Chapter 26 Blood doesn't mean loyalty
Carlino’s POV
By the time we sealed the estate, I trusted no one.
Not the guards on the gates. Not the men in the control room. Not even the ones who had bled for me before. Damien’s absence sat in the air like smoke you couldn’t see but still tasted.
“Lock internal comms to closed loop,” I told Luca as we walked. “No outgoing signals without my word.”
“You think he left backdoors?” Luca asked.
“I think he stood beside me for eight years while hiding the truth.” My jaw tightened.
“Assume everything’s compromised.”
We turned down the private corridor that led to the older wing of the house — the part built before the expansion, before the empire got bigger than the walls that held it.
Before my father handed me the throne. Two guards stood outside his study. They looked nervous. Good.
“Anyone go in?” I asked.
“No, boss,” one said quickly. “Just your father.”
They didn’t hesitate.
I pushed the door open without knocking. My father sat by the window in his wheelchair, a blanket over his legs, city lights reflecting in the glass behind him. A chessboard rested on the table beside him — mid-game, pieces frozen in strategy that no longer mattered.
He didn’t turn.
“You’re late,” he said calmly.
“I was busy being betrayed.” That made him look at me.
His eyes were still sharp. Age hadn’t dulled them. The stroke had taken his body, not his mind.
“Damien,” he guessed.
“Yes.”
A pause.
“I wondered when that would happen,” he murmured.
My hand tightened on the back of a chair. “You what?”
“I said I wondered when,” he repeated, voice even.
“You knew he doubted you?”
“I knew he asked questions you refused to ask.”
Anger flashed hot and fast. “He walked out with Kailen. Into an active attack on this house.”
“And you think men betray power for fun?” my father asked. “Or because something rots underneath it?”
I moved closer. “Kailen asked me about Travien.”
Silence.
The name didn’t surprise him. Answer number one.
“He said Travien wasn’t a traitor,” I continued. “He said you ran human cargo through supply routes. That Travien found out.”
My father’s jaw shifted slightly. Not fear. Not guilt.
Annoyance.
“Criminals accusing criminals,” he said dryly. “That’s your evidence?”
“Did you do it?”
The question landed hard between us.
From the doorway, I heard soft footsteps. I didn’t need to look.
Lina.
Of course she ignored orders again.
“Out,” I said without turning.
“No,” she replied.
My father glanced past me, curious. “Let her stay.”
I looked back at her. She stood straighter than usual, arms folded, chin lifted just enough to show she wasn’t backing down tonight.
“This doesn’t concern you,” I told her.
“It does if men keep trying to burn the house down around me,” she said. “I’m tired of being the last to know why.”
My father studied her, almost amused. “You always did pick strong women.”
“This isn’t a discussion,” I snapped.
“Then stop talking and start asking the right questions,” Lina shot back.
I stared at her a second too long. She didn’t look away. Fine.
I turned back to my father. “Did you traffic people?”
His eyes hardened. “I built routes. I moved product. Weapons. Information. Influence.”
“Not people?”
“In our world,” he said, “lines blur.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only honest one.”
Lina exhaled slowly. “So that’s a yes.”
My father’s gaze flicked to her. “It’s a reality.”
I felt something shift in my chest — not shock. Recalibration.
“Travien,” I said. “What did he find?”
My father’s fingers tapped once on the armrest. “He was idealistic. Thought we could win without becoming what we fought.”
“And?”
“And he threatened exposure.”
“So you silenced him.”
“I contained a liability.”
Lina’s voice cut in, sharp. “You killed him.”
My father didn’t look at her. He looked at me. “Leadership,” he said quietly, “is choosing who pays the price so the rest survive.”
The room felt smaller.
Damien’s voice echoed in my head: I thought you were different.
“Did you tell me?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you needed to lead without hesitation. Doubt makes men weak.”
“No,” Lina said. “Lies make them blind.”
“Careful,” I warned her.
“No,” she said again, stepping closer. “You don’t get to silence truth just because it’s ugly.”
My father watched us like we were part of a lesson unfolding exactly as expected.
“Kailen knows,” I said.
“Yes,” my father replied.
“You knew he knew?”
“I suspected.”
“And you said nothing?”
“What would you have done? Hugged him?”
I stepped forward. “I would’ve prepared.”
“You were comfortable,” he said. “Comfortable leaders get replaced.”
“By men like Kailen?”
“By men who aren’t afraid to look at what they are.”
I leaned down, hands gripping the arms of his wheelchair. “You made me defend a legacy I didn’t fully understand.”
“I made you strong enough to hold it.”
“You made enemies I didn’t earn.”
“Power always comes with inheritance.”
Lina moved beside me. “And what about the people who didn’t choose to be part of this inheritance?”
My father’s gaze softened slightly when he looked at her. “You think you’re outside it?”
“I think people deserve better than being cargo,” she said.
Silence.
Then—
A knock. Fast. Urgent.
Luca didn’t wait to be invited. He stepped in. “Boss. We traced movement from one of the old port accounts. Funds just shifted. Big.”
My father’s eyes flicked to me.
“When?” I asked.
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Destination?”
Luca hesitated. “One of our safe warehouses.”
Cold settled in my spine.
“Kailen?” Lina asked.
“No,” I said quietly. “Damien.”
Because only someone on the inside would know which accounts still existed under old names.
My father exhaled through his nose. “He’s forcing you to choose.”
“Between what?”
“Legacy,” he said, “or control.”
Lina looked at me. “You don’t have to be him.
My father’s voice sharpened. “And you don’t have to be weak.”
I straightened slowly.
Two paths.
Burn the past.
Or protect the structure it built.
Either way, war.
“Lock down every port tied to pre-2012 routes,” I told Luca. “Quietly. No alerts.”
“On it.”
“And get Niel. Full team. We move in ten.”
“To the warehouse?” Lina asked.
“Yes.”
She nodded once. “I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t a debate.”
“Stop deciding my safety for me,” she said.
“You said yourself — this war just got bigger than the house.”
She wasn’t wrong.
That irritated me more than if she were.
My father watched her with interest. “If she goes,” he said, “she sees what you really are.”
“She already does,” Lina replied.
Our eyes met.
Something there had changed. Not softer.
Stronger.
“Fine,” I said. “But you stay behind me. You don’t improvise.”
She gave a small, humorless smile. “No promises.”
Luca stepped back toward the hall. “Boss… there’s one more thing.”
“What.”
“The warehouse that got the transfer?”
“Yes?”
“It’s the one Damien helped design.”
Of course it was.
I looked at my father.
“You built an empire on secrets,” I said. “Now I get to clean them up.”
He held my gaze. “No,” he said quietly. “Now you get to decide which ones survive.”
I turned for the door. Behind me, Lina followed.
And for the first time in years, I didn’t know if I was walking toward a trap—
—or toward the truth that would finally tear my name away from my father’s.
Either way, Damien was waiting. He knew exactly how I thought. That made him more dangerous than Kailen.