Chapter 43 #2
He holds a tray with a fresh glass of cold water.
Lucius looks up, surprised by the boy's presence, and takes the glass from him, a faint, incredibly rare smile touching his lips.
As the boy steps back respectfully, Lucius glances toward Kael, his brow furrowing. "How old is he?"
"Sixteen years old," Kael answers softly. "His mother fell into some debt with our lower sectors, and the boy volunteered to work the logistics floor to pay it off."
Lucius stares down at the swirling water in his glass, his mind suddenly drifting completely away from the cold steel of the base.
He remembers his quiet conversation last night in the dark with Tessa.
She had softly told him that sometimes, boys could be an incredible help to a grieving mother and take care of a broken father.
She had mentioned her own family, talking about how her aunt's son had looked after the household with the gentleness and tenderness usually expected only of a daughter.
Lucius violently shakes himself out of those heavy, distracting thoughts, forcing his mind back to the brutal reality before him.
He sets the glass down and pulls the first stack of correspondence toward him.
Kael has meticulously sorted them by importance, and Lucius prepares himself for whatever ghosts are hidden in the ink.
He looks at the first set of old, fragile papers. These are the letters written by his own family and Tessa’s father, Arthur Jones, back when the world was different.
The first stack consists of letters fourteen through nineteen, all written by Marius Blackwood to Arthur Jones during the initial years of their alliance.
Beneath those lie ten letters written by Arthur Jones back to Marius Blackwood, filled with tactical updates and warnings.
The next bundle is larger, consisting of thirty to thirty-five deeply personal letters written by Arthur Jones to his wife, Shaanvi Jones, sent from various safe houses.
Lucius opens Marius Blackwood’s final letter, his eyes scanning his father's bold, arrogant handwriting.
The text states explicitly and without hesitation that Marius will take complete financial responsibility for Tessa, spending whatever wealth is required to keep her safe and hidden if Arthur fails to return alive from his dangerous mission in Italy.
The final, largest stack contains exactly fifty letters written by Shaanvi Jones to Marius Blackwood.
Most of these desperate pages are frantic updates about her husband’s deteriorating safety in Europe.
But the single most vital detail hidden inside the frantic text reveals a dark truth: before his disappearance, Arthur had systematically burned almost one hundred and twenty highly sensitive letters concerning Don Blackwood, his wife,
and their inner circle of powerful friends to protect them from an impending raid.
Kael steps forward, his face completely devoid of colour, and hands Lucius the final, most crucial letter from the pile. "You need to read this one yourself, Boss."
Lucius takes the fragile piece of paper. As his eyes scan the words penned by Arthur to his wife right before his death, something fundamental inside Lucius shatters into pieces.
“Oh! My lovely woman, I am not coming back from here. My friend—my most loyal friend, Don Blackwood—he will be taking care of you and Tessa. I am not dying for others, but for…”
The text cuts off abruptly, the sentence left unfinished forever.
Kael leans over the back of the couch, staring at the page over Lucius’s shoulder.
"That’s all he managed to write. Then he died right there at that desk. Look at these dark stains at the bottom of the parchment... those are blood drops, Boss. They are completely dry and have turned entirely black with age."
After reading every single letter in the pile, a suffocating, agonizing wave of guilt crashes over Lucius.
The cold, hard truth stares back at him from the blood-stained paper: his family hadn't destroyed Tessa's life.
His father had spent years trying to help and protect Tessa’s mother from a threat far larger than any of them realized.
Seeing the powerful don trembling slightly, Kael places a steadying, heavy hand on the back of Lucius’s shoulder. "Be calm, Lucius. You haven't even listened to the audio call records yet. There is more to the story."
Lucius drains the glass of water in one heavy gulp, his chest tightening to the point of pain.
He realizes with a sickening clarity that he never truly knew the truth about his own father.
Why had the old man kept him in the dark?
Why had his father raised him to believe they were nothing but monsters?
The sixteen-year-old boy steps forward again, quietly refilling Lucius’s empty glass with a practiced, gentle hand.
He glances at Kael, his eyes filled with a deep, intuitive understanding.
"Kael, Sir, for now, I think the Boss shouldn't listen to the audio records. His heart is too heavy right now."
Lucius nods slowly, looking up at his lieutenant with hollow eyes. "Yes... not right now. I will listen to them after an hour. I need time to breathe."
Lucius motions for the young boy to sit on the chair opposite the couch. He studies the boy's calm, peaceful aura. "How did you know I wasn't able to handle listening to the recordings right now?"
The boy offers a small, gentle smile, completely unfazed by the dangerous mafia don sitting before him.
"I grew up entirely around women, Boss. I live with my mom, my two older sisters, and my grandma. There are no men in our house. Because of that, I suppose I am more emotionally aware and empathetic than most boys at my age. I can see grief when it sits in a room."
Lucius understands everything perfectly.
The boy had been nurtured by the warmth of a mother from childhood to adulthood, learning how to feel, while Lucius's father had violently ripped him away from his mother at a young age, dragging him into a cruel, blood-soaked world of crime.
For the next hour, Lucius simply sits and talks with the sixteen-year-old, finding a strange, therapeutic release from his agonizing overthinking.
He realizes for the first time that some boys grown up by women possess a profound gentleness that the criminal underworld usually beats out of men.
"Boss, sometimes just being in the presence of your favourite person can help you come out from the darkness of overthinking and depression," the boy says quietly, standing up and bowing respectfully before he finally leaves the room.
The heavy, suffocating silence returns to the private office, broken only by the distant, low hum of the glowing monitors outside. Only Lucius and Kael sit there in the shadows.
"Are you OK to listen to the call records now?" Kael asks, his hand hovering over the laptop.
Finally, Lucius takes a deep breath, his jaw tightening into a hard line. "Yes. I am ready. Play them."
Kael hands him a pair of heavy, noise-cancelling earphones, slipping his own pair on.
"There are twenty call records in total in this decrypted batch, but for now, these first two are the most vital to understanding the timeline. I will keep restoring the remaining eighteen records over time and give them to you as the server processes them."
Kael presses the enter key, and the first recording starts.
The audio crackles to life with heavy static. Don Blackwood’s deep, booming voice echoes through the line, speaking to an elderly, fragile woman. He asks her if she is recovering well. Suddenly, the heart-breaking sound of loud, desperate crying fills the line.
“My daughter and my son-in-law are no more, Don Blackwood,” the grandmother sobs into the receiver, her voice breaking with ancient grief.