Chapter 3 - The Shadows of Kade Manor
Kade Manor sat behind ten-foot wrought-iron gates on the northern outskirts of Chicago, an imposing fortress of gray stone and slate roofs that had witnessed decades of underworld history.
Inside the cavernous mahogany study, the fire crackled in the massive hearth, casting long, dancing shadows across the leather-bound books and the heavy oak desk. But the room felt like a tomb.
Weston sat behind the desk, his elbows braced on the wood, his face buried in his hands.
The events of the afternoon replayed in his mind like a relentless film loop. The park. Wren’s tear-streaked face. The heavy stroller. And those three pairs of eyes—one set of slate-gray staring back at him with an unnerving, silent judgment that mirrored his own reflection.
Triplets. Four years old.
He had calculated the timeline with ruthless mathematical precision. November. Four years ago, right around the time he had forced Wren out of his life, demanding a quiet, brutal divorce under the threat of his rivals finding out about her existence. He had told himself he was saving her. He had convinced himself that keeping her away from the blood-soaked reality of the Kade syndicate was the ultimate act of love.
What a magnificent, cowardly lie.
He hadn't protected her. He had abandoned her, pregnant and alone, in a city full of wolves, while he sat in a sterile mansion drowning his conscience in whiskey and business expansion.
The heavy oak door creaked open, and Marcus, Weston’s oldest friend and head of security, stepped into the room. Marcus’s face was grim, his broad shoulders tense beneath his black suit.
“Boss,” Marcus said quietly, stopping five feet from the desk. “The Marchetti family pulled all their logistics teams off our docks twenty minutes ago. Odalys’s father is screaming for blood. He says you humiliated his daughter in public for a ghost from your past.”
Weston didn't look up. “Let him scream. Cut off their shipping access to the south corridor by morning. If they want a war over a broken engagement, give them one.”
Marcus hesitated, shifting his weight. “And the... the woman from the park?”
At that, Weston raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot, dark with a raw, jagged hunger that Marcus had never seen in all the years they had run the streets together.
“Did you find her?” Weston asked, his voice low and vibrating with tension.
“We tracked her CTA transit card,” Marcus said, pulling a tablet from his inner pocket and placing it flat on the mahogany desk. “She didn't go back to her old apartment in Evanston. She’s been living under an assumed last name—Miller—in a modest rental house out in Oak Park. She works part-time at an independent bookstore downtown and raises the kids entirely on her own. No nanny. No family support. Just her.”
Weston stared at the glowing screen. A photograph of a small, weather-beaten bungalow with a white picket fence and a tricycle on the porch stared back at him.
“Oak Park,” Weston murmured.
“Boss,” Marcus said cautiously, his voice dropping an octave. “Marchetti is looking for an excuse to hit us where it hurts. And if you go storming into a suburban neighborhood looking for your secret family, half the syndicate is going to find out within the hour. If your enemies realize you have an ex-wife and three children living in an unprotected house thirty minutes from downtown…”
“They won't find out,” Weston interrupted, standing up so abruptly his leather chair scraped loudly against the hardwood floor. He shrugged on his heavy black wool overcoat, his jaw set like granite. “Because I’m going there right now. And by the time the sun rises tomorrow, that house will have a security detail tighter than this fortress.”
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“Weston,” Marcus warned. “She ran from you today. She looked at you like you were the plague. Walking onto her porch uninvited is going to blow up in your face.”
“Let it blow,” Weston said, sliding his gloved hands over his knuckles as he walked toward the door. “I spent four years living in hell because I thought I did the right thing. I’m not spending one more night without knowing my children.”
