Chapter 3
The urn was opened that night.
Not publicly.
Not theatrically.
Rafe and I stood in the private chapel where it had remained beside my father’s memorial.
Inside were ashes.
Not a child’s.
Old fireplace ash mixed with fragments of burned cedar.
Rafe stared at it.
“You never checked.”
“No.”
I hated admitting it.
But grief had been weaponized precisely because people know the bereaved rarely interrogate ashes.
The lock of hair?
Elias’s.
Celia had saved his first haircut.
Lenette had access to it at North House.
Every detail had been selected to make disbelief feel obscene.
I confronted her in my study.
“Who designed it?”
She sat across from me.
No engagement ring now.
She had removed it herself.
“Cedric.”
“How much was yours?”
She looked down.
“Enough.”
Good.
No pretending.
Cedric believed Celia was dangerous to Alderbourne stability.
Not because she betrayed us.
Because she was outside the old families.
No alliance.
No inherited loyalty.
And she had given me a son.
That mattered more than I wanted to hear.
My father had left behind something called the First Son Understanding.
Not a law.
Not even a formal rule.
A Mafia custom.
The first acknowledged male grandchild of the sitting Alderbourne head would be raised toward future command unless proven unfit.
I had always considered it archaic.
Apparently others considered it destiny.
Elias was that grandson.
Celia had produced a future before senior men had approved the mother.
Then Lenette entered the picture.
Daughter of a powerful allied branch.
A marriage between us had been discussed even before my ambush.
I refused then.
Cedric did not.
If Elias disappeared, the path changed.
Any future son Lenette and I had could become the child elders rallied around.
I stared at her.
“You buried a living boy for a hypothetical one.”
She started crying.
“I told myself it was temporary.”
“How long is temporary?”
No answer.
Four years apparently.
Then:
“I thought Celia would build a life somewhere else.”
“And me?”
She looked at me.
“I thought you eventually would too.”
With her.
There it was.
Not only family strategy.
May you like
Desire.
Lenette had helped erase my son because she wanted a future where his absence made room for her.
