Chapter 5 Atlas
Atlas
I didn’t think about anything except the work for the first two hours.
How could I? When you wiped out an entire rival family, there was no room for reflection.
Only tasks. Loose ends. Men to command, men to correct, men to remind that victory meant nothing if discipline slipped for even a second.
There were bodies to move, fires to put out—both literal and political—territories to secure, and questions to shut down before whispers turned into rebellions.
This was what was expected of a Cavalho. More importantly—this was what was expected of a don.
For as long as I could remember, the war with the Trimboli family had been the one constant in our world. They’d struck first. We were expected to strike last. My grandfather had said it so often that it became scripture:
“As long as one Trimboli draws breath, the Cavalho family is never safe.”
He hadn’t said that for effect. He’d said it because it was a truth carved into the marrow of our bones. Their family had taken more from us than any outsider could comprehend, and that night was the first time in decades we’d had a clear shot at ending this feud.
My grandfather was gone now, his blood barely dry before the family started circling like wolves, waiting to see who would rise.
That role had fallen to my father. And after him, it fell to me.
Whether I wanted it or not. A don-in-waiting didn’t get to question the path laid out for him.
He didn’t hesitate or falter. He carried the weight of an entire dynasty on his back and finished the wars the men before him could not.
So I focused on what a man in my position was supposed to focus on: order. Strategy. Elimination. Control. In that order.
The work was endless, and it kept me steady.
Violence didn’t rattle me; it was the one language I’d always understood.
But sometime after midnight, when the compound finally went quiet and the last of the men cleared out, the silence gave my mind room to wander.
And a sliver of memory pushed its way in—unwanted, unwelcome, persistent.
I shut it down immediately. Mercy was a weakness.
Regret was a crack in the foundation. Both could topple an empire faster than a bullet ever could.
If I was to inherit this throne—if I was to become the man my grandfather had trained me to be—then there was no space in me for softness or second-guessing.
Not when the stakes were absolute. Not when an entire organisation looked to me to uphold order with an iron hand.
So I poured a drink in my grandfather’s office—the office that felt too big now, heavy with ghosts and expectations. The liquor burned down my throat, but I barely tasted it. Leadership tasted nothing like I’d thought it would. It wasn’t victory. It was vigilance. Responsibility. Isolation.
I tried to focus on what came next—alliances that needed mending, territories we’d need to redistribute, men who needed to be reminded that power didn’t tolerate complacency. There were protocols for succession, protocols for war and punishment. My life was a series of protocols.
Rage. Power. Precision. Control.
That was the foundation.
It wasn’t the time for hesitation or reflection. And definitely not mercy. But the more I pushed the night down, the more it forced its way back into my mind—the smoke, the chaos, the moment my finger had hesitated on the trigger.
I shouldn’t have remembered it. I shouldn’t have felt anything at all.
A future don didn’t second-guess the orders his bloodline demanded he carry out.
Yet there I was, hours later, replaying a decision that should’ve been instinctive.
One clean shot. One less loose end. One more step toward securing everything my family had bled for. And I’d failed to take it.
I tried to rationalize it—told myself it wouldn’t matter, that loose ends sometimes died on their own, that the world had a way of wiping out its own mistakes without my involvement. I tried convincing myself that the consequences wouldn’t follow me.
But the truth settled in my chest like a weight I couldn’t shake: a Cavalho doesn’t hesitate or falter. And by doing so, I may have just made the biggest mistake of my life.