to say no and already be planning how to say yes the second he heard, Dad, please.
I’d done some version of this before, seventeen, covered in blood, six kids relying on me and Nik to get them through the night. That had been parenting by survival.
This would be the opposite.
I flipped back to the front gate.
Long drive equalled time. Cameras lost clarity across that distance. Engines had to slow. Anyone trying to rush the house would run out of road before they ran out of arrogance.
I added a checkpoint disguised as stone, archway with integrated cameras, bollards under the surface.
Guardhouse dressed as a guest pavilion. Guests came to see my wife, they didn’t need to feel like they were entering a prison wing.
The house split where it needed to, Public Wing. Private Wing. Family Wing.
Public wore the Codex. Private wore my guilt.
The Codex chamber replayed behind my eyes the second I traced the central atrium.
Crow men were meant to be fluent in power and restraint. I’d used one and thrown the other away. Every line I drew after that felt like a confession carved in stone.
In the public wing, the dining hall, the library, I buried exits into the walls. Private doors. Hidden corridors. Routes she could use when the scrutiny turned vicious. Spaces she could slip into and close the door, back to wood, breathing like a human being, not a performance piece.
The private wing got more of me.
Master suite, sitting room, bedroom, ensuite, personal kitchen, terrace. Each threshold another step away from cameras.
Houses aren’t made with families like ours in mind.
I added a proper medical suite off the quieter corridor. Federated feeds. Private access. Doctors I’d vet myself.
If I was shot, stabbed, or broke a bone. It would be treated here.
If she dropped in our house. She’d wake up with someone at her side who gave a shit about Madeline, not headlines.
Then I opened the private note I hadn’t shown anyone.
The jewellery room schematics came next. Velvet drawers. Glass-top island.
My chest eased the second I started designing the collar vault.
Flush in the wall. Invisible until the right panel was touched. Primary lock keyed to me. Inside, lined slots, stands, hooks. Each collar with a home.
Daily pieces, slim, elegant. The sort of thing dynasty women pretended was just jewellery. A narrow band at her throat that read as luxury to anyone who didn’t know what it really said.
Formal pieces, heavy, unapologetic. For rooms full of crests who needed reminding whose wife they were looking at.
Private ones, weighted with our own rules. Only for us.
I pictured mornings in that room, her in one of my shirts. Her whispering yes, Daddy when I asked her if she was ready to kneel. That sound had wrecked me every time.
The cabinet could never feel like captivity. That mattered more than how badly I wanted it.
I added the second lock.
Her fingerprint overlaying mine.
Dual access.
Not because she’d ever want to open it without me.
Because I loved her by building exits just as much as I built walls.
This was what it looked like when I gave the ugly parts of me somewhere holy to live. My need to own, to structure, to control—trained into protection instead of punishment.
I thought about her on my lap in that dressing room, my thumb tracing the edge of a collar while I murmured Crow words she now understood. I love you. Mine. Wife.
She’d said I love you, Daddy in my mother tongue once. I would earn the right to hear it again.
That memory sat right next to the Codex chamber now. The best of me and the worst of me in the same language.
The house became the apology I couldn’t give her yet.
Rooms where she could be the Crow wife the world needed and the woman in an oversized shirt who liked trash TV and ridiculous heels.
The wardrobe wing and jewellery room slotted back around the collar vault, perfect and precise.
My thumb rested on the glass over the word Daddy in my notes.
I wanted that word back from her more than I wanted this entire estate.