Chapter 11
I don't doubt her. Not for a second. The moment the words leave her mouth, the truth hits me with a force that has nothing to do with reason.
It doesn't ask for proof. It doesn't pause for logic.
It settles deep, heavy, and final, like something my body has always known but my mind refused to touch.
My son.
The rage that follows is immediate and visceral, so sharp it steals the air from my lungs.
MINE.
Not metaphorical.
Not imagined.
Not a lie meant to corner me.
Mine in a way that reaches back through blood and bone and instinct.
I'm in her face before I remember moving.
So close I can see the pulse beating wildly at her throat.
So close I can smell fear, sweat, the faint trace of her soap, something soft and domestic that does not belong anywhere near what she's just done to me.
My vision tunnels.
My son.
The words detonate again, louder this time, ripping through me with fresh violence.
MY SON!
Mine.
The realization hits like a second betrayal layered on the first, cutting straight through bone.
She didn't just leave me. She didn't just disappear while I was broken, drugged, stitched.
She took my blood. She took my heir. She took ten years I will never get back.
Ten years of first words. First steps. First scraped knees.
Ten years of my son learning how to exist in a world that didn't have me in it because she decided I didn't deserve to know.
The rage is so intense it goes white-hot. I've killed men for less. I've burned empires for less. My hands curl into fists at my sides, because if I touch her right now, I don't trust myself to stop.
"How," I grind out, my voice sounding barely human, "could you do that?"
The question isn't curiosity. Its disbelief sharpened into something lethal.
How could you look at a child who was half me and decide I wasn't worthy?
How could you let another man raise him?
Put my son in another man's house, give him another man's name, another man's lies?
Carter fucking Whitford, no less! How could you keep him from me?
Every instinct in me screams to end her. Not quickly. Not clean.
But I don't.
Because killing her now would be mercy. It would let her escape the weight of what she's done.
Let her avoid the reckoning she owes me.
I want her alive. I want her to feel this.
To understand exactly what it means to steal something sacred from a man like me and live long enough to regret it.
My jaw locks so hard it hurts. I lean closer, straining to keep my voice low, shaking with barely contained violence.
"You didn't just betray me," I snarl. "You erased me."
My chest heaves, my breath burns as I fight the urge to tear the room apart with my bare hands.
"You took my son and never told me." My eyes burn. I've never felt this furious. Not at my uncle. Not at the men who tried to kill me. Not even at the city when it turned its back. This is different. This is personal. This is raw.
This is a wound that never had the chance to scar over because I never knew it existed. I pull back a fraction, just enough to keep myself in control.
"Pray," I tell her coldly, "that killing you isn't the easiest solution."
Because right now, it's the only thing keeping her alive.
She opens her mouth. I see it, the instinct to defend herself, to explain, to carve space for survival out of whatever scraps I'm leaving her.
A knock at the door spares me. The sound is jarringly normal.
Max, my top guard, sticks his head in, "Doc is here. "
Finally.
I turn on her with a sneer sharp enough to cut. "Patch her up," I snap, jerking my head in her direction like she's a problem that needs managing. Not the reason my world is tearing itself apart. "Then get her out of my sight."
She flinches. The doctor nods quickly, already moving, already choosing obedience over questions.
I can't breathe. The air in the room feels too thick, too heavy, like it's pressing in on my lungs.
There's a stone table nearby, marble, obscene, meant to impress men who don't know the cost of anything real.
I grab it and tip it over with a sound that feels like a rupture.
It crashes to the floor. Marble explodes.
The expensive flooring fractures beneath it. I feel nothing.
My fist hits the wall.
Again.
And again.
The pain is sharp, grounding, a clean line through the chaos. Skin splits. Blood runs. I welcome it because it's simple, because it makes sense, because it doesn't lie.
I hear a sound I don't expect. A whimper. Instinctively, I turn. She's staring at me. Not defiant now. Not strategic. Just… small. Her eyes are wide, tears pooling without spilling, like she's watching something she can't understand and is afraid to name.
The doctor has edged closer, cautious, eyes flicking to my knuckles, to the blood dripping onto the floor.
"Your hand—" he begins.
"In the guest room," I snarl, not looking away from her. "Now."
The doctor thinks about saying something else. I can see it. Then he thinks better of it. He guides her away gently, one hand at her elbow, his body instinctively positioning itself between us. His instincts are right.
The door closes.
Soft.
Final.
The silence after is unbearable. I stagger to the bar and pour another bourbon; my hands are shaking now, and the glass rattles against the counter. I drink it like it might drown what's clawing up my throat. It doesn't.
The bottle leaves my hand without conscious thought. It shatters against the wall, glass and liquor spraying like a second, lesser explosion. The glass follows. Then another. The penthouse takes the abuse in silence.
I stand there amid the wreckage, blood dripping from my knuckles, chest heaving like I've run miles instead of standing still. Ten years.
Ten years stolen.
And now the truth is here, bleeding into everything I touch, demanding payment.
I press my forehead briefly to the cool wall, jaw clenched so hard it aches.
This isn't over. This is the beginning. God help anyone who stands between me and what was taken from me, because nothing is going to survive what comes next.
The door opens without ceremony. Max must have heard the noise and called him, because Gabriel strolls in like he owns the place, jacket half open, posture loose, that familiar swagger like nothing in the world could truly surprise him anymore. He takes one look at the room.
The shattered marble. The glass embedded in the wall. The blood dripping steadily from my knuckles onto the ruined floor. He lifts an eyebrow.
"What?" he asks mildly. "Did you see a mouse or something?"
I stare at him. For a long, suspended moment, I'm ready to tear him apart.
My body is still humming with violence, muscles tight, breath ragged, rage looking for somewhere to land.
Then something breaks. I laugh. It rips out of me, harsh and ugly and uncontrollable.
The kind of laughter that bends you forward at the waist, that scrapes your throat raw, that sounds more like a man choking than anything resembling humor.
I laugh until my chest hurts. Until tears sting my eyes. Until the room spins just a little.
Gabe watches me without flinching. Doesn't reach for a weapon. Doesn't crack another joke. He just lets it happen. He's always had that effect on me. When the laughter finally burns itself out, I straighten slowly, wiping a hand across my face. My breath is still uneven. My knuckles still bleed.
Gabe nods once, like this all checks out.
"Rough morning," he wagers.
"You could say that."
He moves closer then, careful but unafraid, his eyes flick briefly to my hand before meeting my gaze again.
There's something steady there. Familiar.
Earned. We've been through hell together.
He dragged me off the asphalt when I was more dead than alive.
Kept me breathing when my own family wanted me erased.
And when his twin sister was taken—when they found what was left of her—I was by his side as we waded through blood.
We distributed vengeance together. Clean. Thorough. Final.
Some bonds don't need words.
He gestures at the wreckage. "Want to tell me what caused this? Or should I guess?"
I exhale slowly, the last of my laughter fades into something heavier.
"She's here," I state simply.
Gabe's expression changes. Just a fraction. Enough.
"The ghost," he murmurs.
"Yes."
He doesn't ask which one. He's always known there was a woman in my past. Just not who. When men spend as much time together as we do, they see things. They notice things they don't see. He never asked. I never told. He nods again, like this explains everything it needs to.
"And?" he asks quietly.
"And she dropped a truth on me," I say, voice flat now. Dangerous. "One that changes everything."
Gabe studies me for a long second, glances toward the guest room from where small noises betray a presence. He cracks his neck once, slow and deliberate, like a man settling into familiar work. He reaches under his jacket, pulls his gun, and checks the chamber with practiced ease.
Anyone else in this room—even Enzo—would already be disarmed and bleeding for a move like that. Not Gabe. I just watch him.
He meets my eyes, calm as ever. "Okay," he says. "Who do we kill?" He pauses, then adds thoughtfully, "Please say we can do it slowly. I'm in the mood for slow."
I don't answer right away. I don't need to.
Gabe knows better than to rush me when my silence sounds like this.
He's got his own ghosts. Always has. That's why he stalks a woman instead of asking her out like a normal human being.
Married or not, morals were never the obstacle.
Gabe takes what he wants. Who he wants. When he wants. Except this time.
"Whoever took Carter and Amauri Whitford," I finally spit out. The wrong last name burns my mouth. My jaw tightens around it.
Gabe's head snaps up. "Come again?"
I don't look at him. I can feel his mind working, fast and lethal, grabbing for threads, trying to weave something coherent out of what I just said.
He comes up empty. I sigh and turn toward the kitchen.
The faucet hisses as I shove my hand under cold water.
The sting distracts from my mood from the mess of emotions I don't know what to do with.
My knuckles throb, the split skin burns as blood swirls down the drain in diluted ribbons.
Gabe follows without a word. He opens the freezer, grabs a bag of frozen peas, and presses it into my hand like this is just another morning after a bad night. I take it. Hold it against my knuckles.
"They took my son," I say quietly.
Silence follows. The kind that isn't empty, just stunned. Gabe doesn't move. Doesn't speak. I can feel the shift in him anyway, the way something heavy settles into place.
"Whitford isn't your name," he states slowly.
"No," I reply. "It isn't."
I lean back against the counter, eyes closed for a brief second, the cold biting into my skin, grounding me.
"She never told you," Gabe guesses.
"No."
Another beat.
"And now?"
"Now," I say, opening my eyes, "someone put my blood in a helicopter and thought I wouldn't come for it."
Gabe's mouth curls into the cold mask he's famous for. A mask that has made grown men cry and shit their pants.
"Okay," he says calmly. "Now we're talking."
His mind is already recalibrating, already moving pieces on a board only men like us can see.
"Then," he adds, dropping his voice an octave, "we don't just get them back."
I meet his gaze.
"No," I agree. "We don't."
No questions are voiced. No explanations are given. There are a thousand things hanging between us—how, when, why, what she knew, what she didn't—but none of them matter right now. Those are wounds to reopen later. Right now, there's only one direction.
Gabe nods once. That's it.
He pulls his phone out, already moving, already five steps ahead. His voice shifts, not louder, just colder. "I need everything you have on the Whitford kidnapping," he orders into the phone. "Timeline. Footage. Air traffic. Cell pings. Shell companies. Anyone who breathed near that helicopter."
He listens for half a second, then cuts in. "No filters. No delays. I don't care who it pisses off."
He ends the call and looks at me again. "War?"
I don't hesitate. "Yes."
The word lands heavy. Final. Gabe's mouth curves, sharp and satisfied, like a blade finding its groove. He starts tapping messages, fingers flying. I know what that means: doors opening that don't usually open, people waking up to find their phones ringing with names they don't want to see.
I straighten slowly; the frozen peas slip from my hand and thud softly onto the counter. "They touched my blood. They took him."
Gabe's eyes darken. "They just signed their death warrants."
Outside, the Strip keeps glittering. Inside, something ancient and merciless unfurls its wings. This is what happens when men like us stop reacting and start hunting. Somewhere in this city, people are still breathing who won't be by nightfall. The war doesn't announce itself.
It just begins.