Chapter 6

Jackson POV

The estate was silent. Not the peace of a sanctuary, but the heavy, suffocating stillness of a tomb.

For three days, I hadn't stepped outside the study.

The air inside was thick, layered with stale smoke and the metallic tang of impending violence. My men drifted through the halls like ghosts, terrified to make a sound, terrified to draw the attention of the beast pacing in his cage.

I kept replaying the last few months in my head.

The fog that had clouded my mind. The inexplicable lethargy. The flashes of unprovoked, rabid rage directed at the only woman who had ever looked at me without flinching.

Elena.

I remembered the way she looked at Candida. Not with jealousy, but with a primal revulsion. She saw something I didn't. She saw the viper coiling while I was too busy admiring the garden.

"Marco," I said.

My voice was a rusted grate, scraping against the silence.

My Consigliere stepped out of the shadows. He looked tired. Good.

"Bring me everything on the Camacho family connections within our ranks," I ordered, my eyes fixed on the empty desk. "And bring me Leo."

Marco paused, just for a heartbeat. "Leo, Boss? Your driver?"

"Drag him to the basement. If he resists, break his legs. But keep his tongue intact. I'll need that."

Marco didn't ask why. He simply nodded and vanished into the gloom.

I turned back to the wall of monitors. I had technicians pulling every second of surveillance footage from the last year. I watched it on high speed, a blur of my own life unspooling in fast-forward.

There.

Timestamp: Three months ago. 2:00 AM. The east wing corridor.

Candida, walking barefoot. She didn't stop at the nursery. She went straight to the staff quarters.

The door opened. Leo pulled her inside.

I rewound it. Played it again.

The familiarity. The way his hand slid down the curve of her back. It wasn't the tentative touch of a subordinate. It was the possessive grip of a man claiming what was his.

A cold, crystalline clarity washed over me. The neurotoxin report on my desk was just paper. This... this was visceral.

An hour later, Marco returned. He placed a stack of documents on the mahogany desk with a heavy thud.

"You were right," he said, his voice grim. "We dug into the offshore accounts. Leo Camacho isn't just a driver. He's the nephew of the Camacho Don. He's been funneling our logistics data to them for two years."

I picked up the papers. Transfers. Asset liquidations. A draft agreement for a merger between the Parks and Camacho families, dated for next month.

The date of my planned "accidental" overdose.

I didn't scream. I didn't throw anything. The rage was past the point of noise. It was a singularity in the center of my chest, a black hole swallowing all light.

"Is he downstairs?"

"Yes."

I walked down to the basement. The air grew colder, smelling of damp concrete and old rust.

Leo was strapped to a metal chair. His face was already a canvas of bruises, but his eyes held a feral defiance.

He spat a glob of blood onto the floor when I walked in.

"Don Parks," he sneered. "Finally woke up from your nap?"

I didn't speak. I walked to the worktable, picked up a pair of heavy pliers, and turned to him.

"Start talking," I said softly.

Leo laughed. It was a wet, gurgling sound bubbling up from his chest. "You think you're scary? You're a joke. A cuckold. While you were playing king, Candida was in my bed laughing at you. We played you like a fiddle, Jackson."

I jammed the pliers onto his fingernail and clamped down.

He screamed. It echoed off the concrete walls, a sweet, terrible symphony.

"She dosed your tea every morning," Leo gasped, sweat pouring down his face, mixing with the blood. "Just enough to make you suggestible. Just enough to make you hate your barren wife. We needed her out of the way so Candida could take the main seat. Then, once the merger was signed... pop."

He mimicked a gun with his free hand. "Bye bye, Jackson."

I twisted the pliers, feeling the cartilage give way.

"And the boy?" I asked, my voice devoid of humanity.

"Joey?" Leo grinned through the pain, his teeth stained crimson. "He's mine. Look at his nose, you blind idiot. He's a Camacho through and through."

I dropped the pliers. They clattered loudly on the concrete.

I felt sick. Physically, violently sick.

I had destroyed Elena for this. I had thrown away the only truth in my life for a lie wrapped in a cheap skirt.

I turned to Marco, the command tearing from my throat. "Get the Commission. Get the Capos. Bring Candida to the main hall."

"Now?"

"Now. I want them all to bear witness."

I walked out of the cell, leaving Leo laughing in the dark.

"You're too late!" he shouted after me, his voice cracking. "You already lost her! You killed what you had!"

I stopped at the stairs. My hand gripped the railing until the wood groaned under the pressure.

I didn't kill her. I drove her away.

And God help anyone who stood in my way of fixing it.