Chapter 45
Under the Floorboards
The sleek wrought-iron gates of the villa click shut behind Victor, sealing him back into the crisp morning air.
For three days, he plays the part of Alicia’s devoted lover, letting her secrets spill into the spaces between them.
She talks easily, entirely unaware of the analytical weight behind his gaze.
Her brothers’ empire—the bars, the sprawling casino networks—unfolds in her casual chatter.
She wants him to stay. She begs him to abandon his hotel, to move into her villa, or to let her buy a house where they can live together.
She simply wants the man to live with her, desperate to anchor him to her side before he can slip away.
Victor casts a final, calculating glance back at the mansion.
The estate screams of obscene wealth. Every marble pillar and manicured hedge suggests decades of meticulously laundered money, a ten to twenty-year accumulation of black-market profit disguised as architectural luxury.
His mind registers the details with cold precision, filing the layout away for the war he knows is coming.
"Hey, lover boy! Get over here. I've been waiting for you for almost two hours straight!" Kai leans against the sleek frame of an Audi parked down the driveway, waving a hand with an impatient grin that doesn't quite reach his eyes.
Before Victor can step toward the car, Alicia catches his arm.
She pulls him in, pressing her lips to his in a deep, possessive kiss that tastes of desperation and unspoken fear.
When she finally breaks away, her grip lingers on his jacket, her nails digging slightly into the fabric.
"Don't think you can ever leave me," she murmurs, her eyes intense, searching his faces for a truth he will never give her.
Victor lifts her hand, pressing a gentle, reassuring kiss to her knuckles, his expression a flawless mask of devotion. "Never, pretty lady."
He turns and walks toward the Audi with a smooth, unhurried stride.
Kai slides into the driving seat while Victor opens the passenger door and climbs in next to him.
Alicia waves from the grand porch, and Victor throws her a lazy flying kiss as the engine roars to life.
The car accelerates down the private road, leaving the villa behind and heading toward the safety of their hotel room.
The drive back to the hotel is silent, the tension shifting instantly from manufactured romance to cold business.
Once inside the suite, the atmosphere turns clinical as the luxury of the villa fades from their minds.
Kai immediately boots up his laptop, laying out the decrypted intelligence files across the desk for Victor and Kael to examine.
The data is comprehensive, a digital map of a criminal network that has thrived in the shadows for far too long.
Every bar and casino owned by Alicia’s brothers across Brooklyn and Jersey is mapped out, alongside their primary strongholds in the heart of New York City.
But it is the data on three specific dance bars that makes the room grow cold, stripping away any lingering patience.
"They are running human trafficking rings right under the floorboards of these dance clubs," Kai says, his voice stripping away his usual humour, replaced by a raw, quiet disgust.
He looks at Kael, his eyes hard. "We are hackers. Lucius runs the family business, but we don't touch this type of vile, fucked-up shit. This crosses every line we have."
Kael studies the glowing screen, his expression unreadable as he absorbs the locations and the sheer scale of the horror before them. "I will reassure everything, double-check the feeds, and bring this straight to Lucius and Alex."
"Make sure you do," Kai mutters, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall, his jaw tight.
"I'll handle it," Kael replies calmly, his fingers already flying across the keyboard to secure the transmission.
"If we move on them, it must be entirely legal. Lucius and Alex always keep our operations above board. That is precisely why the authorities never look at us as a Mafia. We destroy them using the system they think they can outrun."
Alex stands in the shadows of a narrow alley, his phone pressed tightly to his ear as the cold wind sweeps through the concrete corridor.
Ten minutes away from the glittering, superficial facade of the fashion house, the true underbelly of the city rots in plain sight.
He delivers a cold, anonymous tip to the police, his voice devoid of emotion as he gives the exact coordinates of the illegal dance bar operating right under the radar.
Within five short minutes, sirens wail in the distance, their sharp cries cutting through the midnight air.
Blue and red lights shatter the darkness of the street as tactical units storm the building, breaching the heavy doors with absolute force.
Inside, members of the A.G. Gang freeze in place, caught entirely off guard mid-transaction, their weapons remaining useless against the sudden onslaught.
"Hands up! Don't move!" law enforcement bellows, weapons drawn as they flood the floor and pin the criminals to the ground.
The heavy wooden doors burst open further, and a crowd of hostage women and young girls break past the stunned, defeated gang members, running desperately toward the safety of the police line.
Watching from the shadows of the perimeter, Alex tracks the movement with a watchful, protective gaze until he is certain every single girl is secure and out of harm's way.
Satisfied that the threat has been neutralized, he pulls the burner SIM card from his phone, snaps it cleanly between his fingers, and drops the plastic fragments into a nearby rubbish bin.
"No one pulls this type of shit while Lucius and his men are still breathing," Alex murmurs into the collar of his jacket, his voice dark and absolute. "It’s our world. Our area."
He strides toward his motorbike, pulls a tinted helmet over his face, and mounts the heavy machine.
The engine kicks over with a deep, territorial roar that vibrates through the asphalt.
He tears through the city streets, a ghost in the dark, heading straight toward the fourth base.
The moment he arrives, he corners the base commander in the dim briefing room.
"Tomorrow at eleven o'clock in the morning, every single base leader attends a mandatory meeting at the main mansion. Lucius’s direct orders. Tell all twenty bases. No exceptions. Anyone who misses it answers to me."
Across the city, Lucius stares out of his study window at the greying sky, the distant skyline offering no comfort to the storm brewing in his chest.
He signs his name with a harsh, final stroke at the bottom of a legal document, officially resigning from his practice as a lawyer.
The career is over, the clean life he tried to build crumbling under the weight of his true inheritance.
He needs to end this double life of lies and secrets before it consumes the people he loves.
In a few days or a few months, it will all be finished anyway, one way or another.
He does not weep for the loss of his career; he knows with cold certainty that he is preparing to end his own life in the coming conflict, sacrificing himself to guarantee their safety.
He makes his final decision, the gravity of it settling heavily on his shoulders.
It is time to shift operations back to the old ancestral mansion, the fortress of his family's past.
Everything started there; it must end there.
His phone rings, cutting through his grim thoughts like a knife. It is Kael.
"I recovered the old phone call recordings," Kael reports, his voice crackling over the encrypted line, carrying the ghosts of old betrayals.
"Good. I am moving back to the old mansion permanently," Lucius responds flatly, his decision unyielding.
"If that's what you want, I’ll meet you there with the audio files," Kael says, before pausing, the weight of the upcoming war hanging in the silence. "What about Tessa, ma'am?"
"She needs absolute protection. No one can touch her while we are at war," Lucius says, his jaw clenching so hard the bones ache.
"Send her to her grandmother's house," Kael suggests immediately, mapping out the logistics of survival.
"Take Emily and Olivia with her. None of the women should stay here, or in Jersey City, or Washington D.C. In fact, clear them out of the entire state of New York. The fallout will be too massive."
Lucius's expression darkens further. "Any information from Victor and Kai?"
"No. Nothing yet since the last transmission."
A ghost of a smile touches Lucius's lips, a rare spark of warmth in his cold world. "I know he will do everything fine. He won't fail."
On the other end, Kael lets out a soft, rare chuckle, a brief moment of shared trust. "Ha-ha! True enough. The man is a ghost when he wants to be."
The heavy oak door of the study clicks open, breaking the spell of the underworld.
Tessa steps inside, her footsteps quiet against the Oriental rug, her presence instantly shifting the energy in the room.
Lucius glances up, his face softening barely enough to hide the monster beneath.
"Your madam just walked in, Kael. I'll speak to you later."
He ends the call, placing the phone face down, and looks at his wife. "Are you okay, honey?"
Tessa approaches his desk, her eyes searching his tired, strained face, seeing right through the armour he wears for the world. "Are you?"
"Darling, you need to leave for your grandmother's house today," Lucius says gently, rising from his chair and stepping around the desk to close the distance between them. "Uncle Joseph will protect you there. It is the only place left that is safe."
Tessa freezes, the words hanging in the air like a death sentence.
The gravity of his tone hits her instantly, and the truth unfolds between them without another word spoken.
A faint, breathless whisper escapes her lips, thick with the weight of nostalgia and regret.
"Time goes by so fast, doesn't it? It feels like only yesterday we were safe."
Lucius looks at her, his vision blurring as the cold exterior finally cracks.
He steps forward, pulling his wife into a tight, desperate embrace, crushing her against his chest as if he can keep the world from tearing them apart.
The air in the room turns thick, heavy with the suffocating weight of an impending goodbye that neither wants to acknowledge.
As he holds her, the restraint breaks entirely.
Tears spill from his eyes, tracing hot lines down his sharp cheeks, wet against her hair.
Tessa can no longer hold her own back; she clings to him, her fingers digging into his suit jacket as they weep together in the absolute silence of the room, two people drowning in a fate they cannot escape.
Lucius does not cry out of fear for his own death; he has long since accepted his end.
He cries because he already sees his empire burning in his mind's eye.
He looks ahead and sees the agonizing possibility of his loved ones and his unborn child being destroyed by the monstrous fallout of his adulthood—a legacy of blood he never wanted to pass on.
The suffering is too immense to carry alone, a heavy, invisible crown breaking his spirit.
Tessa finally pulls back, her breathing ragged as she forces a brave, trembling smile onto her face, trying to give him the strength he needs.
"I will be fine, Lucius. I am sure you will win this. You always do. You will come and collect me after the fight is over, and we will build something new."
She looks down at the resignation papers on his desk, the inked signature still fresh, trying to find a shred of encouragement in his sacrifice.
"Pack your bags. Put in whatever clothes you need. I'm going out to buy some new clothes for grandma before I leave something to keep my hands busy."
"Yes," Lucius says his voice thick and broken as he reaches up to wipe a stray tear from the corner of her eye with his thumb. "Get something for Uncle Joseph as well. Show him we remember."
"Alright. I'll go pack my things now," she whispers, her voice fading as she turns away, the distance between them already feeling infinite.
Lucius cups her cheek for one last, lingering second, and his heart fracturing behind his ribs in a way no bullet could ever manage. "My queen. Smiles like a queen, please. Don't cry. I will come back for you. I promise."
The promise hangs in the quiet room—a beautiful, necessary lie meant to shield her from the dark. In the cold, unforgiving reality of his mind, Lucius knows the truth. He knows he is never coming back from this war alive.
By that evening, the sky turns a bruised, violent purple, bleeding into the black of night.
Tessa, accompanied by Emily and Olivia, boards Lucius’s private jet under the watchful, heavily armed eyes of three trusted bodyguards.
The cabin door seals shut, severing the final tie to his heart.
The engines roar toward the horizon, lifting them into the safety of the clouds and leaving New York, and Lucius, completely behind in the dark.
And Lucius, completely behind in the dark.
~