47. Reid
Chapter forty-seven
Reid
More Than Twenty Years Later
Istared outside the window from one of my skyscrapers on the West Coast. The city looked small from here. It always did. Tech giants, political players, names worth billions. All of them, pawns in the game.
My reflection stared back from the glass. The years turned me older, sharper, into a man who learned the hard way that survival isn’t something that happens to you. It’s a choice.
And I’d buried the pawns who tried to take me out of the game. Federal custody wasn’t a sentence. It was a cage built to keep me from becoming too powerful, burning every competitor to the ground. Despite it, I survived anyway.
Genevieve did too. She made her choice when she stayed.
She carried our son without telling me, raised him under another man’s name while she wore a ring she didn’t want, in a house that wasn’t a home. And in the end, she still came back to me.
She understood loving me ruined her in a way she couldn’t undo, and she wanted the ruin more than the false safety.
I never asked her to leave the children. But I didn’t stop her either. I watched her fold herself in two, trying to hold onto me and them… and when the time came, she made the only decision she thought wouldn’t destroy us all.
It destroyed everything anyway.
And after more than twenty years… she still couldn’t forgive herself.
I know it kills her. Because looking at her grief each day, it kills me. She gave up everything for me. That’s what people say when they try to romanticize it. But it wasn’t romantic.
She didn’t just give up everything. She left her world behind—her son; her daughter; the life she built one lie at a time—and followed me into the abyss. I still didn’t stop her.
Because I was selfish. I wanted her after everything she did to me, the lies, the betrayal, the fucking silence… I still wanted her more than anything. More than fucking everything.
Nowadays, we don’t talk about Eugene… don’t talk about Brielle or discuss the nights she cries herself to sleep.
Why didn’t you fight for them?
I had wanted to ask her… but I already know the answer. It was the answer I wanted years ago when I was cast away.
She was too busy fighting for me. She gave up everything just to stand beside a man the world wanted to disappear again. I could survive the exile ten times over again. I’d done it before. But my Vieve?
She wouldn’t last much longer, not without breaking completely.
So when I’d gotten a glimpse of Brielle in the press, no longer the infant baby or toddler I’d remembered, but now a woman that reminded me too much of her mother…
I couldn’t keep away from it any longer.
I couldn’t ignore her presence in the world anymore.
And she’d fallen into the arms of Killian Russel. Killian fucking Russel. The son of the very man who made me disappear. Who signed the paperwork. Orchestrated the cover-up. Told me that hiding me in federal custody was for my own good. For the safety of Silicon Valley, the preservation of power.
I tried to ignore it. The first time I saw her name in the press, I let it go. The second time, I skimmed the headline, barely reading it. By the third, I had already watched multiple video clips caught by paparazzi.
Brielle Newman.
His shiny new personal assistant the media wanted to know everything about. She wasn’t mine… not by law or by name.
But the more she appeared, the harder it became to pretend that I was okay without knowing and with history repeating itself. Now I was watching Brielle walk straight into the arms of the same people who had taken everything from me, the heir to the same empire that erased me.
Gregory and Cheryl, from what I’d learned, abandoned her, left her to take care of Marissa’s daughter.
If she stayed near Killian, near the Russels, in the spotlight…
then I knew they’d come back for her. And after years of resentment, repeated failures and jealousy…
I didn’t know what they were capable of.
But I couldn’t intervene. My name was still dead. My freedom was conditional… I still had too much at stake.
And I needed someone who didn’t. Someone who didn’t have anything to lose.
My phone rang in my pocket. I pulled it out, gazing down at the call I’d been waiting for. Holding it to my ear, I looked back to the window, over the bridge.
“Kaufman speaking.”
“I’m returning a call. You must forgive me for the delay… I was quite skeptical of the presumably dead king of Silicon Valley requesting a call back. I don’t know whether to feel flattered or not… Regardless, I’d be a fool not to pick up.”
“You know who I am.”
I could hear the smugness in his tone. “Let’s just say your reputation precedes you, even from beyond the grave. My first question for you would be, why do you know me?”
“You have ties to the Russel family.”
He hesitated. “Potentially…” he murmured. “Why is that of concern?”
“The woman Killian Russel has in the headlines. Brielle Newman. His new PA, the newest shiny thing for the press… what do you know about her?”
“How much I know would depend on who’s asking… Why is she of your concern?”
My jaw clenched. “She’s my step-daughter…” The word sat wrong in my mouth. But until I knew for certain… until I had something more than a timeline and a gut feeling that had been eating at me for years, I wasn’t handing that to the man over the phone.
He paused. “You don’t say…”
“In my current circumstances, I can’t be involved with the Newman family. Her proximity to Killian… it complicates things. Potential resurgence of her father and step-mother coming back into the picture. The press bathing her in the light complicates it even more.”
A slow, amused exhale filtered through the phone. “And what exactly would you like me to do?”
“I need her monitored. Not closely, but close enough…”
“I see…”
“And my son… Eugene Newman. He’s been off the grid after serving time in the military. Find him.”
The man was quiet for a moment, turning it over. “…With all due respect, Mr. Kaufman. Though I am a very generous man… things like this don’t come without a price.”
I sighed. “I know they don’t. Which is why I’ll make it worth your while. In return, you’ll get access to everything tied to the Newman name.”
“You mean what’s left of it?” he countered smugly. “The same access that had you disappear from the public eye? Their trust collapsed. Their stock’s worthless and their name is shit. What exactly am I accessing?”
“The name is dead. The money isn’t.”
That rendered him silent once again.
“…How much are we talking?”
“It’s appraised at around 11.4 billion. Frozen under federal review. Buried in hedge funds, shell companies, real estate that never broke ground. In six months, federal oversight withdraws. No one wants to touch a case this influential twenty years later. Once it unlocks, you’ll have access.”
“Such little faith in our country’s checks and balances.”
“I didn’t spend twenty years in federal custody just to come out empty-handed.”
He sighed. “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Kaufman. But I don’t do charity work. A couple billion dollars simply wouldn’t be worth the hassle.”
“But spending years trying to get into the Russel circle is?”
“It’s all about strategy…”
“I think you’re smart enough to know that a successful legacy doesn’t come from whatever strategy you’re chasing now.
The Russel empire is airtight. Private capital.
Global subsidiaries. Government-shielded contracts.
You need that kind of reach. That immunity carved into law. And desperation’s gotten you nowhere.”
“I’m sure this is the part where the Newman pity fund starts to look like the yellow brick road?”
“No amount I offer will ever be enough to buy you what you really want… but I’m offering you something better—a seat at their table. Your legacy won’t be built through headlines or offshore deals. And your son? He won’t inherit power through you. Not unless you change the game.”
“And how do you suppose I do that?”
“I want results. You want a future. And I’m the only one who can give you both.
Find my son and keep eyes on him and Brielle…
Get rid of Gregory, Cheryl and Marissa… And once every last leech tied to the Newman name is dead…
I’ll hand you everything they left behind.
The money. The assets. The shell companies. The legacy… And the girl.”
He stilled on the other end. “You don’t mean—”
“You want a legacy and a seat at the table, don’t you?
I’m handing it to you now. Keep tabs on Brielle.
Her relationship to Killian, his relationship to the child.
Delilah is young—still moldable to be educated.
Trained. Tailored to carry the Russel name.
She’ll be tied to every dynasty—mine, yours, theirs.
She’s not just a child. She’s leverage.”
“Anticipating Brielle staying with Killian long enough to secure my seat at the table… that’s a long shot. A fifteen-year-long one to be exact.”
“But it’s a shot I know you’re desperate enough to take.”
“…You’re the only man I know who can disappear for two decades and still own the board we’re all playing on.”
A smile threatened to pull at my lips. “Pleasure doing business with you, Lockwood.”
A deep chuckle sounded from him.
“Please, Reid… we’re practically family at this point. Call me Calvin.”