Chapter 46
The Shattered Truth
The ancestral mansion stands cold and unyielding, a stark contrast to the sterile luxury of the penthouse Lucius left behind.
It is the morning after Tessa’s departure, and the vast, echoing rooms feel entirely hollow without her presence.
By ten o'clock, the head maid enters the study, quietly setting down his favourite breakfast onto the dark wood of his desk.
Lucius does not even glance at the plate, his mind already miles away from the mundane realities of food.
"Not today," he says, his voice flat, cutting through the silence of the room. "Take it away. I am not eating until this meeting is finished."
Once the door clicks shut, he turns his full attention back to the desk.
Resting on the polished surface is the audio device Kael delivered, prepped with the recovered recordings from his father’s old phone line.
A heavy, suffocating silence fills the room as Lucius reaches out and presses play on the first file, bracing him for the ghosts of the past.
The audio crackles to life, and the deep, unmistakable voice of Don Blackwood fills the study. "I am sorry, Shaanvi," his father says, the raw exhaustion in his tone catching Lucius completely off guard. "I know I am the man responsible for your husband's death. It is my fault."
Shaanvi’s voice breaks through the speaker next, a torrent of frantic screams and bitter, heated accusations cutting through the static.
She lashes out at him with everything she has, but the ruthless mafia don does not retaliate.
He simply takes her rage in absolute silence, offering no excuses, repeating only a quiet, heavy apology.
Once her tears and screams finally burn themselves out, Don Blackwood speaks again, his voice dropping to a gravelly, protective vow.
"I will take care of everything, Shaanvi. I promise you."
Lucius sits frozen as the file ends, his chest tightening as he absorbs his father's confession.
The man who never bended the knee to anyone was carrying the crushing weight of a guilt Lucius never knew existed.
Before he can fully process the shock, the second recording begins to play.
Shaanvi’s tone is calmer now, the edge of grief softened by time. "How are your sons?" she asks softly.
"The elder son is doing well," Don Blackwood replies, a rare touch of pride in his voice before it fades into something deeply fractured. "But the younger son... I haven't spoken a single word to him in ten years."
There is a sharp pause on the tape before Shaanvi speaks up, confusion clear in her voice. "Then when are you going to meet him?"
"Only one day a year," his father answers, the words sounding like a self-inflicted sentence. "Only on Christmas."
"And what do you give him then?" Shaanvi presses, her voice gentle. "His favourite toy car set? Or perhaps... just a bit of your time?"
The sigh that leaves Don Blackwood vibrates through the desk speakers, heavy enough to crack stone. "No. I want him to become a completely self-made man in the future. That is all I want for him. He cannot rely on a shadow."
The recording cuts to static, but the words echo brutally in the quiet of the study.
A sudden, sharp memory pierces through Lucius's mind—a memory of his childhood, of watching other kids being held by their fathers, receiving the love and affection he was systematically denied.
He had grown up believing his father despised him, but the reality unfolding from the speakers is a devastating paradox.
His father had always loved him, choosing distance only to force him to grow strong, independent, and free from the mafia's taint.
The tape continues to roll, and Don Blackwood's voice grows even more exposed as he confesses his deepest, most guarded secret to Shaanvi.
He speaks of his immense love for his younger son, but explains that the boy's mother hates him because of the mafia blood on his hands.
Or at least, that is what Lucius had always assumed the story was.
Instead, his father drops a truth that shatters Lucius’s entire understanding of his own bloodline.
"She doesn't hate me because of the business, Shaanvi," Don Blackwood confesses, his voice stripped of all mafia bravado, revealing a hollowed-out, broken man.
"She loves another man. I have known it for years. But I have never said a word to her. I never called her out on it. I just let her live her life."
As the final words fade into a low hum, Lucius’s eyes widen in absolute shock.
The carefully constructed reality of his past violently unravels in a matter of minutes.
The realization hits him like a physical blow, triggering a rush of suffocating flashbacks of his mother, his cold childhood, and the silent, brooding father who carried everyone's sins alone to protect a woman who loved someone else.
He sits in the centre of his ancestral home, completely unmoored, totally and utterly broke inside.
Lucius does not cry. The shock freezes his tears, turning his grief into a raw, lethal pressure that locks his jaw and tightens his fist.
His fingers close around the crystal wine glass on his desk, squeezing with bone-crushing force until the glass shatters completely.
Shards pierce his palm, and dark, thick blood wells up instantly, pooling onto the mahogany surface.
The head maid gasps, rushing into the study with her eyes wide in horror. "Sir! Oh my god, your hand—" She moves to grab his wrist, but Lucius jerks his arm away.
"Don't touch me," he rasps his voice dangerously low.
Before the maid can spiral into a panic, she calls for help.
A bodyguard bursts through the door carrying a first-aid kit.
The maid moves forward again, trembling as she tries to apply a bandage, but Lucius slides his hand out of her reach, his gaze icy.
"From this moment on, only men can touch me in this house. Get out."
Suddenly, his private phone vibrates on the bloody desk.
It is Victor. Lucius swipes the screen and presses it to his ear, but before he can speak, the sound of heavy, ragged breathing fills the line.
Victor sounds like a man who has been running for miles, his throat parched, his voice completely stripped of its usual smooth composure.
"The honey trap is complete," Victor chokes out, panting heavily. "Kai and I are heading back to America right now. It's done, Lucius. The whole fucking thing went boom."
Lucius stands up, his brow furrowing as he senses the chaos on the other side of the world. "What is wrong with you? What happened out there?"
Victor doesn't answer the question directly.
Instead, the raw adrenaline pours through the phone.
After their final intimate encounter, while Alicia was completely off guard, Victor had slipped into the main bedroom of Alessio's sister and planted the charges.
The moment they cleared the perimeter, Kai triggered the digital time bomb.
The explosion tore through the heart of the estate, completely destroying the villa and levelling the entire compound into a burning heap of rubble.
"Where are you now?" Lucius demands, his fingers gripping the phone tighter.
"Airport road. Sitting in the back of a taxi," Victor breathes out.
Beside him, Kai’s voice echoes in the background, sharp and urgent. "We're on our way back, Lucius! Hang tight!"
The line cuts out. Lucius lowers the phone and presses his bloody palm flat against the wooden table, staring at the crimson stain spreading across his father's old files.
"It is imperative to break glass right now, is it? Just when you are preparing to fight a total dumbass like Alessio?"
Lucius looks up to see Teajun walking into the study.
He is the one and only doctor Lucius trusts with his life without a single second thought.
Teajun assesses the room with a calm, clinical eye, his expression unbothered by the blood.
Lucius knows the timing is terrible, but the weight of his mother’s betrayal and his father’s hidden sacrifice is a crushing burden he simply cannot hold back.
"Fine," Teajun sighs, dropping his medical bag onto the chair. "Sit down. I will bandage this before you bleed out on your own paperwork."
As Teajun cleans the deep cuts, Lucius looks past him, his mind fixed on a complete lockdown of the estate. "Teajun. Give every female maid their severance pay. Tell them they are dismissed from service today. No women can stay here. Only male staff remains."
Teajun pauses, a piece of sterile gauze in his hand. "Are you absolutely sure about this, Lucius?"
"I am super sure," Lucius answers, his voice echoing with absolute finality.
Teajun resumes wrapping the white cotton firmly around Lucius's hand. "If it makes you feel any better, Tessa is completely safe at her grandmother's house. Olivia called me. Apparently, there is an extra layer of elite guards protecting the perimeter—guards provided by your father years ago."
A small, grim wave of relief washes over Lucius’s face. "That is exactly what I need to hear."
"There. The bandage is done," Teajun says, snapping his kit shut and nodding toward the desk.
Lucius shifts his gaze to a heavy leather suitcase sitting near the corner of the room. "The money envelopes are in there. Each one is labelled. Go give them to the female maids and ensure they leave the grounds immediately."
Teajun walks over, unbuckles the suitcase, and pulls out the thick cash envelopes.
He checks the names one by one, walking out into the corridor to hand them over to the staff.
Within minutes, the remaining women gather their belongings and exit the mansion gates, leaving the ancestral home entirely silent, populated only by soldiers and ghosts.
At exactly eleven o'clock in the morning, the heavy iron gates of the ancestral mansion groan open to admit a fleet of black vehicles.
The twenty base leaders, accompanied by their four most trusted men, file into the estate under the watchful eyes of Alex and Kael.
The atmosphere is thick with anticipation and the silent weight of a war that everyone knows is looming just over the horizon.
As the men move through the courtyard, Alex catches sight of a familiar figure standing near the entrance.