Sometimes healing doesn’t happen in grand moments, it happens around a crowded table, in laughter that echoes through generations, in the silent recognition of who we used to be… and who we still are. This chapter was a love letter to found family, to blood ties rediscovered, and to the kind of warmth money and power can never buy. Killian didn’t know what he was walking into, but maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of him finally coming home. Thank you for reading and feeling with him. JW 🤍
The drive out of the city was quiet. No music. No distractions. Just headlights carving through the rain slicked roads and the sound of my breath in the silence.I didn’t know what to expect.I didn’t know what to be.When June texted me the address, I punched it into the GPS like it was any other target. Like I was preparing to intercept someone, not show up as… a nephew. A cousin. A grandson.The house sat at the end of a quiet street lined with tall trees and overgrown hedges. Modest. Warm light glowed from the windows. The kind of place that smelled like soup and old books. The kind of place people belonged to.I killed the engine and sat for a moment, gripping the steering wheel.Then I got out.The door opened before I could even knock.June stood there, apron tied around her waist, eyes already glassy with tears. She took one look at me, and I barely got a word out before she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.Not tentative. Not polite.Real.Like I was flesh and bl
The rain hadn’t stopped since I left my house. The rain dripping down from my hair to my body. Everything felt tight. My chest. My jaw. My goddamn skin.I stood in front of my house. The silence was louder than anything.Elevator. Hallway. Door.My house welcomed me like a stranger, cold, empty, mine. Too clean. Too polished. I stripped off my soaked jacket and my clothes, let it drop where it fell, and walked straight to the liquor shelf. Something dark. Bitter. I didn’t care. I just needed the edge.My fingers trembled as I poured.Not from fear.Not from weakness.From memory.The box was still on the table.Killy Jackson’s box.I stared at it like it might move if I blinked. Like it was something alive. Some cursed relic that changed everything I thought I knew about myself.The photograph sat on top. My mother. Elena.She was smiling.Smiling in a way I never saw again after Robert Wolfe took her away from whatever life she lived before. Smiling like she belonged to someone who
I stepped into the penthouse, the door clicking shut behind me. It felt empty, too still, too perfect. High ceilings, polished floors, curated art. A space I had made mine by right of name. But tonight, it made me feel hollow.I dropped my bag onto the couch and powered on the terminal. Screens lit up: Robert Wolfe’s face, financial dashboards, satellite views of the estate. But I didn’t care about power or money, not yet. Tonight, everything had changed.In the attic box from June, I’d found Killy’s leather journal. But I needed names. I needed proof. I needed to know how they killed him.I opened a secure terminal. A dark web portal. I typed keywords: “Killian Jackson,” “June Jackson,” “Elena Williams wolfe,” “snake cufflink,” “tall woman gloves.” Data sparked. IPs. WhoIs tracings. Lineage. Photos. By morning, I had a list: personnel files from Wolfe Enterprises security contractors, private investigators, off the books fixers. I scrolled, each name a calorie burned from my spine.M
The town didn’t even have a proper name on the GPS, just a smudge of green tucked against the river, north of the city line. It looked like a place time forgot. Old swing sets rusted in open yards. Power lines sagged low across gravel roads. Shutters that were once brightly painted had faded and peeled from years of sun and silence. People here didn’t just live slow. They lived small. Quiet. Hidden.Exactly the kind of place you ran to if you wanted to disappear.I’d memorized the address the second that man in the bar gave it to me. I repeated it over and over on the drive, like a prayer. I hadn’t used my car. I borrowed one from a Midtown contact. Switched phones. Left my watch, trackers, and regular systems at home. If this led to anything real, I couldn’t risk Robert’s people picking it up.This wasn’t cartel business.This was mine.I parked half a block down. The engine ticked as it cooled beneath the late-afternoon sun.The house was modest, white fencing chipped at the edges, f
The garden was overgrown now. Vines climbed over cracked marble benches, weeds threaded through the paths once manicured by staff who’d long since been dismissed or silenced. No one visited this corner of the estate anymore.Except me.I knelt near the old stone sundial at the far end of the garden, the place my mother used to sit when she thought no one was watching. She’d come here often, sometimes for hours, hands folded in her lap, face turned toward the sky as if waiting for something. Or someone.I used to think she was praying.Now I knew better. She was mourning the man she loved. The man whose initials were etched into the back of the locket.K.J.For all the love we were never allowed.I rolled the locket between my fingers, letting it catch the late sun as it slid toward the horizon. The warmth didn’t touch me. Not anymore.I was colder now.Sharper.Hungrier.I stood, brushing dirt off my slacks, and headed for the gate at the edge of the property, where my bike waited. I’d
The Wolfe estate had never been quiet.Even in the dead of night, something always hummed. The distant shouting of Robert. The whispers of Victor at my door, giving orders. The shift of guards moving past windows, their comms crackling low. I used to hate that noise.Now, I missed it.Now, there was only silence. And I hated that more.The curtains hung still against the windows, unmoving despite the storm that had passed through the night before. The morning sky was gray, swollen with the promise of more rain, but no wind stirred the heavy air. My tea had long gone cold beside the window seat. I hadn’t touched it.I couldn’t remember the last time I tasted anything and felt it.There were bruises on my ribs that had faded, but not completely. There were wounds lower, deeper, that hadn’t even begun to scar. And in the middle of it all, a strange hollowness, like someone had cut me open and left the cavity empty.Victor had barely been around for days now.And it felt like the rope arou