Chapter 1
The gates were already open when I looked back at Winifred.
Two of my men stood beside her.
Nobody touched her.
Nobody needed to.
“You wanted him to learn loss,” I said quietly. “He just lost a grandmother.”
Winifred’s face changed.
Not heartbreak.
Shock.
She had spent most of her life believing family rank made consequences negotiable.
Apparently she expected mine to be negotiable too.
Theo stood beside me with the soaked wooden race car pressed against his chest. Water dripped from the wheels onto his birthday shirt.
Winifred looked at him.
“Lucius, don’t be absurd.”
I stared at her.
She continued.
“It was a toy.”
Theo’s fingers tightened around the car.
That mattered more than her words.
“No.”
My voice stayed low.
“It was something I made for my son.”
She laughed.
“You can make another.”
I looked at her.
There it was.
People like Winifred measure loss by replacement cost.
If another object can exist, the first one never mattered.
Theo whispered beside me.
“Dad?”
I crouched.
“Yes?”
“Can you fix it?”
I looked at the swollen wood.
“I’ll try.”
Winifred rolled her eyes.
That was when I noticed several relatives looking down.
Not at Theo.
At the ground.
Avoidance.
Familiarity.
I stood.
“How many times?”
Winifred frowned.
“What?”
I looked toward my cousins, aunts, and older capos.
“How many times has she done something like this to him?”
Silence.
My jaw tightened.
Theo looked up at me.
Winifred laughed.
“Don’t turn a birthday joke into an interrogation.”
I ignored her.
One cousin finally spoke.
“Lucius…”
I looked at him.
His face told me the answer before his mouth did.
“This wasn’t the first time.”
Theo lowered his eyes.
May you like
And suddenly the ruined race car stopped being the incident.
It became the first one I had witnessed.
