Wells
TWENTY-EIGHT
Laetare: Midway through the fast comes a single rose-colored Sunday when the church eases its sorrow and lets a glimpse of renewal through. The man who lived in the dark started showing up in the sunlight, remade in ways no one expected.
Cain shows up first, still shaking rain off his coat.
The others come in behind him, loosening collars, dropping into chairs, somebody complaining about the rain. None of them knows what this is. In a few minutes, every man in this room is going to look at Ridge and me differently, and there's no version of the next hour where that doesn't happen.
Ridge doesn't wait for anyone to settle.
"Vin had Dad killed. He orchestrated all of it."
The room goes silent. Not the kind that builds, the kind that crashes.
Cain's hand freezes halfway to his chair, and Keller's head snaps toward Ridge, then me, then back.
"What?" Reeves booms.
Ridge doesn't flinch.
"We don't need to go into all of the specifics here. That's not why I called the meeting. It was time that you knew. I didn't tell you sooner because I didn't want any of you to get your hands dirty while we handled it."
"What the fuck? How? Why? I want specifics," Cain says.
"Another time. Wells brought me proof that Vin arranged the hit. He used the Duvalls as cover. That's what you need to know."
Reeves is on his feet before Ridge finishes. "Six months." He says it low, which is worse than the boom. "You two have known for six months. I run security for this company, and you let me walk around blind while you handled it between you."
Ridge meets him. "That was the point. None of you touch it, none of you answer for it. You stay clean."
A muscle pulls tight in Reeves's cheek. His hands flatten on the table.
Cain leans back in his chair, exhales a breath, and mumbles under his breath.
"Jesus Christ," Rhodes says, cutting his eyes to me. I hold his gaze.
Reeves shoves his chair back and stands. He doesn't pace. He just stands there, hands braced on the back of the chair.
"How do you know?"
"The burner that called Ridge that night never traced back to anyone. The Duvalls confessed, the case closed, and everybody moved on. I couldn't. When I went back through the money, I found a trust Vin had buried, and the second I had that, the burner led straight to him."
Cain runs a hand over his head.
"He was good," Ridge says. "He made us think we had the answer, and we stopped looking."
For a second, nobody says anything. Vin taught half of us to drive. He sat at the end of the table every Christmas and called us his boys. Cain says it before I can. "He had his hand on my shoulder at the funeral."
I pull a cigarette from my jacket but don't light it, holding it between two fingers while I talk.
"It took six weeks to map. Every account, every shell, every trust he built in thirty years, all of it offshore, layered so deep he was sure no one could follow. I followed. By the end, I had the whole structure on one screen, every dollar and where it slept."
Reeves crosses his arms but stays quiet now.
"Then I took it. One night, while he was asleep, I drained the accounts, dissolved the shells, and scattered the money through so many hoops he'll die chasing it. He woke up to zero."
Keller frowns. "He's got lawyers. He'll claw it back."
"No. That's the part he understood before any of you will.
" I set the cigarette on the table. "Every cent was dirty.
Drug money washed through a fake antiques business.
The second he walks into a bank or a courtroom or a police station to fight me for it, he's confessing to laundering and trafficking and a body.
I didn't have to hide that I took it. I just made sure that reaching for it is the same as handing himself a cell.
He can see exactly where it all went. He can't touch a dollar without ending himself. "
The room stays silent.
"He's unbankable now. Anywhere he tries, his accounts come back flagged, and they close him out.
His cards are dead. His name throws an alert at any institution that runs it.
He can't move money, can't travel easily, can't walk through a single door like he used to.
He's been completely stripped of any power, money or ability to operate like he did before. "
Rhodes tilts his head. "The people who worked for him?"
"He mostly worked on his own. He never even met the suppliers in person. He's radioactive now. Nobody in that world will work with him again. He spent his whole life being the man everyone needed. Now he's the man no one will touch."
Rhodes's voice comes flat. "You didn't kill him."
"No."
"Why the fuck not?"
I meet his eyes without flinching.
"Because a bullet's over in a second. I didn't want it over.
I kept everything. The whole file, Dad, the shipments, the bodies, sitting in a place that releases on its own if anything happens to me or to this family.
He knows it's there. He surfaces, he talks, he so much as says the name Stone out loud, and it goes straight to the people he's spent thirty years terrified of.
That file is a leash on his throat for the rest of his life. "
Keller picks up his glasses and turns them over.
"So he's just out there."
"He's somewhere in Eastern Europe with no money and no name, looking over his shoulder every morning, knowing exactly who did it and knowing there's not one move he can make.
" I pick the cigarette back up. "He gave up a wife, kids, a life, every human thing a man's supposed to have, all of it for the money.
The money's gone, and with that, he has nothing and no one.
He will die a lonely and destitute man."
Reeves shakes his head, the muscle in his cheek tight.
"That's not justice. That's mercy dressed up as punishment. He belongs in the ground next to Dad."
"Maybe," I say. "But think about what the ground would actually give him.
Peace. He killed Dad for a hundred-million-dollar shipment that got seized at our own dock three weeks later.
He torched his whole life and his oldest friendship for nothing, and a bullet just lets him stop knowing that.
I'd rather he live every single day inside what it bought him, which is nothing at all.
I'm not putting another body on this family, and I'm not making us into the thing he is.
Ridge and I made the call. You want to be angry, be angry at me. "
"What did you tell everyone else? Vin was around for thirty years. People notice when someone like that disappears."
Ridge answers this time.
"He retired. Moved to England. Bought a cottage. That's the story."
Cain laughs, but there's no humor in it.
The silence stretches. Then Keller speaks again, quieter now.
"He was practically an uncle to us."
I don't look away.
"He killed our father and countless others to satisfy his own greed and used us to cover it. He doesn't get to be family anymore."
Reeves stands again, his hands curling into fists at his sides.
Cain closes his eyes.
"So the Duvalls died for Vin's lie."
"Yes."
The word sits in the room like a stone dropped into still water. Ripples spreading. No way to pull it back.
Rhodes leans back in his chair, arms crossed.
"And Ridge carried that."
Ridge's voice comes out rough.
"I carried it."
Reeves looks at Ridge, then at me.
"You should have told us sooner."
"Maybe," I say. "But it was cleaner this way. Vin's gone. You know the truth now. Now we can move on, growing the business, honoring Mom and Dad with the Stone name."
"And if one of us wants to finish it? Track him down and put him in the ground anyway?" Reeves asks.
Ridge answers before I can.
"Then you do it knowing it's revenge, not justice. We made our choice. You make yours."
The room goes quiet again, and no one moves. Cain reaches for the bottle of water in front of him but doesn't open it. Just turns it in his hands.
"Did anyone else know? Before you told Ridge?" Cain asks.
"No," I answer confidently.
"You sat on it alone."
I meet his eyes.
"Until I had proof. Yes."
Cain sets the bottle down. Reeves runs a hand over the back of his neck.
Keller tilts his head, studying me.
"Wait."
I brace for the next question.
"You would have smoked half a pack of cigarettes by now. How long have you gone without smoking?"
The shift catches me off guard. I glance at Ridge, who's watching me with something that looks like faint amusement. I hold the unsmoked cigarette up and smile.
"Going on three months."
Cain blinks.
"I'm sorry. Are we handling one family revelation at a time, or should I sit down again?"
"No fucking way. Three months. You."
"Believe it, brother."
Rhodes leans forward.
"Are you dying or something? I never thought I'd see the day that Wells Stone didn't have a cigarette in his mouth."
I turn the cigarette between my fingers, feeling the paper, and the crunch of the tobacco inside. Even though the cravings to smoke are done, I still like to hold one in my fingers.
"I stopped reaching for one every time I sat down to work. It took a while, but I think I'm finally over the hump."
Reeves crosses his arms.
"Wonders never cease."
I don't say the rest. I don't tell them about the first week, when my hands shook so badly I couldn't type or about the breathing exercises that replaced the burn in my lungs.
I don't tell them about all the other changes, how I'm trying to be healthier, get out more, put myself in the sunlight at least a few hours a day.
Cera runs under this moment like a current I can't name. But I don't pull her into this room. She doesn't belong to them. She belongs to the part of me that's still trying to figure out how to be different.
Keller watches me for another beat, then nods.
"Good for you, bro. I'm proud of you."
The room settles again.
Cain leans forward, elbows on the table.
"So what happens now? We just go back to running the business like none of this happened?"
Ridge answers.
"We run the business. We keep the family together, and we move forward, just like Dad would have wanted."
Reeves's voice is flat.
"And if Vin shows up?"
"He won't," I say. "I can assure you he wants to stay as far away from us as possible."
"But if he does?"
I meet his gaze.
"Then we finish it."
Keller stands, smoothing his jacket.
"I need a drink."
Cain laughs, short and sharp.
"Yeah. That sounds about right."
Reeves doesn't move yet. He's still looking at Ridge, then at me.
"Don't leave me out on shit like this. It's my job. But thank you for handling it. Vin is lucky I didn't know."
Ridge doesn't answer.
"That's precisely why we decided not to tell you. Trust me, Ridge had the same instinct you have. This way is better. We keep our hands clean, avoid another body connected to us, and business carries on."
Reeves nods slowly, then pushes his chair back.
"Next time, don't wait six months to tell me."
"Noted."
The brothers start to leave. Rhodes claps Ridge on the shoulder as he passes. Keller pauses at the door, glancing back at me.
"Three months. That's real, Wells."
I don't know what to say to that, so I just nod.
Cain is the last to leave. He stops next to my chair, his voice low.
"You did the right thing. Bringing it to us."
"We're family. I was always going to tell y'all."
He leaves without another word.
The door closes. Ridge and I sit in the quiet. I pull the cigarette from my pocket again and set it on the table between us.
Ridge looks at it, then at me.
"You good?"
I think about Cera, about the mornings I wake up and reach for my phone before I remember I don't get to call her anymore. I wonder if she would be proud of me. She always hated my smoking.
"Getting there."
Ridge nods, then stands and buttons his jacket. "The Tchoupitoulas center opening's still Sunday?"
"Yep. A few setbacks getting the final CO, but it came through this afternoon, as a matter of fact. Party is Sunday and open for the kids to come after school on Monday."
"And you're really going to stand up in front of everyone to speak on behalf of Argentum? I still can't believe it."
"I am. I'm proud of this and excited that it has all come together."
He shakes his head, close to a smile. "You've come a long way, bro. I'm really happy for you. I can tell you're working hard, and it's paying off. Mom would love what you're doing."
The mat is in its usual spot, second row from the back, close to the window. None of my brothers know I've been coming to yoga for three months since I quit smoking. It's probably the single thing that helped me kick the habit.
The studio smells like lavender and wood polish. It's become familiar now. I settle into an easy pose, palms resting on my knees, and let my shoulders drop.
Every Tuesday evening, the same room, the same routine. It has done more for me than a decade of screens and silence ever did.
I close my eyes and let the breath move.
In through the nose, out through the mouth.
The tightness in my chest loosens. The press conference sits somewhere in the back of my mind.
If anyone had asked me a year ago if I would have spearheaded a charity, much less put myself front and center to promote it, I would have laughed in their face.
Around me, the room fills, mats unroll and water bottles hit the floor with soft thuds. Someone laughs near the door. The air shifts as more bodies settle into the space.
"Good evening." The voice cuts through me like a blade.
It's not the normal instructor's voice or any voice I expected to hear again.
My breath stops. My hands tighten against my knees, fingers pressing hard into bone. The air in the room doesn't move. The sound around me fades to nothing.
I know that voice. I know the cadence of it. The warmth underneath the instruction. I know it from calls that ran until three in the morning and from an office where I sat across from her and pretended I didn't want to touch her.
I lift my head. It's Cera.
She stands at the front of the room in fitted black leggings and a loose white tank.
Her hair is pulled back in a low bun. She isn't wearing makeup.
She looks rested, settled in a way I never once saw on her when she was mine.
That's the thing that takes me apart. She's happy, and I had nothing to do with it.
Six months of silence, of building a life where I didn't reach for the things I used to reach for, of believing I'd never see her again, and she's standing ten feet away.
Then her eyes move across the room and stop on me. I watch it land. The instructor's calm holds for a second, two, and then something behind it slips, and I know she sees me.
Neither of us moves. The room settles around us, mats and towels and somebody's low laugh, and none of it reaches me. There's only her and the impossible fact of the same air.
I can't move. I can't breathe. After six months of becoming a man she might have stayed for, she's standing in front of me, and I'm the one who can't survive it.